There was quite a bit of skilled tapping and dancing throughout the show and some of the performers such as Donisha Brown have a great skill at taking a beat and transforming it into an all out musical outburst of energy.

We take our Wagner seriously in this town. Despite the 135 years since this was first performed as a cycle in Bayreuth Germany in 1876, the Ring is always new, always worth plumbing – and accordingly, we treat it with a combination of gravitas and hype not seen elsewhere.

It’s immediately evident from the grim set that one is about to witness a decidedly bleak version of the Kander and Ebb classic.

It astounds what can be done with red felt, and old garden hose. A steamer trunk, all 9 cubic feet of it? Pure gold.

As he did when he played Destry in Wirehead, Marin creates a character that’s a bit of a nebbish, the perennial loser whose efforts are charming in their sincerity. This role might be so effective because it goes to so many of us on our better days.

Wilder can be very funny, but his humor here is kitschy or weird, instead of revealing. His attempts at profundity, such as the repetitious Christmas dinner, left me feeling like a fidgety kid in need of an Adderall fix.

Costumer designer Brandin Barón developed the true shocker – a 1970’s wardrobe that isn’t an affront to the dignity of the characters.

I was curious and eager to see this show at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco the night before Thanksgiving, having had the good fortune to have seen the original production in New York City.

Watching Felder’s Bernstein conduct the Vienna Philharmonic play Wagner, you’re immediately in the moment, understanding perhaps, for the first time, Bernstein's take on something so hugely heroic.

Wilder and Bracco’s play works so well because of the obvious lengths they’ve gone to make this historically accurate – to make it less of a fairy tale and more of a real-life miracle.