Putting your life to music doesn’t necessarily make your life art, especially when it turns on the clichéd ticking of a biological clock.

But, as the story progresses, the male ability to adapt and overcome adversity through bonding and team effort is given the recognition it’s due – and even celebrated.

Milling around the lobby of the Thrust theater after opening night, I overheard a "looking into the abyss" reference more than once.

Why do we feel the need to project such goodness upon some externalized other who brings order to our households and happiness to our children – as if it was something entirely beyond our ken?

The playwright’s awkward tone is deliberate and may at times shock you, but this production manages to infuse it all with a rare energy and comic aplomb.

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.

“It’s so real.” she kept repeating, an echo taken up by others, as if being real made the violence preferable to other alternatives.

Perhaps the greatest compliment one can give this production of the Tony Award-winning musical is that one forgets that it's “community theatre."

Theatre that stays with you invariably has at least one actor with such compassion and understanding of his character that he completely inhabits it.

This is the great Jim Carpenter's first time on the Magic stage, and those that follow Bay Area theater know he's a stalwart icon. For that alone, this production is not to be missed.