From Newsgroup: alt.tv.star-trek.tos   
   From Address: cigarmanwine@gmail.com   
   Subject: SHATNER ON STAGE: A REVIEW   
      
   Thought you people might enjoy a grown-up critique. For once. As   
   opposed to "It's awesome" or "It sucks"!   
      
   William Shatner, the once and forever Capt. Kirk of "Star Trek,"   
   beamed into San Francisco's Orpheum Theatre for one night Sunday,   
   leaving a very thin vapor trail of reminiscence, showbiz anecdotes,   
   projected clips and photographs, and a patch of singing. Gruffly   
   amiable and self-amused as its creator could be, "Shatner's World: We   
   Just Live in It ..." came off as a shoddy piece of work, faux-casual   
   to a fault and frequently tedious, unfunny or banal.   
      
      
   The show, which recently had a limited run on Broadway before going   
   out on tour, is a kind of stand-up scrapbook of a career, with the   
   Canadian-born actor flipping back and forth through his life as a   
   stage and film performer, horse lover, son, husband, father and   
   armchair philosopher. Close to two hours is a long time to spend in   
   the company of someone who patched together a series of often   
   meandering and poorly told tales to little cumulative effect.   
      
      
   The audience came primed to witness a major pop culture figure of the   
   past half century in the flesh. Many jumped to their feet when   
   Shatner, looking hale and lively at 80, strolled onstage after his   
   own   
   voice-over intro. By evening's end, a patient politeness had settled   
   over the house. The clips - of "Star Trek," "Boston Legal," a George   
   Lucas tribute, a sentimental Shatner moment with Patrick (Capt.   
   Picard) Stewart and more - often outshone the live raconteur.   
      
      
   Signaling an intention not to take himself too seriously, while   
   simultaneously introducing an equine preoccupation, Shatner opened   
   with a clip of himself riding in on a horse at his own Comedy Central   
   roast. Then he spooled back to his boyhood in Montreal and a   
   precocious love of theater. A working actor in his teens, Shatner   
   went   
   on to perform at the famed Stratford Festival, were he understudied   
   Christopher Plummer in "Henry V." He was soon on Broadway in   
   "Tamburlaine," and the work kept coming.   
      
      
   Little of 'Star Trek'   
      
      
   The show took its time getting to the "Star Trek" material, and then   
   dwelled on it lightly. Shatner clearly wanted to open up other, less-   
   familiar corners of his "World." There were sketches of his mother   
   and   
   father, a long story about driving a rabbi from Vancouver to Chicago,   
   clips from a movie in which he played Alexander the Great and   
   snapshots, both photographic and verbal, of his current wife and his   
   three daughters from a previous marriage.   
      
      
   He did conjure some revealing scenes, none better than the one of him   
   watching Neil Armstrong's landing on the moon on a tiny TV. Shatner   
   was divorced and lonely at the time. His musing on Capt. Kirk's   
   possible tiny role in the space program was a mordantly funny   
   reflection on the tangency of fantasy and reality. Had the show   
   ventured farther and deeper into such realms, "Shatner's World" might   
   have been a much worthier voyage   
      
      
   Pacing a problem   
      
      
   Great long chunks of the evening sat there inertly, while others got   
   brushed over too quickly. Pacing and emphasis plagued the show   
   throughout. One episode after another staggered around in vain search   
   of a payoff. He overshared a favored horse's fate, a misadventure   
   with   
   a Pontiac and an encounter with a gorilla. Some tantalizing material,   
   meanwhile, went underexplored. Surely there is more to say about a   
   mother who explained her teetotaling by remarking, "Alcohol   
   interferes   
   with my suffering."   
      
      
   His quotes from other sources often fizzled. An attempt to unpack   
   Steve Jobs' last words was ill-advised. So were some of his pat   
   insights about love and animal communication.   
      
      
   Speaking in his signature aggressive cadence - which he joked he'd   
   devised to goose up a failing Broadway show - Shat-ner relied on an   
   office chair as his sole prop, wheeling and riding it around the   
   stage. There was little theatrical imagination apparent in a   
   production staged by Scott Faris in New York. No program book or   
   sheet   
   was on offer at the Orpheum.   
      
      
   Whenever he got off a choice phrase or timed a line delivery well,   
   the   
   missed opportunity of the show loomed up. "Sorry to disappoint you,"   
   Shatner sang, in a lyric from one of his self-parody albums, "but I'm   
   real." Even through the smoke of the evening's misfires, you could   
   sense the outlines of an engaging life and a substantial personality.   
   It wasn't Shatner's reality that disappointed. It was the show that   
   let the audience down.   
      
      
   This article recently appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco   
   Chronicle. Eat that for breakfast!   
      
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