Paul and Greg of A Chorus Line Opened Hearts and Minds
Published: May 16, 2013
The Tony Awards (June 9) are just weeks away, but before then, on June 2, San Francisco will glitter with its own Broadway magic at Bay Area Cabaret’s Closing Night Gala/A Tribute to Marvin Hamlisch. The event will take place at the historic, elegant Venetian Room at the Fairmont Hotel. Hamlisch performed with Bay Area Cabaret for the grand re-opening of the Venetian in 2010, with this tribute held on what would have been the prolific composer’s 69th birthday.
This issue of the Bay Times celebrates straight allies, with influential and talented Hamlisch certainly having been one of them. Terre Blair Hamlisch, his widow, tells the Bay Times, “Marvin was one of the first in doing benefits to raise awareness for AIDS, and personally took care of many friends during their struggle and at the end of their lives…Many.”
With lyricist Edward Kleban and...
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Jersey Boys: Oh What a Night!
By Dennis McMillan Published: March 21, 2013
Hey, ya effin’ a-holes! If ya miss Jersey Boys at the Curran Theatre, ya bettah fuggedaboudit! But if you don’t like salty Jersey swears, this ain’t the show for you. First, we had Jersey Shore and then Jersey Wives, but now we got Jersey Boys, the heartwarming rock documentary about...
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Everything Goes Grand in Anything Goes!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: January 24, 2013
The Roundabout Theatre Company’s Anything Goes is the new Broadway revival of Cole Porter’s timeless classic musical theatre masterpiece that easily earned the 2011 Tony Award for Best Musical Revival. Anything Goes has a limited engagement at the SHN Curran Theatre through Feb. 3. If you don’t absolutely adore Cole...
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The Version Mary
By Terry Baum Published: December 20, 2012
I’m half of A Coupla Crackpot Crones. Our latest show, “Crones for the Holidays,” plays at Stage Werx in San Francisco through December 30. We do sketch comedy and improv from a lesbian, feminist and generally subversive viewpoint. What better subject to subvert in a Christmas show than the actual...
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Ben Lipitz Brings Pumbaa the Warthog to Life
Published: December 20, 2012
(Editor’s Note: Award-winning Broadway actor Ben Lipitz is in San Francisco currently performing with the North American Tour of Disney’s “The Lion King.”)
“This show touches lives and brings families together,” reported veteran Broadway performer Ben Lipitz in an exclusive interview with the Bay Times.
Asked about a...
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The Christmas Revels: Created Out of Imagination and Love
Published: December 6, 2012
By Lynn UngarIt’s the beginning of the 15th century in the small Italian village of Prosecco, and the townspeople have gathered together to perform a nativity play and celebrate the shortest day of the year. The cast enters, singing the Sicilian Bagpiper’s Carol, and the village assembles in small family...
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Beach Blanket Babylon Political Stars
Published: November 1, 2012
Steve Silver’s Beach Blanket Babylon is the world’s longest running musical revue. The show began its run in 1974 at Club Savoy Tivoli and has since moved to the larger Club Fugazi in North Beach. The show is such a living legend that Green Street between Columbus Avenue and Powell...
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You’ll Go Insane Over Marat/Sade
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: July 12, 2012
Marc Huestis is presenting the Thrillpeddlers production of Marat/Sade, the Tony Award-winning 1963 theatrical classic by Peter Weiss.
Actually the entire title is The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade;...
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Corpus Christi Play Opens in SF with Added Film Premiere
Published: April 19, 2012
By Cathy Renna and Nathan Tabak
A decade and a half ago, when Terrence McNally first conceived a play that depicted Jesus and his apostles as gay men in 1950s Texas, he expected controversy. What he didn’t expect was that after the outrage had died down, Corpus Christi would...
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New Works Ahead and Final Weekends
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: April 19, 2012
Custom Made Theatre’s production of Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day completes its run on April 22. Catch the play critics are calling “simply incredible!” Remaining shows are Fri-Sat 8pm; Sun 7pm. Save $5 on all tickets using code: Kushner at http://www.custommade.org/tickets. The Member of the Wedding previews on June...
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A Horny Old Goat in Berkeley
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 19, 2012
The lighthearted Anatol is a character-driven comedy of manners. Arthur Schnitzler’s Austrian play tells of a chronic lothario, some of the women he seduces, and his sneering, cynical best friend. Anatol lives in the bourgeois elegance of late 19th-century Vienna. He believes that all the women he has been with...
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Awards Gala Honors and Shows to See
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: April 5, 2012
Approximately 400 members of the Bay Area theater industry attended a gala at the Palace of Fine Arts April 2, where over 80 awards were bestowed for Outstanding Achievement in 30+ categories by the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Among the recipients was Tom Kelly, former Theatre Editor...
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Interview with Diana Brown of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later
By Tom W. Kelly Published: March 22, 2012
Ten years after the brutal death of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, five members of the Tectonic Theatre Project returned to Laramie to try to understand the long-term effect of the murder. They found a town wrestling with its legacy and its place in history.
Between rehearsals,...
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Some Things Are Good In Denmark
By Jeanie K Smith Published: March 22, 2012
William Shakespeare's Hamlet is arguably the most famous play in the English language, and perhaps even in other languages as well, being perceived as the definitive great author’s work that delves into human emotions with penetrating insight and well-wrought poetry. Still, it's rarely read by American students any more, and...
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An Hilarious, Heartbreaking One-Woman Show
By Terry Baum Published: March 22, 2012
Marilyn Pittman, lesbian stand-up comic, has been delighting and enlightening San Francisco audiences with her razor-sharp wit and political insights for many years. Now, with her solo show It’s All the Rage at The Marsh, Pittman takes us on a trip exploring the most traumatic event of her life. She...
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Loved by You, a Self-Love Story at Brava Theatre
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: March 22, 2012
For two nights only March 28 and 29th at Brava Theatre in SF, Lori Shantzis will perform her solo show Loved by You, a testament to the enduring spirit and strength of a woman whose childhood messages were anything but self-love and self-acceptance. Below in an interview with the BayTimes,...
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Ghost Light — All the World’s a Stage
By Tom W. Kelly Published: January 26, 2012
Epic, sprawling, messy, painful, provocative, challenging and insightful, Ghost Light (currently running at Berkeley Repertory Theatre) embodies the life and ongoing torments of Jonathan Moscone, the son of San Francisco’s murdered Mayor Moscone. And given the horrific nature of post traumatic stress syndrome and its many manifestations, it should be...
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A Tennessee Williams Tour-de-Force For Two Actors
By Terry Baum Published: January 12, 2012
Kudos to Theatre Rhinoceros for bringing Tennessee Williams’ The Two-Character Play to vibrant, shimmering, tormented life. This is Williams’ most autobiographical work, and his own personal favorite. On the centennial of the birth of the greatest American playwright, Rhino Artistic Director John Fisher, who also directed this production, did right...
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SF Gay Men’s Chorus Brought Us Home for the Holidays
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: December 29, 2011
The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus wrapped a beautiful bow on its 34th season with its 22nd annual “Home for the Holidays” concert at the Castro Theatre. The Chorus, under the direction of Conductor Timothy Seelig, was joined by soprano Melody Moore and Velocity Bells plus additional guests including the...
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Becoming Julia Morgan: More than Meets the Eye
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: December 29, 2011
There is no doubt that Julia Morgan was a formidable woman and a hard-working visionary who was able with sheer determination to break into areas where women had previously never succeeded. Being the first female to be admitted to the hallowed halls of UC Berkeley School of Architecture, the Beaux...
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Xanadu is Xciting and Xcellent Xposition!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: December 29, 2011
Xanadu the musical is now rolling on the New Conservatory Theatre Center stage. This is the Douglas Carter Beane Broadway play based on the 1980 cult classic movie that critics panned. I guess I am just a sap, because I enjoyed the film for what it was: camp comedy. No,...
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Golden Girls Reenact Classic Christmas Episodes Flawlessly
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: December 15, 2011
It just wouldn’t be the holidays without a nice visit from the sweet old ladies. No, not your aunts and grandmothers – I’m referring to the four Miami seniors in the Golden Girls’ Christmas Episodes, now playing at the Victoria Theatre. The Golden Girls are back this holiday season with...
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An Entertaining and Energetic Christmas Carol in San Jose
By Jeanie K Smith Published: December 15, 2011
Rick Lombardo, Artistic Director of San Jose Repertory Theatre, has had a vision, and brought it to life in a new adaptation of the venerable Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol. Lombardo's version breathes some much-needed new life into the staging of the familiar story, resulting in a thoroughly entertaining show...
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Dance-Along Nutcracker Was Far Out, Man!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: December 15, 2011
This year’s “Dance-Along Nutcracker,” the big yearly fundraiser for the Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, paid homage to those hippie, trippy days of the Summer of Love in Haight-Ashbury San Francisco - with its love-ins and be-ins and turning on and dropping out. It was basically the Nutcracker Suite music of Tchaikovsky,...
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Donna Sachet’s “Songs Of The Season” were Certainly Pleasin’
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: December 15, 2011
Every year Donna Sachet puts on her “Songs of the Season” cabaret show to benefit the AIDS Emergency Fund and Breast Cancer Emergency Fund. Every year the talent lineup is incredible. Her 19th season of “Seasons” at the Rrazz Room was nothing less than that.
The show began...
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A Refreshing Holiday Confection
By Jeanie K Smith Published: December 8, 2011
Almost, Maine delivers laughs and love in Los Altos
The Bus Barn Stage Company in Los Altos has avoided the ubiquitous “Christmas Carol” and other treacly offerings of the holiday season by mounting a delightful play, one filled with the requisite snow but also filled with humor and warmth...
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Tennessee Williams... Timeless Drama For Now
By Lynn Ruth Miller Published: December 1, 2011
"All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress."-Tennessee Williams
“Of all the great American playwrights, Tennessee Williams is our most important,” said Jasson Minadakis, Artistic Director of Marin Theatre Company and director of The Glass Menagerie that opens...
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Brilliant Fela! Gets You Out of Your Seat
By Terry Baum Published: December 1, 2011
How do you make a Broadway musical about the chaotic, violent, stoned, intensely creative life of Fela Kuti? Fela was a Nigerian musician and political radical whose star blazed across the world until his death in 1997. A Broadway musical is an inherently precise, disciplined phenomenon. To capture the brilliant...
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Fringe of Marin’s 28th Festival of One-Act Plays
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: November 17, 2011
Part I A panoply of Bay Area Playwrights, Directors and Actors showcase new short plays at the 28th season of Fringe of Marin at Dominican University.
The first of the two programs starts with Bill Chessman’s Who is Who?, a delightful whodunit farce of mistaken identities set in the...
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Cirque du Soleil’s TOTEM is Totally Terrific
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: November 17, 2011
Written and directed by Robert Lepage, TOTEM traces the fascinating journey of the human species from its original amphibian state to its ultimate desire to fly. The characters evolve on a stage resembling a giant turtle, the symbol of origin for many ancient civilizations.
Inspired by many founding...
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Afield Wins Best of SF Fringe 2011
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: November 3, 2011
In Linda Ayres Frederick’s Afield, the winner of the 2011 Best of Fringe, we encounter Samuel, a grouchy farm worker busily digging into the earth. He is joined by Miriam who, as she returns to where she grew up now fearfully walks among land mines. As Miriam questions Samuel she...
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The Last Romance is a Romantic Comedy for All Ages in San Jose
Published: November 3, 2011
By Jeannie SmithJoe DiPietro's The Last Romance, currently running at the San Jose Repertory Theatre, is an amusing piece about love that happens later in life. The central question posed in the program asks, "Is it ever too late for love?" and the play answers it rather obliquely, giving us...
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Fear Over Frisco Offers Shocking Shocktoberfest
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: October 20, 2011
You are in store for gore when you attend the Thrillpeddlers’ Shocktoberfest 12: Fear Over Frisco at Hypnodrome theatre - just in time for Halloween. Fear Over Frisco is a series of three short plays based in San Francisco during the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘60s, all written or adapted...
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Marga Gomez’ Not Getting Any Younger at The Marsh is Hilarious
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: October 6, 2011
Marga Gomez takes off like a firecracker in her 9th solo show Not Getting Any Younger playing at The Marsh in San Francisco. Lauded for her honesty as an out gay comedian before it was safe to be one, Gomez has actually been a master of deception - especially when...
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August: Osage County Dysfunctional Family Drama at City Lights in San Jose
Published: October 6, 2011
By Jeanie K. SmithTracy Letts’ 2007 play has been hailed as the most monumental American play of the last few decades. It has garnered every possible theatre award, including a Pulitzer Prize in 2008, and ran to rave reviews for several years on Broadway and extensive touring. Focused on one...
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A Delicate Balance: Still Precarious After a Half-Century
By Lily Janiak Published: October 6, 2011
Forty-five years after its premiere, Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance, which is now running at the Aurora, remains one of the most incisive and terrifying skewering of suburban America in our dramatic canon. The usual suspects - knee-jerk propriety, isolated half-acre castles - get their comeuppance, but so do the...
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Dear Miss Cline and Night Over Erzinga Hit Solid Notes
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: October 6, 2011
Smuin Ballet kicked off its 2011-2012 Season at the Palace of Fine Arts with a world premiere Dear Miss Cline by Choreographer in Residence Amy Seiwert set to the music of Patsy Cline. This acrobatic upbeat piece completed an evening that presented previously performed repertoire including the late Michael Smuin’s...
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Art for AIDS Celebrates 15th Anniversary Supporting UCSF AIDS Health Project
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: October 6, 2011
UCSF Health Project presented the 15th annual “Art for AIDS” auction at the Galleria in the San Francisco Design Center. UCSF’s AIDS Health Project has served the community for more than 27-years with free HIV testing, education, counseling, and mental health services. More than 175 gallery quality works of...
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The Execution of Nancy Drew in Waco Texas
By Tom W. Kelly Published: September 22, 2011
The San Francisco Fringe Festival annually features theatre that challenges, provokes and sometimes even shocks. New works by local and national (and some international) playwrights have the opportunity to live and breathe onstage as well as garner audience reaction, vital to the scripts’ development. And JB Enterprises (in association with...
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Wow! San Jose Rep Scores Big with Spring Awakening
Published: September 22, 2011
By Jeanie SmithSan Jose Rep has opened its season with a brilliant winner of a show - Spring Awakening, the hit musical based on Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play by the same name. Don’t for a second think this must be old - focused on emerging sexuality and societal taboos, the...
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Why We Have a Body: Why We Need Contemporary Lesbian Drama
By Lily Janiak Published: September 22, 2011
The Magic Theatre is advertising Claire Chafee’s Why We Have a Body, its 2011-12 season opener, as “the comedy that rocked San Francisco,” a reference to the play’s 1993 world premiere, at the same theater, which went on to a national tour. But the phrase misleads.
The play, about...
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Eat the Runt is Full of Laughs
Published: September 22, 2011
By Jeanie SmithRenegade Theatre Experiment in San Jose celebrates its Tenth Anniversary season with a reprise of a show that, back in 2003, was a smash hit, Eat the Runt, by Avery Crozier. Judging by the way the audience was rolling with laughter on opening night, Renegade has another surefire...
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Waiting for Giovanni is Jewelle Gomez’s Tribute to James Baldwin
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: September 8, 2011
In her world premiere of Waiting for Giovanni, author and activist Jewelle Gomez presents James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room as a dream play depicting the conflicts in the author’s mind. In collaboration with and directed by Harry Waters Jr., and in association with the New Conservatory Theatre Center, Gomez’s play brings...
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Exit, Pursued by a Bear: Vengeance is Ursine
By Lily Janiak Published: September 8, 2011
At some point in Exit, Pursued by a Bear, a zippy world premiere at Crowded Fire Theater Company, I started to wonder why I liked playwright Lauren Gunderson’s four characters so much, even though they derive so plainly from trite Southern stereotypes. There’s Kyle (Patrick Jones), a good old-fashioned Georgia...
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“Mary Lou” Is Must-See Movie Musical for Queers, Drags & Their Friends
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: September 8, 2011
Mary Lou, which might be described as an Israeli Mamma Mia!, is having its United States theatrical premiere at the Castro Theatre September 17-21.
This is a marvelous movie with much more of a message than the ABBA one, but with every bit of the gloriously magnified music...
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The Ace of Green – Magic at Hotel Rex
Published: September 8, 2011
By Liz BellA three pronged balancing act makes Magic at the Rex a full spectacle of magic, not just tricks.
My companion and I arrived at The Hotel Rex at 7:40 for the 8pm show. The small library bar was crowded, and buzzing with excitement. The clinking of...
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Twelfth Night with a Twist at San Quentin is a Stunner
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: August 25, 2011
“If Music be the food of Love…play on"... Twelfth Night by Wm. ShakespeareIt’s easier to get into San Quentin than it is to get out, even when you are just visiting for the rare opportunity to see thirteen inmates performing in Shakespeare’s romantic comedy Twelfth Night. With an audience comprised...
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Three Cheers for Billy Elliot
Published: August 25, 2011
By Alexandra BringerIn the theater world, it is unique to hear the opinion of an up and coming teen actress. It gives readers a different viewpoint of award-winning shows from a fresh set of eyes. I’m Alexandra Bringer, a high school sophomore in the Bay Area. I think of theater...
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A Riveting Revival of American Buffalo
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: August 25, 2011
David Mamet’s American Buffalo premiered at the Goodman Theatre in 1975, appeared on Broadway two years later, and in a 1995 film with Dustin Hoffman, is vividly revived at the San Francisco Actor’s Theatre. This salon tragi-comedy, considered one of Mamet’s best written plays, depicts three petty crook pals’ attempt...
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Obama Break Dances in San Rafael
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 25, 2011
Marin Shakes’ newest production is a spoof that inflicts irreverent mayhem upon the body of American history. Under the trees in San Rafael, The Complete History of America (abridged) recounts events since 1492 and tangentially earlier with only coincidental relationship to the facts. The energy of the three players keeps...
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Reduction in Force: Marxist Characterization Meets the Financial Meltdown
By Lily Janiak Published: August 25, 2011
“My name is Anita, and I’m an executive assistant,” says the protagonist of Reduction in Force, a new play at Central Works, at the show’s opening. You could be excused for thinking, led astray by Jan Zvaifler’s well-timed delivery, that this first line begins a self-parodying but sympathetic portrayal of...
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The Nature Line: The Post-Post-Apocalypse
By Lily Janiak Published: August 11, 2011
The post-apocalyptic world envisioned in The Nature Line, a new play by J.C. Lee at Sleepwalkers Theatre, bears close resemblance to the pre-apocalyptic one. Sure, people in it - the survivors of the end of the world, a couple of generations later - aren’t allowed to touch. Or have sex....
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A Midsummer Afternoon’s Wander
By Lily Janiak Published: August 11, 2011
To see Women’s Will’s 1960s-themed, free-and-open-to-the-public production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is to dive a little too deeply into regional caricature: It’s fine when you’re sitting in a park in the East Bay, the smell of pot interlaced with the aromas of your neighbors’ artisan picnic items, enjoying your...
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Exuberant City Lights Brings in Sexy “Nine”
Published: August 11, 2011
By Jeanie K. Smith“Nine,” the musical based on Federico Fellini’s iconic film “8 ½”, opened on Broadway in 1982 and ran for over 700 performances. The lack of consistent critical acclaim didn’t stop it from winning five Tonys, including Best Musical. With music and lyrics by Maury Weston and book...
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Fifi & Fanny
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: August 11, 2011
Stephanie Lynne Smith, concert pianist and former artistic director of the Lesbian Gay Chorus of San Francisco, and Carolyn Eidson, singer/ comedian/ filmmaker, have performed as Fifi & Fanny in venues around the Bay Area since 2007. Last year they performed to sold-out audiences in their smash hit, Fifi &...
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Help is on the Way” is on the Way
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: August 11, 2011
The Richmond/ Ermet AIDS Foundation is proud to present “Help is on the Way”, the 17th annual gala celebration. This year’s all-star benefit concert features entertainers from Broadway, TV, film, and the recording industry. It’s jazz, pop, and live performance, up close and personal, from some of San Francisco’s favorite...
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Shakespearean Scottish Murder in San Rafael
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 28, 2011
Marin Shakespeare Company enacted bloody Scottish regicide, regret and madness under a full moon for the opening night of Macbeth. In a classically staged outdoor presentation, Director Lesley Shisgall Currier successfully guided a large cast of talented local actors through the story of a rising political star who is goaded...
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Shakespearean Trouser Roles Modernize at Cal Shakes
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 14, 2011
Secret gay marriage adds a contemporary element to Cal Shakes’ world premiere (July 9) of The Verona Project, a musical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s early Sixteenth Century play The Two Gentlemen of Verona. This play uses the Bard’s lines from his commonplace tale of unrequited love and mistaken identity, but adds...
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When Rock and Roll Meets Shakespeare at Cal Shakes
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: July 14, 2011
Whether or not the blending of a Rock and Roll band with a Shakespeare play can prove to be harmonious is still in question for this reviewer, but The Verona Project, is, without doubt, an audacious attempt to fuse contemporary popular music with classical theatre. With vim and vitality, this...
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OMFG: Less LMAO than TTYL
By Lily Janiak Published: July 14, 2011
“We’ve seen this movie before,” Heather (Cindy Goldfield) sings toward the end of OMFG! The Internet Dating Musical, which runs for one more weekend at ODC Theater. So have we, but evidently only we know how it ends: Heather and Brandon (Jackson Davis), having gotten to know each other through...
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SF Mime Troupe's Entertaining Fast-Paced "2012-The Musical!"
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: July 7, 2011
Torn between the demands of the well-heeled bankers and the voice of the working class, a troubled commedia masked President Obama opens SF Mime Troupe's 52nd season in 2012-The Musical at Dolores Park 4th of July weekend. Directed energetically by Wilma Bonet, the multi-role playing cast includes SFMT regulars Michael...
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Enchanting Dinner Theatre on the Embarcadero
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 7, 2011
Maestro's Enchantment is Teatro ZinZanni's newest cabaret offering of music, magic and aerial acrobatics both comic and graceful. The show serves as a delightful accompaniment for scrumptious dining among friends and party people. The very professional troupe of ten performers unabashedly milks the show for thrills and laughs with a...
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Billy Elliot’s Dancing Dazzles His Macho Father
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 30, 2011
In a northern English coal mining town, ten-year old Billy Elliot struggles with his ambitions and sexuality, and rises out of a gritty background to wild success. The Broadway hit Billy Elliot The Musical now at the Orpheum is an astonishing display of stagecraft, singing and dancing. The overall theme...
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Life Lessons from Geri Jewell
Published: June 30, 2011
By Dayna VerstegenOn Thursday evening, June 23, I had the great pleasure of meeting the comic, actress and author Geri Jewell when she spoke about her book I’m Walking as Straight as I Can during the monthly Betty’s List Literary Salon at Duboce Park Café.Prior to that meeting, I knew...
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They Really Pull Out All The Stops at “The Stops”
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: June 23, 2011
This is your last chance to really “get your church on” at New Conservatory Theatre Center’s holy rollin’ musical, The Stops, with music & lyrics by wacky Eric Lane Barnes, book by Barnes & Drew Emery, directed by F. Allen Sawyer, and choreographed by Stephanie Temple. David Bicha, Cameron Cummings,...
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Aurora Reimagines Kafka’s Insect
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 23, 2011
Gregor Samsa cannot understand the nightmarish Metamorphosis that has overcome him. In the play by that name, just opened at Aurora Theatre, the dramatization of the 1915 novella by philosopher Franz Kafka bursts with invention and imagination. The direction by award-winning Bay Area director, performer and playwright Mark Jackson maintains...
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Wish We Were Here is a Genie-us Comedy!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: June 16, 2011
Wish We Were Here is actor, playwright and solo performer Michael Phillis’ latest two-person show about a guy and his genie. But this is far from Aladdin. And it ain’t no happily-ever-after fairytale. Directed by Andrew Nance, the fast-paced comic gem is currently running at New Conservatory Theatre Center.The set...
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Tiny Alice: A Mystery Play in All Senses of the Term
By Lily Janiak Published: June 16, 2011
There’s nothing easy about Tiny Alice, Edward Albee’s 1964 play currently running at Marin Theatre Company: Not for the designers, who must both house the play in rooms that suggest an enormous mansion and create a model of the mansion itself - a “huge doll’s house model” that looks imposing enough...
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Sondheim’s Assassins on Stage at the Eureka
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 16, 2011
Assassins by Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and John Weidman (book) sings and dances tunefully through an exhibition of atrocities. In Ray of Light Theatre’s musical comedy, now playing at the Eureka Theatre, a band (scattered across a cluttered, rustic Americana stage set) provides music for an ensemble of singers...
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A.C.T. Opening Night Gala Featured Tales Of The City Musical
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: June 9, 2011
“It’s nobody’s city but my own,” was a phrase from the new Armistead Maupin musical, Tales of the City, which beautifully described the pride of San Franciscans on the opening night gala fundraiser and Tales of the City performance for American Conservatory Theater on June 1. The evening started out...
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Tales of the City: San Francisco 1976 and 2011
By Lily Janiak Published: June 9, 2011
In adapting Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City into the world premiere musical currently running at American Conservatory Theater, libretto writer Jeff Whitty had some difficult choices to make. The original stories, serialized in The Chronicle in the ‘70s and ‘80s before becoming novels, sprawl - but in a good way....
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Let Me Down Easy: Where Talking Heads Fall Short, Anna Deavere Smith Stands Tall
By Lily Janiak Published: June 9, 2011
You will not hear the words “reform bill,” “budget” or even “Obama” in Let Me Down Easy, Anna Deavere Smith’s new solo show staged by Leonard Foglia at Berkeley Repertory Theatre (now running). And yet her piece really is about healthcare in the United States - just not the side we’re...
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Mamma Mia! Dancing Queen Ethan LePhong
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: June 9, 2011
Broadway San Jose presents Mamma Mia!, currently running at San Jose Center for the Performing Arts. This Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus smash-hit musical based on ABBA songs is a favorite with LGBT audiences. And gay actor-dancer-singer Ethan LePhong is currently featured in the touring show’s cast.(Bay Times) What do...
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Geoff Hoyle’s Old Geezer at The Marsh
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: June 9, 2011
So packed with spectators each night is Geoff Hoyle’s Geezer (with performances added each week), that an audience member remarked that The Marsh walls would soon need to be expanded. Hoyle’s show is both visually entertaining because of his talent as a mime clown with a flexible, rubber-like body and...
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Cal Shakes Challenges Staging Titus Andronicus
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: June 9, 2011
Against fears of rain and windy weather, California Shakespeare Theater pursued its aim to go forth with their outdoor production last Saturday night. It never rained and was well worth the trip to marvel at what the company did to breathe life into this so-called failed play (one of Shakespeare’s...
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Blue Man Group: Brings Mischief & Playful Insight
By Mike Ward Published: June 2, 2011
Entering the Golden Gate Theatre, an air of excitement is palpable. No set is visible, yet the key to the evening is projected on the scrim:“When meeting people from a foreign culture, offer a few gifts that reflect your interests as a gesture of friendship. Better yet, give things you’ve...
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Distracted Makes a Worthwhile Distraction
Published: June 2, 2011
By Jeanie K. SmithDistracted, a decidedly contemporary play by Lisa Loomer, takes on the epidemic of ADHD, the stress on our children and teens, and the endless distractions of modern society, all in a high-tech production currently playing at City Lights Theater Company in San Jose. We follow one hapless...
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Care of Trees: A Love Storyboard
By Lily Janiak Published: May 26, 2011
Near the end of Care of Trees, a “sort of” love story currently running at Shotgun Players’ Ashby Stage, playwright E. Hunter Spreen neatly summarizes her play’s premise: “Boy meets girl, boy gets girl, girl turns into tree, boy loses girl.” That boy is Travis (Patrick Russell), and in addressing...
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Candide of California : Playful and Illuminating Modernization
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: May 26, 2011
Candide of California (or, Optimism), The Custom Made Theatre Company’s Artistic Director Brian Katz’s adaptation of Voltaire’s Candide, both transforms the original philosophical tale into a farce that satirizes present-day California optimism and alludes to life in America (including some of the state’s and country’s political figures). Although the adaptation...
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Katya Takes Us Around the World with Song and Laughter
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: May 19, 2011
Countess Katya Smirnoff-Skyy has mounted her latest musical autobiographical romp, Katya Takes You Home: Songs and Stories for the Gypsy, Vamp, and Vodka Drinker in Your Soul, now playing at The Jewish Theatre. This raucous show is all about her fascinating travels around the world in song and witty patter....
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Love for $Ale Benefits St. James Infirmary
Published: May 12, 2011
By Slutty Sister Dana Van Iquity Tomorrow! Productions teams up with award-winning escort and adult entertainer Derrick Hanson, presenting Love for $ale: A Sweet Talking, Street Walking Burlesque Cabaret to benefit St. James Infirmary and to kick off SexWorkerFest, the 2011 SF Sex Worker Film Festival. Co-hosted by Hanson and SF’s...
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Plastic Dolls Reborning
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 12, 2011
Motherly desire and morbid fixations figure largely in SF Playhouse’s newest, challenging production: the world premiere of Reborning by Zayd Dohrn, directed by Josh Costello (currently running). The play’s title refers to a peculiar form of artistry. Parents (usually) pay megabucks to artisans to meticulously create lifelike vinyl sculptures of...
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SF Follies: A Spirited Spoof
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 12, 2011
Foolishness, folly or foundation? Producer John Bisceglie’s SF Follies, a musical revue currently running at Theater 39 (at Pier 39), immerses the audience in the history and distinct nature of San Francisco. Against an easily recognizable skyline with glitter, footlights and moving gobo projections, a smooth-voiced Emcee (eerily reminiscent of...
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Silk Stockings Studded with Talent
Published: May 12, 2011
By Jeanie K. Smith
An enormously talented cast brings Cole Porter’s forgotten musical, Silk Stockings, to life again for 42nd Street Moon. Currently running at the Eureka Theatre, the show gives the classic Garbo vehicle Ninotchka a Hollywood twist, happily adding to the merriment and mayhem of the original....
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Fringe of Marin’s Spring Awards: “Patio Dreams” Wins 1st Place Honors
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: May 12, 2011
With grateful thanks to Dr. Annette Lust, Artistic Director and Festival Coordinator, the Dominican University Community Players and Fringe of Marin recently celebrated their 27th Anniversary Season! And on May 8, Critics Awards (as well as People’s Choice Awards) for Best Play, Best Director and Best Actors were announced at...
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Vice Palace: The Last Cockettes Musical — Bloody Good Theater!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: May 5, 2011
As part of their fourth annual Theatre of the Ridiculous Revival, Thrillpeddlers presents Vice Palace: The Last Cockettes Musical, currently running at the Hypnodrome Theatre. The show is based on The Cockettes’ 1972 musical revue There’s Blood on Your Face, and it’s a combination of Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 “Masque...
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The Lily’s Revenge: 2011’s Most Exciting Production Yet
By Lily Janiak Published: May 5, 2011
In talking about The Lily’s Revenge, Taylor Mac’s fearless and vital epic currently running at the Magic Theatre, which (among other things) is an allegory about gay marriage, the statistics are as good a way to begin as any. The show has 6 directors, all women (Meredith McDonough, Marissa Wolf,...
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Killer Queen: The Story of Paco the Pink Pounder
By Laurie Bushman Published: May 5, 2011
I was really excited as I headed off to the SoMa location of Michael the Boxer Gym and Barbershop to see the latest production of THEOFFCENTER performance collective, Killer Queen: The Story of Paco the Pink Pounder. All I really knew was that it was a one-man show about a...
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Angels In America — Devastatingly Divine
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: April 28, 2011
Angels In America: Millennium Approaches exemplifies the utter genius of playwright Tony Kushner and the shining jewel of director Laura Lundy-Paine in the currently running production at the LGBT Center’s Rainbow Room. Lundy-Paine has assembled an extremely talented, versatile cast and directed them to slowly unravel mentally, if not physically,...
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La bohème — Delicious & Melodic Bonbonn
By Lynn Ruth Miller Published: April 28, 2011
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.” -Anonymous Puccini’s La bohème is a soap opera made sublime. The melodies are unforgettable, and the heartbreaking story - of consumptive Mimi (Jasmina Halimic) who stumbles into Rudolfo’s (Alexander Boyer) garret flat, loses her key and falls in love - will...
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Cordelia: Shakespeare through the Lens of Noh Drama
By Lily Janiak Published: April 28, 2011
For the inexperienced viewer, noh, a traditional form of Japanese drama, can be challenging. The principle character wears masks and costumes that conceal almost all of her body. She doesn’t speak very often, and when she does, it’s in the form of a ritual chant rather than dialogue (noh evolved...
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A Friend in Need: Night of Cabaret and Love for Mike Ward
By Tom W. Kelly Published: April 21, 2011
On April 30, the Cabaret and Theatre communities from the Bay Area and beyond will converge to perform in A Friend in Need, produced by Victoria Molina and cabaret sensation Carly Ozard. They join to honor the work of SF Bay Times columnist (Jazz & Cocktails) and award-winning director Mike...
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The Lily’s Revenge: A Unique Theatrical Experience Coming Soon
By Lynn Ruth Miller Published: April 21, 2011
“Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.” -Eugene Ionesco
“The Lily’s Revenge isn’t a play; it’s an event, a wedding, a bar mitzvah and a big, big party.” If a flower falls in love with a blushing bride, can he complete...
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A High Five for Fringe of Marin Spring 2011!
Published: April 21, 2011
Thanks to the inspiration and leadership of Dr. Annette Lust, the Fringe of Marin Festival is now in its 27th season. Featuring two programs of one-acts and solo shows - all written, directed and performed by a mix of professionals and amateurs - gives its audiences a lot of power,...
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Xanadu – the Musical: Maximum Laughs, Cheeky & Frothy
By Mike Ward Published: April 21, 2011
Break out your sparkly braided-headband and leg warmers and head to The Retro Dome in San Jose. Xanadu (the stage musical based on the obscure film) is the most fun you’ll have in a Bay Area theatre this year. It’s a full-out laugh & love fest, smartly played with tongue...
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Snow Falling On Cedars: Who We Were and Still Could Become
By Lynn Ruth Miller Published: April 21, 2011
“Racism is man’s gravest threat to man / The maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.” -Abraham J. Heschel Snow Falling On Cedars is a magnificent achievement on every level. Robert Kelley, director of the TheatreWorks production (and its Artistic Director), has elevated an excellent, if fragmented (packed with too...
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No Exit — A Redefined Classic
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: April 21, 2011
In less than 85 minutes, The Virtual Stage and Electric Company Theatre breathe life into French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre’s one-act classic No Exit (adapted from the French by Paul Bowles). Now playing at American Conservatory Theatre, this U.S.-premiere production, conceived and directed by Kim Collier, blurs the lines between film...
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Three Sisters’ Train to Moscow Neither Departs Nor Arrives
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: April 21, 2011
One of the joys of discovering the work of Russian playwright and short-story writer Anton Chekhov is learning about the subtle art of subtext. What a person says is not necessarily what a person means. For example, in his Cherry Orchard the line “the thermometer’s broken” carries the weight and...
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: April 14, 2011
Pearls over Shanghai, the hilarious remounting of The Cockettes’ original 1972 musical at Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome Theatre, brought down the final curtain after running almost two years. And on April 9, the cast and crew celebrated with a festive party on the set among the show’s fans and supporters. Pearls marked...
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A Streetcar Named Desire: Brilliantly Realized, Moving and Uncomfortably Real
By Lynn Ruth Miller Published: April 14, 2011
“Human kind / Cannot bear very much reality.” -T.S. Eliot, Burnt NortonA Streetcar Named Desire, currently running at Actors Theatre of San Francisco (“ATSF”) like so many of Tennessee Williams’ plays, contrasts the brutality of the real world with our need to believe in the potential of beauty and goodness...
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Tennessee Williams Coming Out in Nightingale
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 14, 2011
Typical of Tennessee Williams, his play The Eccentricities of a Nightingale is a dramatization of repression and lust. Director Tom Ross at Aurora Theatre has just opened a sensitive, gripping production of this small-town coming-of-age (or coming-out) story in honor of what would have been Williams’ 100th birthday. The minister’s...
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Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Energy of Youth
By Lily Janiak Published: April 14, 2011
Into the Clear Blue Sky, a Sleepwalkers Theatre world premiere currently running at the Phoenix Theater, shows that you don’t need a huge budget to create magical and moving art - even if your subject is post-apocalyptic, suburban New Jersey. The script, by young playwright J.C. Lee, is itself a...
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Legacy of Light = Moving + Mirth, Squared
Published: April 14, 2011
By Jeanie K. SmithA brilliant new work by Karen Zacarías, Legacy of Light, currently in its West Coast premiere run at San Jose Repertory Theatre, is smart, funny, and touching. Mingling science with history and the distaff view, Zacarías gives us much to think about - women’s place in science,...
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Sherlock Holmes - The Final Adventure Is Marvelous!
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: April 14, 2011
Sherlock Holmes - The Final Adventure, an adaptation by Steven Dietz (from the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1899), is a marvelous look at the last case handled by the great Sherlock Holmes (or is it?). The theatrical mystery starts with a newspaper headline stating that the great...
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Fuddy Meers Become Clear in Mill Valley
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 14, 2011
Fuddy meers is “stroke talk,” the largely unintelligible speech from victims of interrupted blood flow to the brain. In this chaotic family comedy-drama, Fuddy Meers by David Lindsay-Abaire (now running at Marin Theatre Company), wildly psychotic characters in a surprisingly dark plot move to a sweet ending. The playwright throws...
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Geezer: Geoff Hoyle Tries to Convince Us That He’s Getting Old
By Lily Janiak Published: April 7, 2011
Seeing Geoff Hoyle’s Geezer, which is currently running at the Marsh SF, is an exercise in cognitive dissonance. As his title would suggest, Hoyle’s autobiographical solo show offers his take on aging, with all the attendant senility jokes and well-wrought pearls of wisdom. Hoyle goes to great lengths to convince...
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The Thunder Comes To San Francisco!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: April 7, 2011
Australia’s Thunder from Down Under, the internationally-acclaimed male revue, is coming to the Rrazz Room! Voted best male strip show in the 2009 Review-Journal poll: “Best of Las Vegas,” these sexy Australian imports spark with high energy as they show off their buffed bodies to adoring fans who can’t seem to...
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Talking with Tom Ross — Celebrating Tennessee Williams’ 100th Birthday
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: April 7, 2011
Coinciding with what would have been his 100th birthday, the Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley presents the great Tennessee Williams’ The Eccentricities of a Nightingale. Below, SF Bay Times theatre critic Linda Ayres-Frederick speaks with Aurora’s Artistic Director Tom Ross, who directs this upcoming production. (Bay Times) What was it about...
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New Conservatory Theatre Center Announces New Season
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: April 7, 2011
New Conservatory Theatre Center’s Producers Club recently hosted patrons at their 2011-12 Pride Season announcement party in their spacious Lobby and their largest performance space, the Ed Decker Theater. The festive event promoted their upcoming 17th Pride Season as well as presented a Board Service Award to Neil Sekhri (for...
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Pearls Over Shanghai: Closing After Record Breaking 22-Month Run!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: March 31, 2011
On Saturday, April 9, Pearls Over Shanghai - San Francisco’s longest-running Cockettes musical hit - will close. Produced by Thrillpeddlers at their intimate Hypnodrome Theatre, they sadly announced the astounding, award-winning, record-breaking 22-month run must end. What started in June 2009 as a two-month limited engagement will have played for almost TWO...
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M. Butterfly: or The Need to Believe in Love’s Illusions
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: March 31, 2011
Currently running at the Gough Street Playhouse, The Custom Made Theatre Company stages David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly. The title refers to Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly, where an American naval officer abandons his young Chinese wife to return to America and marry an American woman. Based on an article that...
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The Oldest Profession: Five Aging Hookers Talking on a Park Bench
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: March 31, 2011
To create discourse about sex and age, Brava Theater currently presents The Oldest Profession by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive, Baltimore Waltz). Directed by Brava company member Evren Odcikin with musical arrangements by Angela Dwyer, this production recognizes the awareness of women playwrights. There is much...
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Equus: Solid Production
Published: March 31, 2011
By Jeanie K. SmithPeter Shaffer’s second play, Equus, premiered in 1973 and was soon perceived as one of the top plays of the 20th century, partly because it so beautifully frames the contemporary debate between passion and reason. But it’s also an intriguing investigation of a horrific crime, one that...
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Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven: It’s Only Funny Because It’s True
By Lily Janiak Published: March 31, 2011
Young Jean Lee, contemporary theater’s most honest and daring voice on the subject of race, doesn’t just make her audiences feel uncomfortable; she engages their discomfort. At one point in Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven (currently running as a collaboration by the Asian American Theatre Company and Crowded...
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Wild[e], Wonderful Earnest with a Drag-tastic Twist
By Mike Ward Published: March 31, 2011
With the ornate Victorian front-drop and the clamshell footlights around the base of the stage, the tone is set for a play richly gilded in the clever use of social satire and comedy of manners. Yet, when the curtain comes up on The Importance of Being Earnest (a Roundabout Theatre...
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Wirehead: How Can We Use Theater to Talk About Technology?
By Lily Janiak Published: March 24, 2011
It’s hard to write a good play about the way digital technology is affecting our lives. Playwrights must balance the banal (adjustments to our daily routines, the overwhelming accessibility of information) with the philosophical (usually, a debate between humanism and progress), all while refraining from excessively preposterous sci-fi. Currently running...
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Fiddler Fleetly Flies In Olympian Time
By Mike Ward Published: March 24, 2011
We’re fortunate in the Bay Area to have a depth of theatrical talent from good elementary school programs to strong professionally-oriented community theatre companies to our exceptional small professional and outstanding regional theatres. We’re also fortunate to have strong touring productions come through our region. Though with higher ticket prices,...
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Brava Theater’s The Oldest Profession… A Hoot!
By Lynn Ruth Miller Published: March 24, 2011
“It’s not the job you do, it’s how you do the job.” -AnonymousYou can’t help but love them: five adorable old ladies dropping one-liners about their ups and downs (no pun intended) as proud members of the world’s oldest profession. The women - Linda Ayers-Frederick (as Edna), Lee Brady (Vera),...
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Quilters: Sixteen Blocks of Prairie Women’s Lives
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: March 24, 2011
Ross Valley Players’ production of Quilters is pieced together with love and stitched with pride. Here is a musical delight to capture the whole family. With book by Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek and music and lyrics by Damashek, the story is about the lives of American pioneer women (based...
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The North Pool: Important New Work Needs More Work
Published: March 24, 2011
By Jeanie K. SmithRajiv Joseph is theatre’s latest prodigy, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2010 for his play, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, currently playing Broadway starring Robin Williams. The North Pool, his newest play, has gone through several workshop productions and is currently world premiering at TheatreWorks. Clearly Joseph...
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Lady Grey (in ever lower light) and other plays Scales the Fourth Wall with Ease
By Lily Janiak Published: March 24, 2011
Lady Grey (in ever lower light) and other plays, currently running at the Cutting Ball, doesn’t seem much like the play at first. At rise, the title character (Danielle O’Hare), slouching in heels and a girlish grey frock, at which she often picks, regards the audience as it regards her....
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You Will Regret Not Seeing No Regrets
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: March 17, 2011
What would happen if one day every LGBT person decided to call in “GAY” at work? In Manhattan? In America? On the entire planet?! And is it still chic to be an activist? These are the thought-provoking questions raised in Paul Rudnick’s hilarious and sophisticated comedy/drama No Regrets, now running...
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35th Annual Theatre Awards Ceremony Coming Soon!
By Tom W. Kelly Published: March 17, 2011
Tickets are on sale NOW for the biggest theatre gathering of the year! On Monday, April 4, 2011, the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle proudly hosts their 35th annual Awards Ceremony, celebrating Bay Area theatre excellence during 2010. The theatre-loving public is invited. Don your dandiest duds and mingle...
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The Homecoming - Welcome to the Family!
By Albert Goodwyn Published: March 17, 2011
Who’s coming home? American Conservatory Theater’s new (and currently running) production of Harold Pinter’s classic The Homecoming answers that question in a brilliantly modulated staging on a set so intense you feel like you are there in that north London living room. When the third son brings home his lovely...
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Ruined: Atrocity and Tenderness, Side by Side
By Lily Janiak Published: March 10, 2011
When you walk into Berkeley Repertory Theatre to see Ruined (currently running), it’s hard not to know the show is about rape and sexual torture in the Congo. In case you hadn’t heard about playwright Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer, Guggenheim or MacArthur “Genius” Awards, or guessed from the title that you’re...
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Detective Story: The Busy Workings of the Precinct
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: March 10, 2011
Detective Story by Sidney Kingsley (now playing at the College of Marin) is a winner. The entire action of the play takes place in the detective squad room of a New York police precinct on a single day in August 1949. James Dunn directs this large production. With 26 actors...
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Broadway’s Luminescent Driving Miss Daisy: A Must-See
By Mike Ward Published: March 10, 2011
Put this review down. Log on to your computer. Purchase your tickets to the current revival of Driving Miss Daisy now - it’s been extended one last time through April 9 at Broadway’s John Golden Theatre. Book your flight and room and be prepared for one of the finest evenings...
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Orphée: Spellbinding!!
Published: March 3, 2011
By Ray Renati
Haunting, hypnotic and dreamlike. These are the words that best describe Ensemble Parallèle’s production of Orphée, presented for two evenings at the Herbst Theatre. And excited anticipation filled the sold-out theatre for this San Francisco premiere. Orphée, composed in 1991 by Phillip Glass, is a “homage”...
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40 Pounds in 12 Weeks: A Love Story
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: March 3, 2011
Jenny Craig beware! Writer and solo performer Pidge Meade has opened up more than one can of worms about our societal obsession with losing weight in 40 pounds in 12 weeks: A Love Story, now playing at the Marsh San Francisco. How do you pack 20 years of the weight-loss...
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Sex and Death: Or, Just Death
By Lily Janiak Published: March 3, 2011
It’s easy to make a Harold Pinter play look silly. On the surface, his plots - two hit men trying to fill café orders without food or a kitchen in “The Dumb Waiter,” a married couple coordinating schedules so as to avoid one another’s infidelities in “The Lover” - might...
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Avenue Q’s Cleverness Still Takes the Day
By Mike Ward Published: February 24, 2011
While there is no such thing as actor-proof material, Avenue Q (now running at the Orpheum Theatre) is pretty darned close. This clever, witty, bawdy, naughty, twisted and very heartfelt show still brings the laughs, ahhhhs, even a tear or two. And the two-hour-15-minute show offers some interesting self-recognition to...
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The Hobo Grunt Cycle: Puppetry Not for Kids
By Lily Janiak Published: February 24, 2011
Puppetry is breathing new life into our contemporary theater. Productions that make use of it are almost guaranteed superlative, even magical stagecraft, and The Hobo Grunt Cycle by the Lone Wolf Tribe (currently running at the EXIT Theatre) is no exception. But this production, a puppet-based meditation on clowns, army...
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The Dresser - Comic Portrait of Backstage Life
By Lynn Ruth Miller Published: February 17, 2011
“We are born at the rise of the curtain, and we die with its fall.” -Jules RenardThe Dresser by Robert Harwood, currently running at San Jose Repertory Theatre, examines the backstage relationship between the self-absorbed “Sir” played by Ken Ruta and his loyal, too-devoted and very alcoholic dresser Norman played...
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The Dog And Pony Show: A Performance Artist’s Domestic Underbelly
By Lily Janiak Published: February 17, 2011
The stereotype of the dog-loving lesbian gets a tender, ironic and insightful investigation in The Dog and Pony Show (Bring Your Own Pony), Holly Hughes’ new solo piece (currently running at The Marsh), directed by Dan Hurlin. You might be more familiar with Hughes as one of the “NEA Four,”...
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Loveland: Ann Randolph is Better than Ever!!
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: February 17, 2011
It’s hard to believe that a show that’s already amazing can get even better. But watching Ann Randolph at The Marsh in her return performance of Loveland makes you jump for joy at the startling capacity of this stellar solo theatre artist to grow by leaps and bounds! As my...
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What We’re up Against: A Must See!
By Lynn Ruth Miller Published: February 17, 2011
“In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male / Vindictiveness of the female.” -Cyril Connolly“I honestly believe that the act of finding humor in real despair is both courageous and life-affirming,” says Theresa Rebeck, author of What We’re Up Against, a world premiere currently running at The Magic...
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40 Pounds in 12 Weeks: A Love Story
By Ann Rostow Published: February 17, 2011
Bay Area actress Pidge Meade brings a heartfelt, unusual and humorous perspective to weight & personal worth in her one-woman show, 40 Pounds in 12 Weeks: A Love Story (currently running at The Marsh SF), shaped-up/directed by one of the masters of the one-person genre, Charlie Varon. Meade took time...
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Spalding Gray Left More Stories to Tell
By Albert Goodwyn Published: February 10, 2011
When monologist Spalding Gray left us a few years ago, his widow found that he still had some never-before-heard stories to tell. She gathered those unpublished works together with some of his beloved classics into a fully-staged reading named Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell. In Custom Made Theatre Company’s...
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Collapse: Collapsing New Peoplee
By Albert Goodwyn Published: February 10, 2011
In Collapse, the world premiere of Allison Moore’s play now running at Aurora Theatre, physical destruction, human tragedy, fear of social and economic disintegration, sex and comedy all create a synergistic metaphor. Developed at Aurora as part of their Global Age Project (a new works initiative), this production features the...
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Phillips Brothers Talk About “William Blake...”
By Lynn Ruth Miller Published: February 10, 2011
“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.” Actor’s Theatre of San Francisco (“ATSF”) continues its tradition of communicating “what it means to...
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Marry Me a Little: Talking to John Fisher
By Tom W. Kelly Published: February 10, 2011
Thanks to Theatre Rhinoceros, and the persistence of Artistic Director John Fisher, LGBT’s will soon have the rare opportunity to see a same-sex production of Marry Me a Little by Stephen Sondheim. Though the two-character musical was originally written for a male-female staging, openly-gay Sondheim granted Rhino rights for a...
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The Seagull: Strength in Numbers
By Lily Janiak Published: February 10, 2011
One of the first things you notice about Marin Theatre Company’s production of Seagull is the sheer number of bodies onstage. A cast of 13 is not just an unusual sight; it’s a profound artistic statement. In contrast to most new plays, in which characters reveal themselves only in their...
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Harper Regan: Harperr’s Journey
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: February 10, 2011
Early in Harper Regan, the exquisitely directed, gorgeously acted and profoundly moving new show at the SF Playhouse (currently running) by British playwright Simon Stephens, the fortyish title character (Susi Damilano, who is also SF Playhouse’s Producing Director) must ask her employer (Richard Frederick) for a simple leave of absence...
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How We First Met: Unique Valentine Treat
By Lynn Ruth Miller Published: February 10, 2011
“Falling in love consists of uncorking the imagination and bottling the common-sense.” -Anonymous“How We First Met is the perfect way to celebrate Valentine’s Day whether you’re on a blind date, going steady or have been married for longer than you can possibly imagine,” says Jill Bourque, who dreamed up the...
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Whodunit at Boxcar Theatre’s Clue?
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: February 3, 2011
Clue is not just a board game anymore. Nor just a movie. Now it’s a play - cleverly mounted at Boxcar Theatre (currently running), which is also not just a theatre but an arena with seating in the square (not in the round), roped off and 10 feet above the action....
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Treefall: Bug Lust Takes Boys to Men
By Albert Goodwyn Published: February 3, 2011
Treefall by Henry Murray uses adolescent sexual awakening to explore themes of adult responsibility, bisexuality and gender identity. Currently running at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, this production (directed by Ben Randle) uses four actors and a distressed set to present thought-evoking drama. In the face of some widespread, civilization-altering...
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Two Plays Dealing (or Not) with Loss
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: February 3, 2011
SHN’s Next to Normal and ACT’s Clybourne Park
How families deal with the sudden deaths of children is a theme currently featured in two shows that opened last week: Next to Normal produced by SHN in their Best of Broadway series (currently running at the Curran Theatre) and...
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Grapes of Wrath: Quashed California Dreams
By Lily Janiak Published: February 3, 2011
When you walk into TheatreFIRST’s production of The Grapes of Wrath, you’re not entirely sure who the actors are. Sure, some present wear period pieces over their jeans, or tramp across the theater’s in-the-round stage with relative comfort. But because flannel and shirt dresses (by costume designer Maggi Yule) are...
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Heartbreak House: Still Relevant Today
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: February 3, 2011
George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House (written 1919) transcends its time period. Directed by Robert Estes, it is currently running as part of Actors Ensemble of Berkeley’s fifth season. This 3-1/2 hour play is a notable work on many levels. But perhaps one of its most pronounced literary elements is in...
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The 39 Steps: Hitchcockian Hi-jinxx
By Tom W. Kelly Published: January 27, 2011
Anything is possible in the wild world of theatre! Chase scene atop a moving train? No problem… at least not a problem in the brilliantly capable hands of director Robert Kelley, one of the Bay Area’s finest. And in his thrilling staging of The 39 Steps, the imagination soars. Adapted...
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Out of Sight: Juggling Identities
By Lily Janiak Published: January 27, 2011
“Be careful with this,” says Sara Felder, handing a knife, one of her juggling props, to an audience member. “Metaphors are dangerous.” If that’s true, Felder is an expert tamer of the unwieldy beasts. Out of Sight, her autobiographical solo show at The Marsh SF, comes alive in its figurative...
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Bone to Pick and Diadem - Epic Romance
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: January 27, 2011
San Francisco’s Cutting Ball Theater continues its 11th season with local playwright Eugenie Chan’s two one-act plays which examine the Greek myth of Ariadne, Theseus and the Minotaur. The program opens with the world premiere of a one-act, newly commissioned by Cutting Ball, titled Diadem, a companion piece to Bone...
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The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs: Human Price of Technologyy
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: January 27, 2011
Master storyteller Mike Daisey returns to Berkeley Repertory Theatre with his solo work titled The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, which currently runs in rotating repertory with his monologue The Last Cargo Cult. With his wry eye and eccentric intellect, Daisey examines how the titular Apple CEO and...
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The Companion Piece for Vaudeville at Z Space
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 27, 2011
The world premiere of The Companion Piece, directed by Mark Jackson, conceived by Beth Wilmurt and produced in association with Encore Theatre Company is now playing at Z Space. Wilmurt and Jackson have produced this comedy with a frantic, madcap glory that that gives striking insights to the creative process....
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Compleat Female Stage Beauty: Superb!
Published: January 27, 2011
By Jeanie K. Smith
Pick up your phone now, dial the number at the bottom of this article, and make your reservations to see Compleat Female Stage Beauty at City Lights Theater Company in San Jose. This show will sell out like hotcakes, and you don’t want to miss...
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Party of 2: A Musical Gem
By Lynn Ruth Miller Published: January 27, 2011
“Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.” -James ThurberIf you believe in love, and well you should, you must not miss the delightful theatrical bon-bon titled Party of 2, The Mating Musical, currently running at The Shelton Theater. This mini-operetta explores the relationship of two independent people who meet,...
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License to Kiss II: Delish Drag & Dining
By Mike Ward Published: January 27, 2011
Perhaps the gayest Teatro ZinZanni production to hit the Spiegeltent on the Embarcadero, License to Kiss II features a loose storyline with noir, secret-agent undertones, set in a fine restaurant (of course), revolving around the best-kept dessert secret (created by Top Chef Desserts winner and openly gay Yigit Pura). Presented...
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The Crucible Revival: Keep the Fire Burning
By Laurie Bushman Published: January 20, 2011
My interest in The Crucible in Oakland was initially piqued when I inadvertently drove by their facility one evening on my way to a birthday party in Alameda. It must have been their Fire Arts Festival that evening because large columns of flame were shooting into the night sky from...
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Doubt: A Moral Dilemma
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: January 20, 2011
Playwright John Patrick Shanley subtitles his play Doubt as “A Parable.” And with his explorations of a series of moral dilemmas, it lives up to both title and subtitle. This 2004 Broadway hit earned both the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award and is currently running at Ross Valley Players. Pared...
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A Hand in Desire: Desiring Something More
By Lily Janiak Published: January 20, 2011
“When men are drinking and playing poker,” says Stella, the put-upon housewife in A Streetcar Named Desire, “anything can happen.” Well, maybe not anything. The play’s first lines - in which Stella and her sister Blanche, a displaced and deluded Southern belle, see each other for the first time in...
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The Last Cargo Cult: A Seriously Awkward Tale
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: January 20, 2011
Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s attempt to include audacity in its theatrical repertoire has resulted in bringing storyteller Mike Daisey in his one-man show, The Last Cargo Cult, to its thrust stage. His latest rant on the populace’s complicit participation in the “religion” of banking runs in repertory with his solo piece...
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Get Wise and Get to the Musical Wise Up!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: January 13, 2011
Have you ever thought how gay the Bible is? Wayne Self has. Consider this: Jesus had two daddies. At least that’s what writer-lyricist-composer Self indicates in his fabulous new musical, Wise Up! The Untold Story of the Three Magi. It’s a somewhat serious, totally hilariously queer slant on the ancient...
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Lost In Yonkers: A Coming of Age Tale
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: January 13, 2011
ost In Yonkers by Neil Simon is a coming-of-age story that focuses on brothers Arty (Noah Silverman) and Jay (Zachary Frier-Harrison) left in the care of Grandma Kurnitz (Naomi Newman) and Aunt Bella (Deb Fink) in 1942 Yonkers, New York. As a depiction of a family struggling with old wounds...
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SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle’s Website Up and Running
By Tom W. Kelly Published: January 13, 2011
For 35 years the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle has recognized and celebrated Bay Area theatre excellence. And this year the Critics Circle proudly enters the modern-age with its official website — SFBATCC.org. The site includes upcoming events, membership list (with bios), history, mission statement, photos from past...
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The Top 10 of 2010: Rhino is Number One
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: January 6, 2011
What a year! SF Bay Times writers covered over 200 theatre and dance productions during 2010. Most of our critics saw between 50-150 shows this year and reviewed as many as possible. Looking back at a busy year, it’s our pleasure to pick our favorite ten (or so) productions. Regarding the...
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In Memory of Quentin Delaney Easter and Stanley E. Williams
Published: January 6, 2011
By Tom W. Kelly and Mike WardAs we begin a new year, let’s take a moment to look back for a moment. Sadly, 2010 marked the passing of two Bay Area theatremakers: Quentin Delaney Easter (January 17, 1953 to April 28, 2010) and Stanley E. Williams (1950 to July 2,...
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Top 10 of 2010: Real Americans is Number One
By Lily Janiak Published: January 6, 2011
Though patrons generally appreciate theatre for precisely the opposite of what I offer in this article - numerical rankings - the following list recognizes some outstanding achievements of 2010 and suggests some artists and companies to note in this new year:10. Traveling Light, Joe Goode Performance Group - The Old Mint Building needed...
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My Top 5 of 2010: An Accident is Number One
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 6, 2011
5. Vigil, American Conservatory Theater - This two-person show by Morris Panych (who also directed), featuring Olympia Dukakis and Marco Barricelli, kept the death-watch hilarious and was ideally suited for their large stage. Dukakis said it all without speaking. American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary Street, San Francisco. Info call (415) 749-2228...
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Alzheimer’s Alzheimer’s Cha Cha Cha: A Humorous Look at Aging
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: January 6, 2011
Recently, 77 year old comedian Lynn Ruth Miller performed her cabaret show Alzheimer’s Alzheimer’s Cha Cha Cha: A Comedy Cabaret at the Actors Theatre of San Francisco. And she will reprise the show within the next few months. Known as “The Stripping Granny,” her risque and hilarious blend of song,...
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Candid, Circus Show with a Meaning
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: January 6, 2011
Sweet Can Production’s currently running show Candid is not your ordinary circus (that mainly presents spectacular physical skill feats, acrobatic stunts and clowning). Rather Candid continues to convey an underlying message regarding the company’s mission to stage-meaningful circus. At the very start, two frightened couples peer through a window at a...
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Wayne Self Speaks Out: Wise Up!
By Tom W. Kelly Published: January 6, 2011
Do you already miss Christmas? Are you going through yule-tide withdrawal? Well, the Metropolitan Community Church SF and Peninsula MCC are offering one last chance to enjoy the holidays with Wise Up!, writer/ composer Wayne Self’s all-new holiday musical. If you thought you knew about the Nativity, think again. And...
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The Top 10 of 2010: Girlfriend is Number One
By Tom W. Kelly Published: December 23, 2010
What a year! SF Bay Times writers covered over 200 theatre and dance productions during 2010. Most of our critics saw between 50-150 shows this year and reviewed as many as possible. Looking back at a busy year, it’s our pleasure to pick our favorite ten (or so) productions. Regarding...
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My Top 10 of 2010: 9 Circles is Number One
By Lynn Ruth Miller Published: December 23, 2010
Fine theater, all too often unrecognized, abounds in the Bay Area! Below are the best of the best.
Honorable Mentions: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Foothill Music Theatre — featured Jay Manleyy’s superb direction and his ability to transform amateur thespians into professional singers and dancers. Info...
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My Top 5 of 2010: Animals Out of Paper is #1
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: December 23, 2010
5. Humble Boy, Marin Actor’s Workshop — Deftly directed by Terry McGovern, British playwright Charlotte Joness’s play seemed loosely inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet with quite a few parallels. Marin Actor’s Workshop, 1554 Fourth Street, San Rafael. Info call (866) 29-ACTOR or at marinactorsworkshop.com.4. Becoming Julia Morgan at Berkeley City Club...
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A Christmas Memory.... a Heartbreaker
By Lynn Ruth Miller Published: December 16, 2010
“Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.” -The Wonder Years TheatreWorks’ currently-running production of A Christmas Memory is a musical with book by Duane Poole, music by Larry Grossman and lyrics by Carol Hall. Although...
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David Sinaiko Brings Holiday Madness in Santaland Diaries
By Michael Platania Published: December 16, 2010
Do the holidays drive you nuts? Well, it drove witty author David Sedaris just crazy enough to write one of his most famous short stories, “Santaland Diaries,” based on his true-life temp job as a Santa-helping elf at Macy’s NYC department store. And this year, Combined Artform mounts their 10th...
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Lemony Snicket’s The Composer Is Dead — But Theater Is Not
By Lily Janiak Published: December 16, 2010
In directing Lemony Snicket’s The Composer Is Dead, which is currently running at Berkeley Rep, Tony Taccone ran into an unusual problem. “When we first talked about producing a play,” he says in the show’s program, “the script only lasted a half an hour. We said, ‘Well, we have to...
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Forking II: A Merry FORKING! Christmas: Fun and Silly
By Michael Platania Published: December 16, 2010
It’s Christmas Eve at the mall where Santa Claus, an engaged couple, the mall manager, a security guard, a cookie-shop owner and a few others are brought together in PianoFight’s production of Forking II: A Merry FORKING! Christmas, now playing at the Off Market Theater. Written by Daniel Heath and...
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Becoming Julia Morgan: A Designing Woman
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: December 16, 2010
The Bay Area premiere of Becoming Julia Morgan is currently running at the Berkeley City Club, which was actually designed by architect Morgan. Belinda Taylor (previously editor of Theatre Bay Area magazine) is the playwright of this biographical play, produced by Sabrina Klein (former Theatre Bay Area Executive Director) and...
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Fringe of Marin Awards
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: December 16, 2010
“The Story of Oh (Revised and Abridged)” Wins 1st Place Honors
With grateful thanks to Dr. Annette Lust, Artistic Director and Festival Coordinator, the Dominican University Community Players recently celebrated the 26th anniversary of the Fringe of Marin. On Dec. 5, both a Bay Area theatre critics jury and...
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Ruth and the Sea - It’s All in the Journey
By Tom W. Kelly Published: December 9, 2010
Theatre takes us on a journey. And road-trip storylines physicalize that journey, oftentimes involving two very different people learning more about each other as they experience the changing environs. Ruth and the Sea by Morgan Ludlow gives the gift of a holiday-time drama (with ample comic relief) that takes the...
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The Lion in Winter: A Masterpiece!!
Published: December 9, 2010
“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” -William CongreveForget the tinsel and holly. Treat yourself instead to a real family Christmas with all its love, hate, jealousy and manipulation. Actors Theatre of SF’s production of James Goldman’s The Lion...
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Tom Orr’s Dirty Little Showtunes!
By Tom W. Kelly Published: December 9, 2010
Look out, San Francisco! Lyricist and performer Tom Orr reprises Dirty Little Showtunes! His smart, sassy, sexy and satirical revue first wowed SF audiences in 1997. And now the New Conservatory Theatre Center merrily mounts the six-man show with all the old favorites plus new parodies. Orr took a moment...
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Shrek The Musical: Not Like Us… Hee’s Green
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 9, 2010
Being green is not easy, whether you are an environmentalist, a frog or an ogre. And the green ogre Shrek makes a compellingly sympathetic case for being part of “The Other,” those who do not easily mesh with polite society. Shrek The Musical, music by Jeanine Tesori and book/lyrics by...
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Cinderella Gets the Slipper
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 9, 2010
The cherished story of Cinderella comes back again this year, courtesy of African-American Shakespeare Company. This time the ugly stepsisters take a different form. They are actually quite striking, different from the highly comical drags who played them last year. These girls mercilessly put down Cinderella with glee, but they...
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Babes in Arms Charms
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: December 9, 2010
“We’re not just babes in arms, we’re babes in armor” is not the catchiest lyric in 42nd Street Moon’s revival of Rodgers and Hart’s Babes in Arms at the Eureka Theatre. But this granddaddy of “barn musical” shows does feature the memorable popular classics “My Funny Valentine,” “The Lady Is...
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Backwards In High Heels is Spectacular!!
Published: December 9, 2010
By Lynn Ruth Miller “When you’re happy, you don’t count the years.” -Ginger RogersSan Jose Repertory Theatre launches an ambitious attempt to recreate the spectacular excess of the “Golden Age Of Hollywood.” Their production of Backwards in High Heels (currently running) has the costumes, the dancing and all the glitz of...
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Spend Time With The Golden Girls This Holiday Season!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: December 9, 2010
It just wouldn’t be Christmas without The Golden Girls — The Christmas Episodes. In case you’re not in the know about this yearly holiday treasure, allow me to elaborate. Four well-known drag queens (dragstresses, if you will) reenact live-onstage two of their favorite scripts from NBC TV’s golden sitcom, “The Golden...
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Solid Cast Shines in The Color Purple
By Mike Ward Published: December 2, 2010
Creating a musical theatre adaptation from a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that was later turned into a magnificent, iconic film can well prove to be disastrous. Numerous other projects traveling the same or similar routes have met untimely, painful closings. And The Color Purple — on national tour, recently in San Jose...
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The Trial Of Ebenezer Scrooge
Published: December 2, 2010
By Lynn Ruth Miller“He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.” -Roy L. Smith.Have you ever wondered if Scrooge kept his promise? Did he really live his life in a new way reflecting the goodness and joy of Christmas? Well, now is your...
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It Get Better with the Power of Theatre
By Mike Ward Published: December 2, 2010
With Dan Savage’s timely, hope-filled outreach “It Gets Better,” youth and young adults experiencing bullying now have a series of messages to illuminate the difficult path of being different in a world where cookie-cutter is king. But how does it get better? That is at the heart of matters in...
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Happy Now? It’s Brilliant
Published: November 25, 2010
By Lynn Ruth Miller “Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.” -St. AugustineHappy Now? by Lucinda Coxon belongs to director Jasson Minadakis (also Artistic Director) of Marin Theatre Company’s currently-running production. Through a fantastic melding of scenes into one another, he has...
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Mummenschanz’s 3x11 Coming to Cal Performances
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: November 25, 2010
After 30 years the Swiss company Mummenschanz, one of the world’s most renowned mime/mask companies, returns to Cal Performances (Nov. 26-28) with Mummenschanz’s 3x11, a retrospective of their most successful creations. The title refers to a 33-year collection of their most appreciated pieces performed throughout the world. Bernie Schûch (one...
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Pride and Prejudice Charms
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 25, 2010
Ross Valley Players’ (currently running) theatrical version of Pride and Prejudice is a charming, simply-put visit with the manners and mores of the English Regency period, satirizing romance, hypocrisy and snobbery. Jon Jory’s stage adaptation of Jane Austen’s enduring early-19th century novel, delves deeply into the nature of the characters,...
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Cavalia Prances into Town
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 25, 2010
Much more than just a “horse show,” the spectacular Cavalia is about the interaction of humans with beasts. Now playing at the White Big Top in China Basin, a large ensemble of international acrobats, riders, trainers and horses work a stunningly smooth choreography that segues seamlessly from scene to scene....
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Freddy and Me: Inopportune Humor, Hidden Insight
By Lily Janiak Published: November 25, 2010
Bryan Curtiss White’s connection to horror film serial-killer Freddy Krueger is much more tenuous than the title of his autobiographical solo show Freddy and Me would suggest. As White is quick to explain, he neither murders children in their sleep nor runs like an orangutan when chasing helpless women. (He...
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Coraline Finds the Key to the Magic Door
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 25, 2010
Coraline, the musical now making its West Coast premiere at San Francisco Playhouse, is based on an award-winning fantasy/horror novella (of same name) by British author Neil Gaiman. With song, dance and an ominously-skewed set, seven of the Bay Area’s most whimsically talented actors inhabit the twisted world of a...
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License to Kiss II, A Sweet Conspiracy - License to Do Just About Anything
By Lily Janiak Published: November 25, 2010
Attending the theatre is an act of profound trust. When you buy a ticket and walk into a show, you tacitly agree to abide by the rules of an alternate reality for the next two (or so) hours. Most of the time, you can rely on theatre companies to...
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License to Kiss II, A Sweet Conspiracy - License to Do Just About Anything
By Lily Janiak Published: November 25, 2010
Attending the theatre is an act of profound trust. When you buy a ticket and walk into a show, you tacitly agree to abide by the rules of an alternate reality for the next two (or so) hours. Most of the time, you can rely on theatre companies to...
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A Perfect Ganesh: Flawless Performances
By Michael Platania Published: November 18, 2010
A Perfect Ganesh follows two women on a journey through India, and as usually happens in these adventures, they discover a lot about life and themselves along the way. Ganesh was written in 1993 by Terrence McNally, best known for Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class as well as the...
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Ctrl+Alt+Delete: Lightweight But Timely
Published: November 18, 2010
By Lynn Ruth Miller“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” -Albert EinsteinAnthony Clarvoe’s Ctrl+Alt+Delete tries to make some very good points about the world of investment and high finance, but it doesn’t do it very well. The fault in this Pear Avenue Theatre production (currently running) is...
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Or, - Historical Play Or Bedroom Farce?
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: November 18, 2010
Or, by Liz Duffy Adams opened last week and is currently running at the Magic Theatre. The name of the play refers to the main character’s objection to writers using the word “or” in their titles. Playwright Adams takes liberties with her language, jumping from century to century using admirably...
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The Tempest - Swim!
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 18, 2010
Shakespeare might have been a technological visionary in the writing of one of his later plays, The Tempest, currently running at EXIT on Taylor, produced by Cutting Ball Theater. Shakespeare envisioned a world of motion in the ocean, sight and sound, all tied together with magic. Director Rob Melrose and...
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Fringe of Marin, Program One - Icebound Captain to Thief with Principles
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: November 18, 2010
On Nov. 12, Artistic Director Annette Lust welcomed us to the 26th season of the Fringe of Marin, a festival of new Bay Area one-act plays and solos! Program One consists of three plays and three solo performances. Alternating with Program Two, both are currently running at Dominican University of...
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Three Times Too - Drag at The RRazz Room
By Mike Ward Published: November 18, 2010
Continuing to bring variety to the Bay Area, The RRazz Room - San Francisco’s premiere nightclub - recently presented three distinctly-different divas of drag. Each had something in each of these categories: Too-Much; Too-Little; Too-Late.Courtney Act: If you were one of the few attending this Australian wonder’s late-night Nov. 4...
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Intergenerational Conflict Engages in Habibi
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: November 11, 2010
Set in the Mission District of San Francisco, Sharif Abu-Hamdeh’s first play Habibi, directed by Omar Metwally, examines the conflicting relationship between a Palestinian father and his only son compounded by issues of cultural identity, immigrant assimilation and the mysteries of art and cultural theft. Produced by Campo Santo at...
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Marcus: Coming Out, or Standing In-Between
By Lily Janiak Published: November 11, 2010
“The secret is,” confesses the title character of Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet, “ain’t nobody think it’s a secret ‘cept me, ‘cept those who don’t want to see.” We’ve seen plays about coming out of the closet before. But in this stunning work, now in its West Coast premiere...
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Immigrant Parents Who Paved the Way
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: November 11, 2010
Alice Presents, that opened at the Theatre Artaud Z Space on Nov. 6 with Burning Libraries, brings its first professional production of 30 real life stories dramatizing the migrant experience of minority immigrants. It consists of live first person interviews with over 300 East Bay migrant youths who narrate the...
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Sunset Boulevard : A Musical Masterpiece
Published: November 11, 2010
By Lynn Ruth MillerThe Palo Alto Players’ production of Sunset Boulevard is an exquisite piece of theater on every level. Director Matthew Mattei designed a professional and gripping production that is much more than the wonderfully talented actors singing on stage or Andrew Lloyd Webber’s powerful score. Thanks to choreographer...
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Melodrama and Murder at the Eureka
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 11, 2010
Murder for Two, a comedy murder mystery musical now being produced by 42nd Street Moon, is a tour de force, frenetic ninety minutes of inquiries by Adam Overett as investigating Officer Marcus Moscowicz. His only suspect is played by hyperkinetic Joe Kinosian as all the usual suspects. Joe and Adam...
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Palomino Rides to Berkeley
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 11, 2010
Writer-performer-director David Cale becomes many different people in his one-man show Palomino, now playing at the Aurora Theatre. The British impressionist weaves seven characters (male and female) into a tale of love and lust centering on a New York horse-drawn carriage driver who also services lonely Park Avenue matrons....
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Glory Days: A Moving, Profound Performancee
Published: November 4, 2010
By Lynn Ruth Miller“Moving on is simple. It’s what we leave behind that’s hard.” -Author UnknownGlory Days is a musical production mounted by The Royal Underground Theatre Company (currently running). Music and lyrics are by Nick Blaemire, and the book is by James Gardiner. It features Jason Aaronson, Ivan Hardin,...
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Normand Latourelle Discusses Cavalia
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: November 4, 2010
Cavalia returns to San Francisco after its popular debut here six years ago. In an interview with Artistic Director and Producer Normand Latourelle, he discusses the show and its creation. It’s a larger and more developed show than its original form, which was both haunting and engaging. Not only for...
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Dead Man’s Wake: Truths and Consequences
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: November 4, 2010
Dead Man’s Wake, a new play by Larry Klein, is loosely based on a true story set in 1969 Marin County. To quote playwright Klein, “This play is about the courage to be yourself. Each member of this family doesn’t really connect with themselves. In essence, they are all living...
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Failure 2 Communicate: School of Hard Knocks
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: November 4, 2010
Failure 2 Communicate by Valerie Fachman is about the playwright’s experiences in the ‘90s when she was an educator in a special school in a rough part of Chicago. Autistic teens were educated alongside teens with emotional and learning disabilities. Led to a rather chaotic environment, these are the stories...
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This West Side Story is Exciting!
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: November 3, 2010
The smash-hit revival of the 1957 Tony Award-winning romantic musical West Side Story is a great reminder of what genius can produce. Taking the already classic Romeo and Juliet and turning it into a hot- blooded contemporary musical is a surefire bet for success, when you consider who the collaborators...
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The Great Game: Afghanistan - It’s Complicated
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: October 28, 2010
How can one criticize a play that covers present-day news to historical events as far back as 1842, seen through the eyes of a dozen writers and spanning 12 hours of viewing? It’s daunting. The Great Game: Afghanistan, now playing at Berkeley Repertory Theatre (produced with London’s Tricycle Theatre Company),...
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9 Circles and 900 Mood Swings
By Lily Janiak Published: October 28, 2010
Only a brave playwright would use literary terms by name in a script. Only a braver one would do so in his first scene, before he’s assured the audience that it won’t drown in writerly preciousness for the next two hours. But Bill Cain, whose 9 Circles is currently enjoying...
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Secret Order: Gripping Drama
Published: October 28, 2010
By Lynn Ruth Miller “The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor.” -George Bernard ShawYour attention will never waver in Robert Clyman’s Secret Order, now playing at San Jose Repertory Theatre. Every moment of this fast-paced production, directed by Chris...
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Bay Area’s Benelli Lands West Side Story Gig
By Mike Ward Published: October 28, 2010
From West Coast to West Side, Bay Area performer Isaac Benelli’s story is the stuff of dreams. Having had the opportunity to direct him and recommend him for the Roger Sturtevant Award (for up-and-coming Equity Membership Candidates), watching his progress and hearing the experience others have had working with him,...
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Absolutely San Francisco - Fun and Funny
By Michael Platania Published: October 28, 2010
Last Saturday night I watched a homeless lady board a cable car and take a trip across town - all from my seat in the Phoenix Theater Annex while watching Absolutely San Francisco - A Musical Trip, written and directed by Anne Doherty. Joining us on this journey, along with...
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Rivets is Spellbinding
Published: October 21, 2010
By Lynn Ruth Miller
“If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.” —Pearl Buck.Every American over the age of 70 remembers Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s immortal words to a shocked nation: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States...
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Who’s Proof Is It Anyway?
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: October 21, 2010
Currently running at SF’s EXIT Theatre, Proof by David Auburn proves to be both a penetrating character study as well as a gripping whodunit. Produced by Bell Jar Theatre, this drama with many comedic moments is directed by Suzanne Birrell. The four-character play is set in a rundown residence on the...
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The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later
By Mike Ward Published: October 21, 2010
Moises Kaufman and his company, Tectonic Theater Project, created The Laramie Project as a response to the senseless, brutal murder of Matthew Shepard over 10 years ago. Now, a series of events at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco revolves around the 10-year anniversary, including a discussion between Kaufman...
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Seven Days: The Ups and Downs of Love
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: October 21, 2010
The San Francisco Playhouse opens the second season of their Sand Box Series with the world premiere of local playwright Daniel Heath’s Seven Days. And Susi Damilano (SF Playhouse’s Producing Director and co-founder) directs the currently running show on their Second Stage. As revealed publicity, Seven Days is about “the...
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Hamlet: Metaphors over Substancee
By Lily Janiak Published: October 21, 2010
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me [Denmark] is a prison,” says the title character of Hamlet, in trying to convey the confluence of pressures weighing upon him (before even the midpoint of the play): his father’s death, his mother’s betrayal, his uncle’s...
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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
By Michael Platania Published: October 14, 2010
Starting with a catchy tune that promises “something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone: a comedy tonight!,” 42nd Street Moon’s production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum certainly delivers on its promise. With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Burt Shevelove and...
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The Last Days of Judas Iscariot: Ambitious Undertaking
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: October 14, 2010
The Custom Made Theatre Company ambitiously undertakes a monster of a play in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. Here, Guirgis (Our Lady of 121st Street and Jesus Hopped the A Train) strongly focuses on the issues of his Catholic roots. With 25 characters played by 15...
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Hedda Gabler - General Gabler’s Daughter
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: October 14, 2010
Off Broadway West Theatre Company’s production of Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen is the first play of their fifth season. And this Ibsen classic is currently running at the Phoenix Theatre.Set in 1890s Oslo, Norway, in the Tesman’s living room (and in a smaller room at the back), we view...
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Shocktoberfest!! 2010: Horror for Halloween
By Albert Goodwyn Published: October 14, 2010
A severed finger, a severed hand, detached heads, torture devices, and a lot of stage blood… welcome to San Francisco’s Halloween season! Thrillpeddlers mount their 11th annual production of their signature show Shocktoberfest!! at their whimsical Hypnodrome Theatre. In Shocktoberfest!! 2010: Kiss of Blood, three one-act plays explore themes of...
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Mary Stuart: The Battle Royale… That Should Have Been
By Lily Janiak Published: October 14, 2010
It’s sad that the conflict between Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I is still so ripe a topic for drama. Has there really been no other battle royale between two female heads of state since the 16th century? Even if there has been, could anything compare to a fight...
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Much Ado About Nothing: A War of Merry Wits
By Albert Goodwyn Published: October 7, 2010
Shakespeare’s witty play Much Ado About Nothing, currently running at Bruns Amphitheater, provides clever physical comedy and two parallel love stories, one old and one young. In this California Shakespeare Theater production, director Jonathan Moscone creates a seamlessly fast-paced show about romance, both deferred and impetuous, along with villainy and...
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Iph… A Tragedy That Doesnn’t Have Legs
By Lily Janiak Published: October 7, 2010
At first I couldn’t tell what was amiss with African-American Shakespeare Company and the Brava Theater’s co-production of Iph…, a new adaptation of Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis. The actors bring energy and commitment to their roles, and the mercurial pastels in Stephanie Buchner’s lighting design are nothing if not easy...
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Superior Donut: A Surprise-Filled Treat
By Mike Ward Published: October 7, 2010
“One of the levers in this play is the way characters are underestimated, either by the audience or by other characters,” shared Leslie Martinson, director of TheatreWorks upcoming production of Superior Donuts. “We think we know at a glance what we need to know about them, but there are unexpected...
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The Sunset Limited: Hope and Despair
By Albert Goodwyn Published: October 7, 2010
Devil or angel? Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited toys with this question in a tense two-man drama starring luminous Bay Area actors Charles Dean and Carl Lumbly, identified in the script only as Black and White. While not casting racial judgments, religious concerns are a major factor in the onstage...
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Scapin: Bill Irwin’s Postures and Impostures
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: October 7, 2010
Due to a great extent to the resounding success of its rich physical performances, Molière’s Les Fourberies de Scapin or The Impostures of Scapin has been extended twice at American Conservatory Theater (must close Oct. 23). Adapted by Bill Irwin and Mark O’Donnell, Scapin is directed and stars Bill Irwin....
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Anita Bryant Died for Your Sins
By Albert Goodwyn Published: September 30, 2010
Welcome back to the angst-ridden years of war and polyester. Currently running at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, Anita Bryant Died for Your Sins by Brian Christopher Williams dramatizes the internal fury of a teenage boy facing the fact that some people will hate him for what he is, complicated...
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Etiquette is Amazing!!
By Laurie Bushman Published: September 30, 2010
I arrived early for my “appointment” at the Yerba Buena Center. After all I wasn’t just here to watch and review the 6pm performance of Etiquette, I would also be performing it. Part of the DARE: Innovations in art, action, audience program at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA)...
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Lady Ha Ha: Witty and Perfectly Delivered
Published: September 30, 2010
By Michael PlataniaThis was a busy weekend — Friday dinner with a friend visiting for Folsom Street Fair and Saturday morning sanding and staining a deck. And Saturday night, I saw Kate Clinton’s one woman show, Lady Ha Ha, brought to the Marines Memorial Theatre via The Rrazz Room Concert...
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The Secretaries: A Wild Women’s Frolic!
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: September 30, 2010
Taking down a community — one lumberjack at a time — the women of Cooney Lumber Mill can wield a chainsaw with the same dexterity as they do an emery board. In The Secretaries, Crowded Fire’s latest offering at Boxcar Theatre, Artistic Director Marissa Wolf offers more than a barrel...
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Hail Caesar! Barges Into Teatro ZinZanni
By Mike Ward Published: September 30, 2010
Rarely would I begin a review with a preface, yet it’s appropriate. Many locals haven’t seen one of the City’s finest entertainment offerings, Teatro ZinZanni. Those who have tend to take out-of-town guests. Yet it’s something all Bay Area residents should see — but NOT this incarnation, titled Hail Caesar!...
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The Brothers Size: A Family Love Triangle
By Lily Janiak Published: September 30, 2010
Because of its unique shape, the Magic Theatre’s stage wields unique power. A partial thrust, it can be both inviting and confrontational, both “larger than” and “in the thick of” its audience. In this sense, it is the ideal space for the Magic’s production of The Brothers Size, their currently-running...
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November: Mamet’s Political Parody
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: September 30, 2010
Just in time for the midterm elections, comes November. This 2008 farce by David Mamet concerns a U.S. President facing a bleak re-election campaign who must look to the turkey (the animal, not the country) lobby to boost his sagging polls. Meanwhile, his speechwriter has demands of her own to...
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An Evening with Leslie Jordan
Published: September 23, 2010
By Rav Renati Here’s a little “inside baseball” for you. The next time you go to a show at The Rrazz Room, don’t be in too big of a hurry to get to your seat. Linger in the lobby for a while until just a few moments before the show...
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A Still Grand La Cage Aux Folles
Published: September 23, 2010
By Michael PlataniaThe day started with an adventure. A friend and I jumped out of an airplane at 13,000 feet to celebrate his 50th birthday. After I caught my breath upon landing, I looked forward to the day’s second adventure — a performance of La Cage Aux Folles, produced by Broadway...
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Compulsion: Captivating and Compelling
By Mike Ward Published: September 23, 2010
A three-foot tall marionette, crafted in the image and essence of Anne Frank, “reads” aloud from The New York Times Book Review‘s coverage of Miss Frank’s diary, “Anne Frank’s Diary is too tenderly intimate a book to be frozen with the label ‘classic,’ and yet no lesser designation serves.”
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The Name of the Game is Money
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: September 23, 2010
Jerry Sterner’s Other People’s Money, currently playing at the Masquers Playhouse in Richmond, is about greed, money and passion. Corporate raider Lawrence Garfinkle aka “Larry the Liquidator” is always looking for the next big score and puts his sights on New England Wire and Cable, a publicly-traded company run by...
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In the Red and Brown Water: Auspicious Beginning to Three-Play Conversationn
By Lily Janiak Published: September 23, 2010
Tarell Alvin McCraney is the undisputed rock star of contemporary American playwriting. Ever since the first productions of his Brother/Sister Plays — three full-length plays that explore life in a Bayou project through the lens of Yoruba cosmology — the critics have raved, some going so far as to dub him the...
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This Chicago is Dazzling!!
Published: September 16, 2010
By Michael Platania
As I sat in the audience at the Hillbarn Theatre, waiting for Chicago to begin, I said to the woman next to me, “I hope I get lost in the show, and it takes my mind off the day’s events.” (My dog had eaten something toxic....
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Jerry Springer the Opera It’s Sensational!!
By Tom W. Kelly Published: September 16, 2010
“Actually, I’m a bit gay,” Jesus admits, bedecked in a gold-lamè loin cloth. Shock factor rules in Jerry Springer the Opera, a sensationally sensationalistic musical produced by Ray of Light Theatre, currently running at the Victoria Theatre. Here, lampooning religion is readily accompanied by the visceral evisceration of humanity’s diversity,...
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Zero to 90 in 90 Min: A Smart Smorgasbord
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: September 16, 2010
As part of the 2010 SF Fringe Festival, Zero to 90 in 90 Minutes is a smorgasbord of short plays and monologues written by four smart Bay Area women: Linda Ayres-Frederick, Joya Cory, Ruth Kirschner and Naomi Newman. And credit must be given to Jan Carty Marsh for her outstanding...
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He/She and Me: Marriage on the Front-Slash
By Lily Janiak Published: September 16, 2010
According to the program notes for He/She and Me, a one-woman show, now running at the EXIT on Taylor as part of the Fringe Festival, “roughly 1 in 3,000 people are born with genders that don’t match their sex.” Whether or not that statistic is accurate, it’s not especially telling....
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Homeless: A Meditation on National, Racial And Sexual Belonging
By Lily Janiak Published: September 16, 2010
In San Francisco, the word “homeless” has strong connotations. We each have a vision, often an emotional and personal one, of what the word means. As a black man mounting an autobiographical play called Homeless, now running at EXIT Stage Left as part of the SF Fringe Festival, writer/performer Rotimi...
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Zinnia Rosenblatt: Multiple Identity Crises
By Tom W. Kelly Published: September 16, 2010
Desperate desires to connect permeate Joe Besecker’s comedy-drama Zinnia Rosenblatt. Produced by J.B. Enterprises, it is currently playing at the EXIT Theatre as part of the SF Fringe Festival. Typically the Fringe Fest features solo shows and occasional compilation programs, but here is a linear-narrative storyline with naturalistic characters… a...
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Eat Our Shorts: Diversity of Relationships
By Albert Goodwyn Published: September 16, 2010
The SF Fringe Festival puts up some of the best new works available. With multiple performances of more than 40 plays in just over a week, the production techniques and running times must be kept in tight control. And Richard Livingston and Christina Augello do just that in this annual...
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Don’t Ask: Brutality of War and Attraction
By Tom W. Kelly Published: September 9, 2010
“You have invaded me,” a horny private warns his straight-identified sergeant, “And now I’m yours.” Statements like this indicate possible metaphorical parallels with the volatile political relationship between invader and invaded seen in Iraq, where Don’t Ask by Bill Quigley is situated. But metaphor soon subsides, and a gay version...
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Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
Published: September 9, 2010
By Michael PlataniaSeven people stand onstage, which is otherwise empty except for one black chair, and make witty pronouncements about artists and art in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. “All art is quite useless” and “The ugly and the stupid have the best art in the world” are...
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Light in the Piazza: Entertaining Despite Flaws
Published: September 9, 2010
The Light in the Piazza, with its lush, lyrical score by Adam Guettel and smart, witty book by Craig Lucas, charms audiences in an attractive production by TheatreWorks. Winner of six Tony Awards in 2005, Piazza deserves attention, not only for its gorgeous contemporary sound, but also for its heartfelt...
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Olive Kitteridge: Word Wizardry On Stage
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: September 9, 2010
It is hard enough for good companies to stage quality plays with ready-made dialogue. And still fewer companies successfully take on the challenge of instilling dramatic life into novels and short stories. But if any theatre company can bring prose to life, it is Word for Word that has a...
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Anton in Show Business: Madcap Comedy
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: September 9, 2010
“Does art reflect life or does life reflect art?” is one of the issues raised in Anton In Show Business, which opens the current season of TheatreFIRST, Oakland’s resident professional theater company. This madcap comedy features a multicultural cast reflecting the Bay Area’s diverse theater community.
Written by Jane...
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Dreamgirls: Glitzy and Gutsy as Ever!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: September 2, 2010
The new touring production of Dreamgirls by Tom Eyen and Henry Krieger, as part of SHN’s Best of Broadway series and now playing at the Curran Theatre, happily surprised this reviewer. How could a new production possibly top the fabulous 1981 original mounting of glitz and guts with those three...
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That Kid Can SING! Rewarding, Inspiring
By Laurie Bushman Published: September 2, 2010
Produced by San Francisco Children’s Musical Theater, That Kid Can SING! is a musical revue featuring a cavalcade of young talent, ages 4 to 25. Yes, a real cavalcade! With each of the 30 performers singing a solo number, the two-hour program requires some audience stamina, but that stamina is...
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SF Fringe Festival 2010: LGBT from A to Z
By Tom W. Kelly Published: September 2, 2010
From Sept. 8-19, the San Francisco Fringe Festival offers a bounty of LGBT-interest shows. Featuring over 250 performances of some 43 different theatre pieces, it’s easy to see 4 to 5 shows a day. And fun! A complete schedule of the 19th annual Fringe Festival is available at theexit.org. Tickets...
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Eat Our Shorts - Enjoy Some Fun Short Plays!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: September 2, 2010
GuyWriters proudly presents Eat Our Shorts, a quirky collection of short plays by SF writers. People innocently move throughout the City, unaware of what is happening all around them. Humorous and/or sexual exploits are laid bare when GuyWriters follow up their successful December 2009 debut to expose the secret lives...
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Trouble (Ahead, Behind) In Mind
By Lily Janiak Published: September 2, 2010
To those who speak of post-racial societies, who don’t think a play about race written in 1955 could have relevance for contemporary audiences, I offer you the following moment at a recent performance of Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress at the Aurora Theatre (currently running). In the play a...
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Antony and Cleopatra — Love and Diplomacy In Rome and Egypt
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: September 2, 2010
Marin Shakespeare Company’s production of Antony and Cleopatra (currently-running) is Shakespeare’s continuing saga of ancient Rome, which begins with Julius Caesar (which Marin Shakes produced last summer). And director Lesley Currier is a brave woman to tackle this seldom-produced historical play. Her production of this drama of love and diplomacy...
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The Grand Spectacle of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 26, 2010
Venerable lore has always brought the story of alienation, of “The Other.” And Disney has a veritable knack for bringing ancient stories into the current vernacular. Their 1991 animated film retold the traditional fairy tale about a valiant prince beset by a curse and his princess savior, and it’s now brought...
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Entertaining Show But Not the Greatest
Published: August 26, 2010
By Michael PlataniaI learned about Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in elementary school in the ‘70s, back when it was still the “Greatest Show on Earth.” Barnum’s FUNundrum, the 140th edition from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, which recently performed at San Jose’s HP Pavilion, was occasionally...
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SF Improv Festival 2010 Rocks On
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: August 26, 2010
If you are a couple and want to have your story told onstage, just volunteer your names to “How We First Met.” At the SF Improv Festival 2010, held recently at the Eureka Theatre, audience members “Laura and Eric” got to see their courtship played out by four talented improvisers...
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A Powerful Gem of the Ocean
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: August 26, 2010
Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson deals with the legacy of slavery and what still exists in a free environment. Multi-Ethnic Theater’s currently running production at The Next Stage features a fine ensemble and strong directing by Lewis Campbell. The script gives tremendous insight into what African-Americans felt and...
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A Nightmarish Macbeth at Cal Shakes
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: August 26, 2010
Under the cool summer skies over Bruns Memorial Amphitheater, the forewarning hooting of real live owls reminds viewers of the curses placed upon theatres performing Macbeth throughout the centuries. The California Shakespeare Theater production of Macbeth recently opened in this most appropriate natural setting. And so far this production has...
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Fifi & Fanny’s Whorehouse Was Packed!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: August 19, 2010
After resigning last month as the artistic director of the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, Stephanie Lynne Smith has landed quickly on her creative feet ... or uh, back? She and comedic partner, Carolyn Eidson, performed their fabulous Fifi & Fanny: LIVE at the Texas Whorehouse musical comedy revue at...
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Glass Menagerie: Tenn Will Shines New Light
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 19, 2010
Boxcar Theatre has mounted an innovative, very successful new interpretation of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, currently running in their black box South of Market theater (extended to Sept. 5). Despite the intimate space, they add six more characters to the original four, serving to flesh out and humanize the stereotyped...
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Table Manner: Norms, or Norman??
By Lily Janiak Published: August 19, 2010
Great theatre directors exercise a jurisprudence of balance. They approach their characters with infinite mercy but unyielding justice, respecting the needs and claims of the individual but reserving their highest veneration for the conflicts that those needs and claims produce. They do not champion, but juxtapose; not endorse, but moderate....
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This is All I Need - A Show About Stuff
Published: August 19, 2010
By Michael PlataniaStuff. Do we define it or does it define us? This is a question asked in the Mugwumpin production of This is All I Need, currently running at the NOHspace. Four performers — Madeline H.D. Brown, Joe Estlack, Erin Mei-Lling Stuart and Christopher W. White — take us through a...
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Disney’s Aladdin - Theatre Magic
By Lily Janiak Published: August 19, 2010
Although Disney’s animated features from the early ‘90s remain immensely popular, for members of my generation (who were children when the films premiered) they meant - and still mean - something special. It was as though those cinematic events, those magical worlds, were created especially for us. Disney’s Aladdin is...
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Leanne Borghesi is Definitely Divalicious!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: August 12, 2010
Divalicious, the delightful cabaret showcase starring Leanne Borghesi with G. Scott Lacy on piano, directed by Stephanie Temple, is currently running at New Conservatory Theatre Center. Some know Borghesi by her alter ego, Faux Queen Anita Cocktail. But here, she is full-on diva to the max. The concept of this...
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A Streetcar Named Desire
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: August 12, 2010
Intricacies of the Human Spirit
For the remainder of August (and extended to September 5!), Boxcar Theatre presents Tenn Will, three award-winning Tennessee Williams plays in repertory. Williams won Pulitzer Prizes for A Streetcar Named Desire (1948) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) and the Drama Critics’...
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Sex Tapes for Seniors: A Read Crowd-Pleaser
Published: August 12, 2010
By Michael PlataniaI don’t have kids, but I know the feeling of watching a niece, nephew or a neighbor’s child in a show. And now I have a sense of what it’s like to watch, instead of a child, a parent or grandparent in a play. They may not hit...
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Show and Tell at Thick House
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: August 12, 2010
Choosing material for the opening show of a newly formed theatre company is challenging, especially when one’s mission is “to never have more male than female roles in any given show and never more male than female actors’ union contracts.” Current gender imbalance in theatrical union contracts is 80% men...
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The Buzz and Bee-havior of Humble Boy
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: August 12, 2010
Humble Boy by British playwright Charlotte Jones opens to the “Flight of the Bumblebee” which set the tone for this production. Produced by Marin Actors’ Workshop and deftly directed by Terry McGovern, Humble Boy is currently running at the Novato Theater Company Playhouse.The title character, Felix Humble (Ken Bacon), an...
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Night of One-Act Plays : Point/Counterpoint
By Tom W. Kelly Published: August 5, 2010
“Memory is your only escape.” And indeed memory plays an integral role in both short works that comprise A Night of One-Act Plays, recently performed at (and produced by) the Victoria Theatre. The two one-man shorts, both written by Robert Correa, feature actor Gerrad Bohl in startlingly different roles. Counterpoint,...
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Rent: Where Are The Lesbians?
Published: August 5, 2010
By Michael PlataniaRent, the ‘90s Broadway phenomenon with music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson and based on the Puccini opera La Boheme (now playing at the City Lights Theater in San Jose), still resonates today. The play begins on Christmas Eve, in a loft apartment where filmmaker Mark (Spencer Williams)...
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In A World… Where Improv Adheres to Its Principles
By Lily Janiak Published: August 5, 2010
The art of improvising is the art of saying “yes.” As Keith Johnstone wrote in Impro, the defining text on improvisation theory, “There are people who prefer to say ‘Yes,’ and people who prefer to say ‘No.’ Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those...
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Carol Channing is Coming to San Francisco, (Part 2)
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: August 5, 2010
On Aug.15, theatrical legend Carol Channing appears at the 16th Edition of Help Is on the Way, a star-studded musical revue produced by the Richmond Ermet AIDS Foundation. Subtitled “That’s Entertainment,” this edition features Melissa Manchester, James Darren, Lisa Vroman, Bruce Vilanch, Paula West and many more! And the beneficiaries...
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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Maggie in Your Face
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 5, 2010
Boxcar Theatre has distilled one essence of a classic American play in their abbreviated version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams. As one of their three-show series called Tenn Will (which also includes Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie in repertory), they are...
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Theatre at its Finest: Superb Lion in Winter
Published: August 5, 2010
By Jeanie K. SmithOccasionally a show comes along that reminds you why you love the theatre, and this is one of them. Shakespeare Santa Cruz has mounted a near-perfect production of The Lion in Winter by James Goldman (currently running) with wonderful design elements and a smart script that sounds...
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30 Days in September: Taut and Riveting
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: July 29, 2010
Attending a dress rehearsal of 30 Days In September was a very moving experience. I was able to speak personally with director Rooben Morgan who told me that the play was about child abuse and incest. Produced by IndiStage, 30 Days In September, an intricate and in-depth look at a...
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The Taming of the Shrew Under the Stars
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 29, 2010
Marin Shakespeare Company again brings innovation to one of the classic comedies by The Bard of Avon with their production of The Taming of the Shrew. The works of the Elizabethan-era poet have, over the centuries, been recast in many different styles, but probably not ever before in a West...
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Alzheimer’s Alzheimer’s Cha Cha Cha And The Stripping Granny
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 22, 2010
Septuagenarian comedienne Lynn Ruth Miller bids you welcome to the “Final Gasp Residential Home” in her one-woman cabaret show Alzheimer’s Alzheimer’s Cha Cha Cha (currently running). Her lively performance includes singing, a striptease and free condoms. Miller might be aged, but she only acts creaky for effect. She pokes fun...
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Mrs. Warren’s Profession: So Contemporary
By Lily Janiak Published: July 22, 2010
If Shakespeare had a runner-up - a fellow playwright whose themes were so broad, whose characters so full and whose conflicts so timeless as to deem him second choice for the singular voice of the English language - surely George Bernard Shaw would be him. How fitting, then, that California...
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Nymph O’Mania is Delightful
Published: July 22, 2010
By Michael PlataniaNymph O’ Mania, a new comedy by local playwright Morgan Ludlow (currently playing at Stage Werx Theatre), is billed as “a modern twist on A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Produced by Wily West Productions and directed by David Stein, Nymph is a musical-chairs story of love and sex set...
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The Middle Ages: Time Passes, Love Remains
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: July 22, 2010
Playwright A.R. Gurney has (like Philip Barry before him) appointed himself a chronicler of the American monied classes. And Ross Valley Players is currently presenting his wryly comedic drama The Middle Ages, which predates his best-known play The Dining Room. In both plays, the story is effectively told through a...
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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Hisses and Claws
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 22, 2010
Tennessee Williams wrote about society’s sexual and religious outcasts, “others” like himself. The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright’s 1955 masterpiece Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, now running in a fresh new production at Actors Theatre of San Francisco, opens a gripping insight to the plight of a questioning gay man stuck...
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Each Hit & I: “F” Bombs The Rrazz
By Mike Ward Published: July 15, 2010
If you’re a fan of jokes about rimming, farts, scat, bestiality, STDs and lesbians (with every variation of vaginal derivation and secretion imaginable) while the “F” bomb and its variants are hurled with clockwork regularity, The Kinsey Sicks in Each Hit & I at The Rrazz Room wouldn’t have disappointed...
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Cowardly Things: Non-Stop Entertainment
Published: July 15, 2010
By Michael PlataniaWhere else can you find love, Paris, rolling pins and leather whips, but in the New Conservatory Theatre Center’s fun-filled production of Cowardly Things, currently running. Part of NCTC’s Summer Cabaret series, Michael Phillis directs Scrumbly Koldewyn and Cindy Goldfield who laugh, dance and sing through two hours...
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PIAF - Love Conquers All: Hearts Will Melt
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: July 15, 2010
“My professional life is fantastic, but my love life is not so good.” So said Edith Piaf, a French chanteuse at the height of her career whose passion for music, men and eventually morphine is celebrated in Piaf: Love Conquers All by Roger Peace, presented by Tone Poet Productions and...
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Traveling Light: Multiple Entendres
By Lily Janiak Published: July 15, 2010
Traveling Light, the title of Joe Goode Performance Group’s revived dance installation currently playing in the Old Mint Building, works on (at least) three levels. First, it encapsulates the performance’s main and most unusual conceit: that the audience (not to the mention performers) must travel through different spaces in the...
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Josephine the Pirate Queen: A Musical World Premiere at the Knox Center
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: July 15, 2010
That dynamic duo, Pamela Barnes and Ellen Hoffman, have created a new hit musical, Josephine the Pirate Queen, which recently ran at the Knox Center for the Performing Arts at Contra Costa College in San Pablo. Josephine boasted a multi-racial cast of 72 (mostly students, ranging from under 10 years...
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Travesties: Marin Shakes Makes the Most of It
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 15, 2010
Tom Stoppard’s play Travesties, now playing at Marin Shakespeare Company, is densely populated with clever witticisms and somewhat abstruse literary references. Director Robert Currier has mounted this play as a truly physical, almost vaudevillian, comedy while sensitively paying attention to the intellectual content and artfully making it accessible to a...
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Left of Oz: Butch Dykes and Fem Dykes And Beers, Oh My!!
Published: July 8, 2010
By Michael PlataniaDorothy’s not in Kansas anymore. This time she’s headed to San Francisco in Left of Oz, a Stephanie’s Playhouse production currently running at the Ashby Stage in Berkeley. An original musical (book, original music and lyrics) by Stephanie Reif with songs that ranged from intimate solos to full-scale...
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Beijing, California: Timeliness vs. Timelessnesss
By Lily Janiak Published: July 8, 2010
The best aspect of Beijing, California, produced by the Asian American Theater Company and now running at the Thick House, may be its premise: a not-too-distant future in which China rises, America falls, and the former conquers the latter. One can imagine this scenario more easily with each passing headline,...
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Teatro ZinZanni’s Love, Chaos, Couture!
By Mike Ward Published: July 8, 2010
Teatro ZinZanni hits the runway the fun way with a passion for fashion in Love, Chaos, Couture: All Dressed Up with Someplace to Go!, now playing at their lush Spiegeltent (SF’s Pier 29). Like many other Bay Areans, I wrote off Teatro ZinZanni as upscale tourist entertainment. Wrong! Designed for...
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Posibilidad: Enjoyable (Despite Challenges)
Published: July 8, 2010
By Michael PlataniaThe San Francisco Mime Troupe opened its 51st season with Posibilidad, or Death of the Worker, on July 4th in Dolores Park. It was a beautiful day with a clear blue sky, a light cool breeze, and a full-capacity crowd. Posibilidad, written by Michael Gene Sullivan and Ellen...
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Young Frankenstein Feels Good!
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: July 8, 2010
If you like Borscht Belt humor, you’ll love Mel Brooks’ new musical Young Frankenstein! Now playing at the Golden Gate Theatre, SHN’s latest offering in the Best of Broadway series has some of the best choreography and well-sung songs that bring a crazy 1974 classic movie back to life and...
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Carol Channing is Coming to San Francisco (Part 1)
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: July 8, 2010
On August 15, theatrical legend Carol Channing will appear at the 16th Edition of Help Is on the Way, a star-studded musical revue produced by the Richmond Ermet AIDS Foundation. This Edition, subtitled “That’s Entertainment,” features Melissa Manchester, James Darren, Lisa Vroman, Bruce Vilanch, Paula West and many more! And...
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Blackbird: Eisen Portrays Pansy Divas
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 1, 2010
Elegant and beefy drag queen Seth Eisen pays loving tribute to singing female impersonators in his show Blackbird, now at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory. He gives elaborately-costumed interpretations of their performances and styles, accompanied by a two-piece combo. Essentially, the show is a cabaret performance covering celebrities and songs dating...
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How the Other Half Loves: A Comedy of Errors
By Lily Janiak Published: July 1, 2010
As a theatre critic, I often seek subtlety in the productions I review. I look for understatement — in design, in performance — to counter what is inherently exaggerated and confrontational in the medium: the makeup, the motions, the emotions and conflicts that flare up right in front of you...
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Memphis: Mountain View to Manhattan — Tony Magic
By Mike Ward Published: July 1, 2010
Going into this year’s Tony Awards, MEMPHIS, a big-hearted musical with Bay Area roots, had already won four awards each from the Outer Critics Circle (OCC) and Drama Desk (DD), though with enough variation as to question which of the eight Tony nominations would transmute into awards. At the OCC,...
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Aging Bull! Something C.O.O.L. to Do
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: June 24, 2010
“We’re ‘The Little Festival That Could’ and ‘The Best Kept Secret in San Francisco!’,” jokes Tom Orr, our own musical comedy, cabaret, porn star and lyricist, who also adds to his resume “drag queen and legitimate stage actress” (after his stint as the Widow Norton in Theatre Rhino’s SexRev: The...
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Durang Me! Wickedly Funny Satire
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 24, 2010
Growing up gay and simultaneously saddled with the guilt-inducing dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, actor Christopher Durang laughed and evolved into a satirical dramatist whose fiercely comic works have been produced on Broadway, Off Broadway, and around the world. Custom Made Theatre’s Durang Me! couples the acidly funny-yet-serious one-act...
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Fierce Love: Stories from Black Gay Life By Pomo Afro Homos
By Rink Published: June 24, 2010
A lucky audience experienced a 20th anniversary of one of the best shows about Black gays and some of their stories on June 15 at the San Francisco Main Library. Fierce Love: Stories from Black Gay Life by Pomo Afro Homos was as fresh,uplifting and outrageous as it was...
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Krapp’s Last Tape: The Foibles of Youth… And of Age
By Lily Janiak Published: June 24, 2010
If an actor’s body is an instrument, Paul Gerrior’s is like a set of bagpipes‑— presuming his portrayal of the title role in Krapp’s Last Tape, currently running at the EXIT on Taylor, is representative of his artistry. Here, at least, Gerrior works like the Scottish musical lung‑— inhaling, holding...
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Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Love and Revenge
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: June 24, 2010
Porchlight Theatre Company opened their 10th anniversary season on June 19 with Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Christopher Hampton with co-directors Ann Brebner and Ken Sonkin.‑Les Liaisons Dangereuses marks the 50th anniversary of Ann Brebner’s arrival on the Bay Area theatre scene and her founding of the Marin Shakespeare Festival.‑The Festival’s...
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Speech & Debate: Teenagers Discovering the Truth
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: June 24, 2010
What has such a dull title, Speech & Debate by Stephen Karam, got to do with the play’s content concerning a sex scandal? Not until we see the play do we understand a threesome of maladjusted teenagers’ efforts to comprehend and eventually bring freedom of expression and tolerance (related to...
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The Fantasticks: Post-Apocalyptic Re-Imagining
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 24, 2010
The musical love story The Fantasticks by Tom Jones (book and lyrics) and Harvey Schmidt (music) celebrates its 50th anniversary! And Bill English and his crew at SF Playhouse have cleverly produced this venerable comedy (currently running) with some of the finest Bay Area talent. English’s directing presents an evenly-textured...
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Topsy-Turvy: Comically Defying Stereotypes
Published: June 17, 2010
By Michael PlataniaTopsy-Turvy, a presentation of two one-act plays by local writers, turns the age-old stereotype of promiscuous gay men and relationship-obsessed gay women on its head. The plays, performed one weekend only at the Metropolitan Community Church as a fundraiser, celebrated the church’s 40th anniversary. The evening opened with...
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Androcles and the Lion: One Good Turn...
By Tom W. Kelly Published: June 17, 2010
How strong are your convictions? Would you be willing to die for your beliefs? In Androcles and the Lion by George Bernard Shaw, produced by San Francisco Free Civic Theatre (currently running at the Eureka Valley Rec Center), a band of Christians bravely face imminent death with a goodly smattering...
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The Marsh’s 20th Year Performance Marathon
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: June 17, 2010
On June 19, from noon to midnight (ending with a late-night party), The Marsh celebrates its 20th anniversary with a Performance Marathon of solo work. Stephanie Weisman, Marsh Founder and Artistic Producing Director, has invited 45 Marsh performers, old and new, for non-stop performances and reminiscences (plus open mike for...
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Woody Guthrie’s American Song Still Relevant
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: June 17, 2010
Woody Guthrie’s American Song is a musical revue of Guthrie’s best-loved material, and it follows the singer from the Great Depression through the Dust Bowl and on to the promised land. Recently opening to a standing ovation, Marin Theatre Company has a hit on their hands!Conceived, adapted and directed by...
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The Pastures of Heaven: Cal Shakes Moves from London to Salinas
By Lily Janiak Published: June 17, 2010
In opening its current season with The Pastures of Heaven, Octavio Solis’ play based on the short stories by John Steinbeck, California Shakespeare Theater broadens — and takes advantage of — its horizons. This is the first world premiere the Bruns Amphitheater has housed, and as a celebration of Northern...
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God’s Ear: A Reanimation of Cliché
By Lily Janiak Published: June 17, 2010
In their current production of God’s Ear by Jenny Schwartz, the Shotgun Players are not shy about foreshadowing motifs before the show begins. The program looks like an old-fashioned plane ticket. The usher tells you to “enjoy your flight.” The pre-show announcement sounds like an in-flight safety demonstration, and the...
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Forever Never Comes: Too Much to Take
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: June 17, 2010
How many twists can you put into a Southern gothic tale? In Enrique Urueta’s Forever Never Comes — A Psycho-Southern Queer Country Dance Tragedy, currently running at The Boxcar Playhouse, there are at least six. First in this Crowded Fire production is the suicide by hanging of Ricardo (Shoresh Alaudini) whose...
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Gay Stereotypes Survive in New Century
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 10, 2010
Paul Rudnick’s play The New Century, now running at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, delves deeply into shallow gay stereotypes. It explores the heroically long-suffering mother of three gay children, the flamboyant public television host in Florida who was “too gay” for New York and the simple homespun mother whose...
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The Golden Girls are Back for Pride Season!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: June 10, 2010
Those four gay guys who play four old broads are back treading the boards at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory for their fourth Pride Season with two hilarious new episodes. The Golden Girls is a clever live stage play using scripts from old Golden Girls TV episodes and a quartet of...
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This Many People: CounterPULSE Premiere
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: June 10, 2010
Closets, AIDS, and centuries of injustice have long threatened the history of individual LGBT seniors and elders. But This Many People, an original theatrical production by OutLook Theater Project, brings these stories out of the closet and into the spotlight (this weekend) as part of the National Queer Arts Festival....
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It’s All the Rage (Not Just Another Family Tragedy: This One Kills)
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: June 10, 2010
The Pittmans were normal. Dad was a World War II hero. Mom was editor of her college yearbook. They were happy for 24 months. And then there were the other 47 years of their marriage. In 60 riveting minutes, Marilyn Pittman tells the story of her parents’ murder-suicide in 1997...
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Boxcar’s Rhino by Ionesco is Hard-hitting
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: June 3, 2010
Rhino, a very quick (45 minutes) ensemble-generated work inspired by Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, is the finest serio/comic, site-specific, movement-based performance of the Spring season. Ending a four-weekend run, it completes Boxcar Theatre’s “Reimagining the Familiar” series. In this tightly and brilliantly directed (and imagined) work by Evren Odcikin (also the set...
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Opus: Madness, Genius; Sensual Ménage-a-Cinq
By Mike Ward Published: June 3, 2010
Simultaneously temporary and eternal, live performing arts exist in these polar-opposite states. Beethoven’s immortal music is only black glyphs upon white backgrounds until life is breathed into them in performance. In its regional premiere at TheatreWorks (opening soon), Michael Hollinger’s play titled Opus explores this contrapuntal conceit — and more...
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Apotheosis of Pig Husbandry
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: June 3, 2010
Social Theory and Non-Violent Revenge Mix Well
The world premiere of The Apotheosis of Pig Husbandry by local playwright William Bivins is currently running at the SF Playhouse as part of their Sandbox Series (dedicated to promoting new works with top-notch directors and actors, using minimal design elements)....
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Boys Will Be Boys
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: June 3, 2010
Candy-Coated Rainbow Gay Pride
Boys Will Be Boys: An OUT-Rageous New Musical Revue is so sweet you’ll want to brush and floss your teeth right after. It’s a delicious piece of taffy. A sticky gummy bear. A mouthful of pink cotton candy. And it is soooooo gay, I...
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Rhino Benefit Spectacular Truly Trotted Out the Talent
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: June 3, 2010
Theatre Rhinoceros held its annual Benefit Spectacular on May 25 at one of its new digs, the Eureka Theatre, featuring the local talent of Rhino regulars and newcomers. Dave Dobrusky was the musical director and piano accompanist with Rhino producer/ executive director John Fisher as the very animated emcee. The...
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Peter Pan Flies! And So Does Tinkerbell!
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 27, 2010
Peter Pan flies alongside Tinker Bell (his “Fairy with an attitude”) in the new stage presentation of Peter Pan, currently running at The threesixty Theatre, a brand new, 1350-seat, state-of-the-art 360-degree CGI theatre pavilion in SF’s Ferry Park. Inside the huge white tent, the London smash hit of JM Barrie’s...
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All My Sons: Dramatic Repercussions
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: May 27, 2010
All My Sons by Arthur Miller, produced by the Actors Theatre of San Francisco, is currently running and continues through June. This powerful script by one of America’s most brilliant playwrights offers a subtle message about responsibility to others.Taking place during World War II and centering on next door neighbors...
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Breath of Life - Spare Stage Spares Us a Payoff
By Lily Janiak Published: May 27, 2010
Americans suffer from exceptionalism and litigiousness. They coin abhorrent terms like “closure” (for the conclusion of the grieving period). David Hare, the British playwright, could hardly make his disdain for this country more manifest in The Breath of Life, produced by Spare Stage and currently running. Yet to see this...
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In the Wake: Sex, Politics and Sexual Politics
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 27, 2010
Berkeley Repertory Theatre in a co-production with Center Theatre Group of Los Angeles presents the world premiere of Lisa Kron’s In the Wake which explores sex, politics and sexual politics. The show follows the career of an outspoken, ultra-liberal journalist through the Bush II years, the high points being the...
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Top Girls - A Feminist View of Success
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: May 27, 2010
Top Girls by feminist playwright Caryl Churchill recently opened, and is currently running, at Ross Valley Players. Set in 1980s London at the Top Girls Employment Agency, Top Girls tells the story of an ambitious and successful career woman, Marlene (Loring Williams) who has just been appointed head of the...
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Marga’s Minority Within a Minority
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 20, 2010
Marga Gomez celebrates Pride Month early with an updated return of her one-hander Proud & Bothered, now at the New Conservatory Theatre Center. With her frenetic comic delivery and her New York City brashness, she weaves together the stories of her personal experiences as a professional mistress of ceremonies for...
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In the Heights at the Curran
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: May 20, 2010
A view of the George Washington Bridge soars between apartment buildings on Anna Louizos’ Upper Manhattan set of In The Heights - a new musical brought to the Curran Theatre by Carole Shorenstein Hays. Conceived by Lin-Manuel Miranda (who also wrote the music and lyrics) with book by Quiara Alegria...
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Penn, Baez & Friends Join for “Evening of Giving/Saving Lives”
By Mike Ward Published: May 20, 2010
Bay Area artists and public figures have long been at the forefront of combining talent forces for humanitarian causes. “An Evening of Giving and Saving Lives” - a one-night-only performance extravaganza focusing on the supporting the relief efforts in Haiti - is one such synergistic happening.The Tuesday, May 25, 7pm...
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Tender Stone: Words and Images are Different Animals
By Lily Janiak Published: May 13, 2010
A glance at the program of Tender Stone, an Artship Ensemble exploration of Persian myth, reveals a production thoroughly aware of its strengths. With an entire page devoted to the company’s image-based philosophy and another to its costume design, the publication primes audiences to expect great things in the visual...
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Hot Greeks: Smokin’ Hot Cockettes Revival
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: May 13, 2010
It helps to know the ancient myth of Lysistrata to appreciate Hot Greeks, the Cockettes’ modernization of Greek playwright Aristophanes’ comedy. [Peace-loving Lysistrata talked the women of Greece into refusing sex with their warrior husbands until they end the Peloponnesian War against Sparta.] Add to the ancient tale the righteously...
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Terroristka: The Inner Psychology of a Suicide Bomber
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: May 13, 2010
Threshold: Theatre on the Verge recently opened its new poetic docudrama, Terroristka by Rebecca Bella at the Berkeley City Club (currently running). Based on a true story, it centers on Zarema Muzhakhoyeva, who was arrested in Moscow for having carried a bomb that she decided not to detonate.Director Jessica Holt...
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ACT’s Ayckbourn Goes Round and Round the Garden
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: May 13, 2010
One of the most frustrating experiences attending the theatre is knowing that the playwright whose work you are about to see is a fine craftsman, the cast of players are carefully chosen and perfectly competent, and the designers and director are all of good repute. And yet, the elements don’t...
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Very Warm for May: Lighthearted Spoof
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 13, 2010
The tradition of Broadway musicals is kept alive by San Francisco’s 42nd Street Moon. Their latest revival, now playing at the Eureka Theatre, is a lighthearted spoof of typical summer-stock rehearsals in Connecticut. In Very Warm for May by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, teenage girl May escapes from her...
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The 14th Annual Best of PlayGround Festival
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: May 13, 2010
PlayGround recently opened (and is currently running) The 14th Annual Best of PlayGround Festival, featuring seven full productions of original short plays by emerging playwrights. Receiving this year’s SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle’s prestigious Paine Knickerbocker Award, PlayGround was recognized for its outstanding and continuing support of the development...
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Some Like it Hot at Something C.O.O.L. Summer Cabaret Festival
By Mike Ward Published: May 13, 2010
With a hot line-up of local cool cabaret cats coming up soon (May 27 to June 27) at the Eureka Theatre, Something C.O.O.L. Summer Cabaret Festival has enough variety to spice up the summer nights for all. C.O.O.L. (a kind of acronym for Carly Ozard, Tom Orr and Russ Lorenson)...
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Echo’s Reach: WOW!!
By Laurie Bushman Published: May 6, 2010
Arriving at Brava Theater Center to see Echo’s Reach (written and directed by Tim Barsky), I wasn’t sure what to expect from my first experience of Urban Circus Arts. As described by City Circus, Urban Circus Arts is “a cross platform performance discipline that unites traditional circus arts (acrobatics, aerial...
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Beach Blanket Babylon Stages New Edition
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: May 6, 2010
About to celebrate its 35th year, Beach Blanket Babylon is the longest-running musical revue in theater history. This laugh-a-minute musical romp, known for its over-the-top costumes, wacky wigs and humungous hats, was created by the genius of Steve Silver, whose vision continues under the guiding hand of producer Jo Schuman...
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SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards
Published: May 6, 2010
On Monday, May 3, 2010, the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle hosted their 34th Annual Awards Ceremony to celebrate and applaud Bay Area theatre excellence during 2009. Over 300 dapperly dressed theatre folk attended the event at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre Lobby. And the mood was festive,...
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Fringe of Marin, Spring 2010 — “The Little Prince” Wins Top Honors
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: May 6, 2010
The Fringe of Marin and the Dominican University Community Players recently celebrated their silver anniversary, with grateful thanks going to their founder Dr. Annette Lust, Artistic Director and Festival Coordinator. And on May 2, Theatre Critic’s Circle Awards and People’s Choice Awards for the Spring 2010 festival were announced.Theatre Critic’s...
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Everything the Traffic Will Allow
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: April 29, 2010
Klea Blackhurstt’s Knockout Merman Tribute
Ethel Merman was called a lot of things in her life, including “the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage.” Some people loved her and still do, some really didn’t and still don’t, and some have never even heard of her. Fortunately, a...
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Fringe of Marin Spring 2010, Program Two
Published: April 29, 2010
By Jeffrey R SmithThe Fringe of Marin, a festival of one-acts plays, started by Dr. Annette Lust precisely 25 years ago, has, like a good Bordeaux, qualitatively evolved. Produced by Dominican University Community Players, it is now a substantial theater event for Marin County. And the current Spring 2010 Program...
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SexRev: Hysterical History of Revolutionary Drag Empress
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: April 29, 2010
SexRev: The José Sarria Experience is the latest comic gem by writer/ director John Fisher (Artistic Director of Theatre Rhinoceros). Presented by Theatre Rhino and mounted at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory (currently running), this musical montage of one of the nation’s first queer activists is held in the round (oval?)...
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State-of-the-Art Sondheim on Sondheim
By Mike Ward Published: April 29, 2010
Merrily We Roll Into the Words
Sondheim’s words, music and puzzle-and-puzzling-people affinity provide inspiration for Roundabout Theatre’s docu-revue-tribute-musical hybrid Sondheim on Sondheim. Conceived and directed by James Lapine — currently running at Studio 54 in a very limited engagement — a stellar ensemble of eight (under the spot-on baton...
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An Accident at The Magic
By Lily Janiak Published: April 29, 2010
It’s difficult to imagine why the Magic Theatre selected An Accident by Lydia Stryk as the closer for its 2009-2010 season. Sure, the theatre was otherwise without a female playwright for the year, but could it not have found another way to check off that pesky demographic box? Must it...
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Girlfriend: Agony and Ecstasy of First Gay Love
By Tom W. Kelly Published: April 22, 2010
Who was that sentimental fool crying at the end of Act One of Girlfriend? Oh, it was me. I never thought I’d live long enough to see a boy-meets-boy love story at a major theatre set to music by a famous composer and with such incredible production values.! And thank...
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Fringe of Marin Spring 2010, Program One: Ushers In 25th Season
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: April 22, 2010
Last Friday, April 16, 2010, Artistic Director Dr. Annette Lust welcomed us to the 25th season of the Fringe of Marin’s new discoveries.The first half of the program is devoted to Dr. Lust’s amazing adaptation of The Little Prince by St. Exupery, which is imaginatively directed by Sasha Litovchenko in...
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The Wind and Rain: Ghost Story
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 22, 2010
As part of this year’s DIVAfest at the EXIT Theatre (currently running), three women play in a tragic love story titled The Wind and Rain. Writer/director Claytie Mason has dramatized an Irish ballad by that name, and the performers sing, dance and/or fiddle. The 90-minute tale tells of two sisters,...
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To Kill a Mockingbird: Slow to Progress
By Tom W. Kelly Published: April 22, 2010
Social progress is painfully slow. And while viewing TheatreWorks’ sumptuous stage production of To Kill a Mockingbird, based on the 1960 novel about 1930’s small-town life, acknowledgements of racism in today’s world plague the audience. The stunning visuals and superb script (dramatized by Christopher Sergel from the novel by Harper...
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Sandy Hackett’s Rat Pack Show: Kings of Cool in the Desert Shadowss
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 22, 2010
Legendary comedian Buddy Hackett comes back from the dead in his son’s new show titled Sandy Hackett’s Rat Pack Show, currently running at Marines’ Memorial Theatre. Buddy appears as the disembodied voice of a fallen angel introducing a devilishly good show featuring his compatriots from Vegas: Dino, Sammy, Joey, and...
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Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: So Much Talent
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: April 15, 2010
Which came first, the musical or the film? In the case of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, it was the 1988 film starring Michael Caine and Steve Martin. Now playing at Broadway by the Bay (directed by Brooke Knight), the 2005 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical (originally with John Lithgow and Norbert Leo...
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Lady of the Loin: Lively and Perceptive
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 15, 2010
“Don’t push back the curtain,” host Sean Owens says in his Lady of the ‘Loin, currently running at the EXIT Theatre as part of DIVAfest 2010. As chanteuse Shannon Day sings his plaintive “Look Again,” he asks, “Is your gender so fixed? Do you bend?” His remarkably poetic tales of...
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John Gabriel Borkman: Substituting Images for Dramaa
By Lily Janiak Published: April 15, 2010
The opening image of John Gabriel Borkman, at the Aurora, may be the production’s best. When the lights rise, the title character is hunched over a desk upstage — yet, motionless and cocooned in heavy linens, he seems more corpse than character. Downstage, on a settee, sits his wife, knitting...
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Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews? Irreverently Engaging
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 15, 2010
The irreverent monologist Josh Kornbluth has ten righteous people for his minion. As a prayer service, his new show Andy Warhol: Good For The Jews? gathers the faces of Jews who have had a lasting impact on society, the same faces Warhol used for his controversial 1980 screen print series...
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ShortLived 3.0: For a Good Time… with Prizes
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: April 15, 2010
Going to the theatre doesn’t have to be a serious affair where you sit quietly with your hands folded. In ShortLived 3.0, currently playing at the Off-Market Theater, PianoFight producers Rob Ready and Dan Williams encourage enthusiastic response. They begin the evening by asking the audience questions and awarding imbibable...
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Fifi & Fanny Are Running a Whorehouse
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: April 15, 2010
Stephanie Lynne Smith is leaving her post as artistic director of the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco to join up with fellow L/G Chorus member Carolyn Eidson to form their new musical comedy act “Fifi & Fanny.” Their inaugural show, Fifi & Fanny at the Texas Whorehouse, is being given...
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Scalpel! Cutting Edge Musical Comedy
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: April 8, 2010
Fans of edgy, comic rock musicals filled with outrageous drag queens and crazed bio-females should rush out to see Scalpel! The Killer Rock Musical at Brava Theater Center. This totally rock-out farce is by writer/ director D’Arcy Drollinger and features a cast of local favorites that is guaranteed to draw...
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Master Class - A Lesson in Art and Life
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: April 8, 2010
A superb production of Terrence McNally’s Master Class recently opened at the New Conservatory Theatre Center (“NCTC”), and thanks to the more intimate setting (under 99-seat house), I liked this presentation better than the 2004 run in a much larger venue (at Berkeley Rep). Actress Michaela Greeley, a New Conservatory...
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Lady, Be Good! More Than a Good Start
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: April 8, 2010
In the first of their Ira Gershwin Celebration Shows this season, 42nd Street Moon has done the master proud. Lady, Be Good! with its medley of memorable show tunes has put the fascination in “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” and the good in the title song! Written by Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson with...
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Vigil: Less-Than-Vigilant Direction at A.C.T.
By Lily Janiak Published: April 8, 2010
As a theatre critic, I cannot help eavesdropping, occasionally, on other audience members’ thoughts about a play. Sometimes a conversation vindicates my opinions, more often it challenges them, but rarely am I made to feel as I did during the intermission of American Conservatory Theater’s Vigil. A woman in the...
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Bear-ing it All: P.A. Cooley’s Bearlesque
By Mike Ward Published: April 8, 2010
Coming up at the New Conservatory Theatre Center from April 14-17, P.A. Cooley (also known as Bay Area Cub 2010) brings his “Four Nights Only” Bearlesque. Talented local actor and funnyman Cooley has brought the gift of laughter to a multitude of Bay Area theatre audiences over the years. We...
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Equivocation: A Perfect Storm
By Mike Ward Published: April 8, 2010
Bill Cain’s Equivocation — currently running at Marin Theatre Company in its Bay Area premiere — is as close to theatrical perfection that one will see in this lifetime. Anna Bullard, Lance Gardner, Andrew Hurteau, Craig Marker, Andy Murray and Charles Shaw Robinson give sterling performances (99.7% pure genius) in...
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The Diary of Anne Frank Opens for Passover
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 8, 2010
The Diary of Anne Frank, produced by the Custom Made Theatre Company and currently running at The Next Stage, chillingly portrays what it must have been like to grow up under house arrest during the Nazi occupation of Holland. And the play also unflinchingly reveals thirteen-year-old Anne’s attraction to the...
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Girlfriend for Boyfriends – Young (Gay) Love Takes Center Stage
By Mike Ward Published: April 1, 2010
Across the Bay, something sweet is soon appearing at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Thrust Stage. Matthew Sweet, that is. And Girlfriend, a musical of first, young love between two high school boys (portrayed by Ryder Bach and Jason Hite) is based on Sweet’s album “Girlfriend.” Director Les Waters (Berkeley Rep’s Associate...
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BABY: A Musical Gestates on Mission Street
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 1, 2010
Strap-on baby bumps abound in Ray of Light Theatre’s BABY: A Musical now playing at the Off-Market Theatres. Pregnancy — or the lack thereof — is the driving theme behind this plot. The six happy actors and an ensemble of five depict the trials and tribulations of couples facing a...
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Enemy of the People: All Too Timely
By Tom W. Kelly Published: April 1, 2010
We haven’t come a long way, baby. At least not as far as corrupt politicians are concerned. In An Enemy of the People, written in 1882 by Henrik Ibsen, capitalism rules, and anyone who gets in the way of the rich getting richer is summarily squashed. Currently running, the SF...
“To be suspected, framed to make women false. The Moor is of a free and open nature,” states Iago in the Bard’s Othello. Originally intended for a male actor, in African-American Shakespeare Company’s smartly-taut Othello, it is a female Iago, and a lesbian at that, who plots the conspiracies. This...
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The Boys Next Door: Slow but Sure, Funny and Insightful
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: March 25, 2010
Tom Griffin’s 1984 play, The Boys Next Door, features four mentally-challenged men living in a group home. Ross Valley Players stages this heartwarming drama with a cast of talented local actors directed by Kim Bromley. Humor is the emphasis in Griffin’s sensitive script, and Bromley’s able cast captures each individual...
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Ain’t Misbehavin’: A Reimagining that Bodes Ill for the Modern Imagination
By Lily Janiak Published: March 25, 2010
Fats Waller, the early jazz musician, found success in paradox. As a pianist, he was all flourish; as a singer, all foible. His hands built him up, the right flitting through frills on top of the left’s ragtime rhythm, but his words knocked him down: “I don’t stay out late/No...
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Jesus Does Moonwalk the Mississippi
By Albert Goodwyn Published: March 25, 2010
The Cutting Ball Theater and the Playwrights Foundation are currently mounting a deeply moving and challenging poetic drama of a spiritual journey punctuated by a spiritually-uplifting church service and Motown choreography. In this play …and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi, Oakland playwright Marcus Gardley uses the Mississippi River, an actual character...
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D’Lo’s Ramble-Ations IS D’Lovely, D’Lightful!
By Mike Ward Published: March 25, 2010
“Your ticket allows you to be an honorary Sri Lankan, gay, vegetarian. Now you can laugh at the pain!” And thus begins one of the most remarkable one-man shows to hit the Bay Area in ages. Ramble-ations: A One D’Lo Show, on Brava’s second stage, is performed by gay, vegetarian,...
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The Little Mermaid: Brains, Beauty & Brine
By Mike Ward Published: March 25, 2010
Rarely does a set of talents converge to redefine performing arts history. But audiences at the opening night of SF Ballet’s production of John Neumeier’s sparkling, deep and quixotic The Little Mermaid – swimmingly-danced to penultimate perfection by Yuan Yuan Tan in the title role and guest artist Lloyd Riggins...
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Spirits of the Dead Haunt the Living in The Sugar Witch
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: March 18, 2010
Local gay playwright Nathan Sanders’ macabre full-length play, titled The Sugar Witch, is receiving its San Francisco premiere (and currently running) at the New Conservatory Theatre Center. This is the second in The Sugar Bean Trilogy (following The Sugar Bean Sisters), and this Southern Gothic tale is set in Sugar...
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Den of Thieves — A Modern Morality Play
By Lily Janiak Published: March 18, 2010
How can you be a “good” person? Must you abide by the law, contribute to civic life and give to charity? Or, conversely, is your best hope only to recognize how “bad” a person you are? If so, should you just do the best you can and try to make...
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Two Dozen Stars Unite to Toast Sondheim
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: March 18, 2010
Tomorrow! Productions presents The Night Stephen Sondheim Kissed Me, a one-night-only all-star cabaret birthday soiree concert to celebrate the 80th birthday of living legend and Broadway treasure Stephen Sondheim, on Monday, March 22, 7 p.m. at Martuni’s, 4 Valencia Street.This beloved and iconic lion of the musical theatre has won...
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The Caucasian Chalk Circle
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: March 11, 2010
A chainlink fence with a gap large enough to peer through separates the audience from the stage, which is strewn with newspapers and other detritus. A few actors drag in a washtub, laundry basket, valise. A resounding boom and a bank of lights descends at an angle stopping short of...
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Concerning Strange Devices…
By Lily Janiak Published: March 11, 2010
...and Structural Contrivances
As historians, playwrights can escape burdens that academics must bear. Modern artists need heed neither the myth of objectivity nor its constraints on style and structure. In Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West, which just opened at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, playwright Naomi Iizuka chronicles a...
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Over Our Heads for One Weekend Only
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: March 11, 2010
This weekend Over Our Heads, the world’s longest-running all-women improv troupe, celebrates 25 years of laughter and original music with a reunion appearance. Annie Larson and Karen Ripley, both talented comics and members of OOH, took some time to answer a few questions regarding the show. There are only two...
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Bringing Broadway to San Francisco
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: March 11, 2010
Fans of Broadway musicals recently received a treat with the staging of Forever Broadway at the Herbst Theatre. The cast of over 60 local singers, dancers and choreographers presented a multitude of songs from favorite Broadway musicals! The talented performers sang and moved rhythmically to precise choreography (all prepared in...
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Hats Off to The Rrazz Room’s 2nd Anniversary!
By Mike Ward Published: March 11, 2010
Hat’s off, here they come, those beautiful girls – and guys! – celebrating the 2nd Anniversary Gala of West Coast jazz/cabaret nightspot, The Rrazz Room. The Headmistress of Hats, Jan Wahl, hosts the event that includes a stellar line-up, and Kelly Park is musical director. The event also serves as...
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The Beebo Brinker Chronicles:
By Laurie Bushman Published: March 4, 2010
Pulp, Camp and History
The West Coast premiere of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, presented by Brava! For Women in the Arts, brings the iconic lesbian pulp novels written by novelist Ann Bannon in the ‘50s and ‘60s to life. If you’re not already familiar with these books, you can...
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Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer
By Lily Janiak Published: March 4, 2010
Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer poses a formidable challenge to any cast. The story — for all its love, deception, and avarice — runs the risk of boring its audience because almost everything has already happened before the play begins. And we don’t even learn what’s happened until the second...
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Bay One Acts Festival Full of Spirited Plays
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: March 4, 2010
Ranging in length from 5 to 30 minutes, this year’s selection of spirited one-act plays in the Ninth Annual Bay One Acts Festival (aka BOA) varies in genre, tone and style. The large number of plays are broken into two programs which rotate in a weekly repertory.Under the new artistic...
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The Real Americans: No Easy Answerss
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: February 25, 2010
“Bless the Founders of our country who were liberal elitists and not fundamentalist Christians.”So prays writer/performer Dan Hoyle consoling himself at many challenging moments while on the road among the middle Americans he encounters in his latest show The Real Americans, now running at The Marsh. Inhabiting character after character...
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The Position: Vying for the Key to the Kingdom
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: February 25, 2010
The Position is the third of five world premieres by local playwright William Bivins opening this season (upcoming are Altered Landscape in February at the Bay One-Acts Festival and The Apotheosis of Pig Husbandry in May at SF Playhouse). It ventures into a world ravaged by 80% unemployment and mass...
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Ann Bannon’s Butch Beebo Brinker Swaggers onto San Francisco Stage
Published: February 25, 2010
By Katharine HollandOn Feb. 26, Brava! for Women in the Arts Theater Center opens the West Coast premiere of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. Ann Bannon wrote pulp novels during the ‘50s and ‘60s, three of which inspired this dramatization by Kate Moira Ryan and Linda S. Chapman (which has had...
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The Safe House Kicks Off The Sandbox Series
Published: February 25, 2010
The Safe House, written by Geetha Reddy and originally commissioned by PlayGround, recently opened (and is currently running) at the SF Playhouse. This co-production with PlayGround is the first production of the SF Playhouse’s The Sandbox, a series of world premieres and an interesting look at promising new playwrights.Enter the...
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Mahalia: A Gospel Musical
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: February 25, 2010
I was born a Baptist, bred a Baptist and soon I’ll be a Baptist gone!” proclaims the legendary Mahalia Jackson. Jeanie Tracy, an acclaimed recording artist portrays the title character in Lorraine Hansberry Theatre’s inaugural production of Mahalia: A Gospel Musical by Tom Stoltz in their new theatre home at...
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tick, tick… BOOM! Goes Off with a Bang!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: February 18, 2010
Believe it or not, MEN have biological clocks, too. No, not like reaching an age when they really have to have a baby. It’s more like getting to a point in one’s life where you feel you’ll never truly create something important. The clock is ticking. So it is in...
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Beauty of the Father: Poetry and Realism Fuse
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: February 18, 2010
Pulitzer Award-winner Nilo Cruz’s Beauty of the Father, produced by Off Broadway West Theatre Company, develops the story of Emiliano (energetically played by Durand Garcia), a conflicted bisexual artist. Currently running at the Phoenix Theatre.Emiliano is conflicted between his responsibility to his estranged daughter Marina (Natasha Chacon) and his personal...
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Rooted Deeply in Personal Memory, The Syringa Tree: Cools in the Shade
By Mike Ward Published: February 18, 2010
Among the most impressive works in the performing arts are one-person, multiple-character solo shows. Lily Tomlin’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe and Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 come to mind. And now, add to that list Pamela Gien’s solo-actress/24-character saga, The Syringa Tree,...
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Cora’s Recipe For Love: A Slyly Crass Act
By Albert Goodwyn Published: February 18, 2010
Waitress Cora Values at the Gas ‘N’ Gulp slings not only hash, but also heaps of love and laughter in her current show about recovering from Valentine’s Day. In Cora’s Recipe For Love, currently running at the EXIT Theatre, the holiday hostess out on the highway tells stories of love,...
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The First Grade: Morality is Elementary
By Lily Janiak Published: February 11, 2010
The First Grade by Joel Drake Johnson, now in its world premiere at the Aurora, doesn’t quite cohere. Hokier moments in which a dysfunctional family trades barbs in an effort to conceal their abiding affection for one another evoke a dark Everybody Loves Raymond. Yet other scenes conjure a more...
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Oedipus el Rey: Updated Classic at the Magic
By Lily Janiak Published: February 11, 2010
Many accuse theatre of losing its cultural relevance. The classics are based on systems of belief that no longer apply, so the claims go, and newer works pertain only to affluent whites. Oedipus el Rey, a reimagining of the archetypal Greek tragedy, now running at the Magic Theatre, boldly attempts...
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The Wave, A Musical, Has Hit The Shores
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: February 11, 2010
Opening to an enthusiastic and sold-out house at The Marsh, Ron Jones’ The Wave sailed in with just a few choppy moments along the way. Currently running, this eagerly anticipated world premiere musical has been extended to February 14. The script is based on an actual classroom experiment in fascism conducted...
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FabrikLegend is Inventive and Poignant
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: February 11, 2010
It takes puppets to bring poetry to the surface. And to echo truth without speaking. So goes the true story of Moritz Rabinowitz, a Polish Jew, brought back to life as a puppet to tell his story. Written, directed and produced by Wakka Wakka Productions (NYC-based theatre group with members...
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Fiddler on the Roof Feels Good!!
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: February 4, 2010
A perennial hit since it first opened its Tony Award-winning 1964 production (directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins), Fiddler on the Roof has enjoyed great critical acclaim. Overall, this passionate story is about the ups and downs of family life. Family life, that is, in Russia in a small town...
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Doubt is a Powerful Parable at NCT
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: February 4, 2010
New Conservatory Theatre Center well presents John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, A Parable. Directed by Ben Randle, this 2005 Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play exposes the fundamental constraints of “certainty” within a larger framework of unassuming bigotry. The uninterrupted 78-minute play takes place in 1964 at the St. Nicholas Catholic...
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Red Light Winter is Remarkable!!
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: February 4, 2010
Custom Made Theatre Company’s currently running production of Adam Rapp’s Red Light Winter is a spellbinding and haunting masterpiece. The story of two young American men — a successful white publisher and his disheveled black buddy, an aspiring playwright — and the prostitute they engage explores the toxic shadows of...
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Sunlight Exposes Flaws in Ideologi
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: February 4, 2010
“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants”—Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, 1914.The winner of Marin Theatre Company’s 2009 Sky Cooper New American Play Prize, Sharr White’s Sunlight is the story of the last hour and a half of a liberal university president’s tenure as the head of a...
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Daddy Long Legs Strides into TheatreWorks
By Mike Ward Published: February 4, 2010
Continuing their artistic adventure and celebrating 40 years of great theatre-making, TheatreWorks mounts the world premiere (with Rubicon Theatre Company and Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park) of Daddy Long Legs, the musical adaptation of Jean Webster’s novel. And this charming, two-person chamber musical (direction/book by John Caird of Les Miserables...
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A Round-Heeled Woman: Breathtaking
By Mike Ward Published: January 28, 2010
Or When “Cagney” Gets Racy
“BEFORE I TURN 67 - next March - I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like.‑ If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.”From a simple personal ad begins one of the most intelligent, humorous,...
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Coming HomeBrings a Relevant Message
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: January 28, 2010
Award-winning playwright Athol Fugard’s Coming Home, currently running at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, is a delightful adventure into storytelling. Based on the memories of living in a small South African town, it’s told by Veronica, her deceased father, and long-time family friend Alfred. Yet beneath the lyricism of these stories is...
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Patience, and Then Some
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: January 28, 2010
The Lamplighters Music Theatre’s presentation of Patience, directed by Jane Erwin Hammett, may require a little (patience, that is), depending upon your point of view. For Gilbert & Sullivan enthusiasts, it will no doubt be a frolic in the park. Patience was the longest running G&S show, first produced in...
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Animals Out of Paper: In the Fold
By Lily Janiak Published: January 28, 2010
To understand the characters in Animals Out of Paper, now in its West Coast premiere at SF Playhouse, one must look at their creations. Freestyle raps, poems, random acts of kindness, a journal of blessings, an origami book called Folding What I Lost and works of origami‑— these creations, and...
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Phèdre: Ancient Meets Modern
By Lily Janiak Published: January 28, 2010
What distinguishes Jean Racine’s Phèdre (in a gorgeous new translation by Timberlake Wertenbaker) is that it is both distinctly classical and unmistakably modern. The play adheres to the structure of an Aristotelian tragedy: a flaw sets in inexorable motion a terrible downward spiral, which, facilitated by the will of the...
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Women on the Way Festival: Secret Agents and Crackpot Croness
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: January 21, 2010
Mary Alice Fry, Artistic Director of Footloose Dance Company, continues her version of the San Francisco Fringe Festival. This year is the 10th anniversary of the annual Women on the Way Festival and features 19 different works by women in dance, theatre, and music at 3 separate SF venues.I chanced...
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Wretch Like Me: The One-Sinner Show
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 21, 2010
Writer/performer David Templeton oozes religiosity in almost every minute of his two-act monologue titled Wretch Like Me, currently running at 142 Throckmorton Theater. But in the end he admits he was brainwashed into being a self-confessed “Jesus freak.” His story of a Southern California adolescence where he found faith is...
Leslie Jordan Serves a Southern Slice in From Whence I Came
By Mike Ward“In the South we don’t put crazy people away, we put them out on the porch so everyone can enjoy them!” It’s an accurate view of the world of television’s favorite Southern Sissy (Sordid Lives) and...
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The Miser: A Merry Romp with Moliere
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: January 21, 2010
While thinking about how to review Ross Valley Players new production of Moliere’s The Miser (with an updated translation by David Chambers), I mulled over something serious to structure my thoughts around or some deep literary concept one could say runs through this comic classic. Perhaps it’s the flexibility and...
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The Sisters Rosenweig Search for Love
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: January 14, 2010
Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig, currently running at The Jewish Theatre San Francisco, offers sharp truths on what divides relatives and what draws them together as well as explores how women define themselves through romances, careers and family. Though Anton Chekov’s The Three Sisters is an intentional influence, these characters...
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Dames at Sea: A Brilliant Parody!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: January 14, 2010
The Dames at Sea musical, now running at the New Conservatory Theatre Center and extended until Jan. 31, is a brilliant parody of those larger-than-life, flashy 1930s Busby Berkeley-type MGM movie spectaculars where an understudy straight from the sticks and just off the bus steps into a role because the...
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Circus Finelli: A Hearty, Delicious Chucklee
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: January 14, 2010
‑Instead of sunscreen, Vitamin D, or a good, stiff drink, try Circus Finelli’s presentation of Frau Bachfeifengesicht’s “Spectacle of Perfection” to counteract the post-holiday slump pervading the Bay Area. The all-women extravaganza, directed by Michael Gene Sullivan, is an Alice in Wonderland experience of the purest order, pulling us into...
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Lesbian Latina Comedy NYE Spectacle
By Rink Published: January 7, 2010
Lesbian Latina Marga Gomez reached a new height in her career as an edgy comic at her New Year’s Eve show at the Victoria Theater. The event was presented by Theatre Rhinoceros, and Rhino’s artistic director John Fisher was the bouncing, twirling MC who clearly enjoyed himself on stage between...
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Tom Orr’s Holiday Show at Eureka Theatre
By Rink Published: January 7, 2010
Singer/Composer/Actor Tom Orr ‘s Jingle Bell Jock Show at the Eureka Theatre on Dec. 27 was a unapologetic and blatant erotic-themed holiday extravaganza that is fresh and authentic. In direct contrast to holiday shows across the Bay Area, Orr’s show was full of hilarious homoerotic word changes rammed into traditional...
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The Best of the Best in 2009 Bay Area Theater
Published: January 7, 2010
With well over 300 theatre and dance companies in the SF Bay Area, there were more than a thousand productions during the year 2009. And the SF Bay Times reviewers covered as many of them as possible. Each writer sees 50-150 shows annually and reviews most of them. And once...
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Jingle Bell Jock! Will Knock Your Socks Off!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: December 24, 2009
For the latest Tom Orr parody production, Jingle Bell Jock!, the Eureka Theatre stage is set with two trees: one for Christmas hung with jock straps, and the other a blue Hanukkah bush decorated with bagels, dreidels, and blueballs — er — blue balls. It’s fun to figure out the...
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A Heartwarming Christmas Memory
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: December 24, 2009
Theatre Rhinoceros in collaboration with Word for Word recently presented a one-night only production of A Christmas Memory. Truman Capote’s humorous and heartbreaking tale of growing up in rural Alabama in the ‘30s and his great Christmas adventure played to a sold-out house!A Christmas Memory is Capote’s largely autobiographical story...
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Black Nativity Perfect in its Imperfection
Published: December 24, 2009
By Mike WardSan Francisco has a full platter of holiday treats, and the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre’s Black Nativity is potentially among the tastiest. The company’s signature piece, staged by LHT co-founder Stanley Williams, evolves each year with featured artists. This year gospel recording artist Debra Henderson gives a master class...
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Threepenny Opera: Sex, Drunks and Punk-Rock & Roll
Published: December 24, 2009
By Mike Ward“Who is the greater criminal? The man who robs a bank, or the man who founds one?” asks the timeless 1928 Brecht/Weill epic-theatre-piece, The Threepenny Opera. And Shotgun Players’ must-see, darkly-brilliant and currently-running production, staged with raw, seductive power by Susannah Martin, answers the question. A message scrawled...
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Aurélia’s Oratorio at Berkeley Rep: The Fantastic & Mundane
By Lily Janiak Published: December 24, 2009
Her hair tousled and her costumes oversized, the gamine Aurélia Thierrée, star of Aurélia’s Oratorio at Berkeley Repertory Theatre (currently running), looks more like her younger audience members. But, childlike as the imagination of director/ designer Victoria Thierrée Chaplin is — her circus-in-miniature explores the fantastic and the mundane where...
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The Greatest Bubble Show On Earth: A really good time!
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: December 24, 2009
“Bubbles are not solid, liquid or gas. They’re here and they’re gone, like life. They teach you the ephemeral quality of life.” So says the “Pope of Soap” Louis Pearl, professional Bubble-ologist in The Greatest Bubble Show On Earth, currently running at The Marsh. Pearl, the Amazing Bubbleman, makes learning...
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The Coverlettes Cover Christmas - Too Much
By Lily Janiak Published: December 24, 2009
The Coverlettes, now performing The Coverlettes Cover Christmas at the Aurora Theatre, do best when they highlight what is great in both the oldies and the Christmas carols that they perform. But ultimately it’s at the expense of themselves as individual vocalists. There’s a reason why 1960s girl group music...
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Katya Returns With Raucous Russki Holiday
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: December 17, 2009
Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, that fabulous red-headed Russian drag queen countess, is back again for a brand new Holiday Spectacular! Katya will entertain you with her usual zestful, uproarious, broken English-Russian accented one woman show, featuring her gorgeous high soprano singing and kooky bantering about times “in the Old Country.” I...
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Hitchcock’s 39 Steps: Fast-Paced First Offering
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: December 17, 2009
Alfred Hitchcock’s THE 39 STEPS, the Tony Award-winning whodunit comedy currently running at the Curran Theatre, is the first production in the 2009-2010 Citibank Best of Broadway series season. Do not confuse it with the original 1935 film masterpiece by Alfred Hitchcock. While the stage version is remarkably faithful to...
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Fringe of Marin Award Winners
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: December 17, 2009
With grateful thanks to Dr. Annette Lust, Artistic Director and Festival Coordinator, the Dominican University Community Players and the Fringe of Marin just completed their 24th Anniversary Season. And on December 6 the Theatre Critic’s Circle Awards and People’s Choice Awards for the Marin Fringe Festival were announced.Theatre Critic’s Circle...
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A Christmas Carol: Timelessly Relevant
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 17, 2009
This season’s remounting of A Christmas Carol by American Conservatory Theater (currently running) brings a different life to the production. Director Domenique Lozano has added some clever fillips to Carey Perloff’s original stage adaptation of the Victorian novel by Charles Dickens. This retelling of the familiar story of Scrooge confronting...
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The Santaland Diaries: A Christmas Treat
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: December 17, 2009
The eighth annual production of David Sedaris’ The Santaland Diaries (adapted for the stage by Joe Mantello) by Combined Artform and Beck-n-Call is a refreshing, candy-coated slice of joy in these gloomy days of recessionist reflexes. The 90-minute monologue, directed by Lux Obscura (ummh?), tells the story of how David,...
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An African American Cinderella
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 17, 2009
Legendary tales are always subject to reinterpretation. Of the thousands of variations of the Cinderella story, African-American Shakespeare Company has brought to the stage a decidedly new version. This one is updated to an indeterminate time in an enchanted land. There are hints of the Louisiana bayou, but the collaboratively...
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Dames At Sea Sets Sail With Flying ColorsDames At Sea Sets Sail With Flying Colors
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: December 10, 2009
The Dames at Sea musical, now running at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, is a brilliant parody of those larger than life, flashy 1930s Busby Berkeley type MGM movie spectaculars in which an understudy straight from the sticks and just off the bus steps into a role because the regular...
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OVO: The Sky’s The Limit
By Lily Janiak Published: December 10, 2009
For the bugs in OVO - the U.S. premiere of Cirque du Soleil’s newest show now playing at AT&T Park - the sky looms close. The bulges in the big top canopy that envelop the playing space and its 2,600 seats create a cocoon-like shelter against which lights play and...
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Golden Girls Bring Back Christmas
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: December 10, 2009
“The Golden Girls” episodes - the ones acted by an all-drag live cast - are always a treat to watch. As a very special sugarplum for their fans, they are currently acting out the actual scripts from the classic TV series, The Golden Girls, with a seasonal theme of two...
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Better Homes and Ammo: American Family Under Fire
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 10, 2009
With dark humor and satirical wit, Wylie Herman’s Better Homes and Ammo, currently running at the EXIT Theatre, examines the interactions of a family locked in a subterranean fallout shelter after surprise nuclear attacks. The apocalypse has landed. And the proprietor of a military surplus store has herded his wife,...
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A Jubilant Jubilee at 42nd Moon
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: December 10, 2009
42nd Street Moon is currently producing their holiday musical, Jubilee — Cole Porter and Moss Hart’s classic take on British royalty run riot. Jubilee was 42nd Street Moon’s inaugural production in 1993, and it proved so popular that they brought it back in 1995. And Porter/Hart’s farce is still fresh...
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Cotton Patch Gospel: Toe-Tapping Epic!
By Tom W. Kelly Published: December 3, 2009
For many, The Custom Made Theatre Company’s production of Cotton Patch Gospel is an ideal holiday show. This backwoods, bluegrass musical tale by Tom Key and Russell Treyz (book) and Harry Chapin (music and lyrics) recounts the “second coming” of Jesus with unabashed sincerity. The production values are top-notch as...
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Matlock: The Ladybug in Cirque’s OVO
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: December 3, 2009
Some of us still harbor the romantic fantasy of running away to the circus. For classically-trained actress Michelle Matlock, an out and proud lesbian, it wasn’t always the case. Now celebrating her first year of clowning as the beautiful Ladybug in Cirque du Soleil’s OVO — currently playing in SF...
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A Christmas Memory Opens Rhino Season
By Tom W. Kelly Published: December 3, 2009
Interview with John Fisher, Artistic Director of Theatre Rhinoceros
John Fisher, Artistic Director for Theatre Rhinoceros, recently took some time from his hectic schedule to spread the word about their upcoming one-night only performance of A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote, co-produced this year with Word for Word.(Bay Times)...
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Meet Madonna, As In The Virgin Mary
By Paul E. Pratt Published: December 3, 2009
Popular NYC Holiday Drag Musical Makes SF Debut Dec. 8 & 9
When Madonna’s Christmas Celebration debuted in the Big Apple five years ago, hundreds raced to the small off-Broadway theatre hosting it - and those were just the protesters! According to Mimi Imfurst, the New York City...
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She Stoops to Comedy: The Whole World’s A Drag Show
By Lily Janiak Published: November 26, 2009
In Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Rosalind, one of his wittiest heroines, manipulates her beloved, Orlando, by disguising herself as a man. In the Bard’s original productions, a man would have played Rosalind — in other words, a man playing a woman playing a man. In its West Coast premiere...
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BOOM: Apocalyptic, Explosive Comedy
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: November 26, 2009
When Jo answers a casual-encounters ad for “sex to change the course of the world,” she has no idea that grad-student Jules actually fears that the apocalypse is at hand and is looking for a partner to repopulate the species. In BOOM, an explosive comedy about the end of the...
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Pulp Scripture - OMG!!
By Tom W. Kelly Published: November 26, 2009
Consider for a brief moment those religious folks waving signs proclaiming “God Hates Fags” and/or the devout who tooketh away California’s same-sex marriage rights. Well, the perfect antidote to those poisonous proselytizers is found in Pulp Scripture. Here, playwright William Bivins humorously proves (in one too-brief hour) that the Creator...
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ReOrient 2009 - The First Ten Years
By Tom W. Kelly Published: November 26, 2009
“When does love become a crime and blood an obligation?” In ReOrient 2009, a two-program rotating repertory of 9 short plays, many facets of love and aggression intermingle to varied effect. Produced at the Thick House by Golden Thread Productions (SF theatre company dedicated to exploring the Middle Eastern experience),...
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Rabbi Sam Stops at Nothing: Eternity is Near
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: November 26, 2009
It takes Charlie Varon and a widow to create a religious reality that would otherwise go unseen in Rabbi Sam, written and performed by Varon (developed and directed by David Ford with music composed by Bruce Barth). In just over two hours, Varon inhabits 12 characters, including Rabbi Sam Isaac,...
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Beautiful Thing Shows How Far We’ve Come?
By Lily Janiak Published: November 19, 2009
It can be a good thing when a play shows its age. But while some plays aptly evoke worlds of the past, others are merely products of the past. Beautiful Thing, now in its ten-year anniversary production at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, falls into the latter category. Playwright Jonathan...
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A Body of Water: Identity Crises
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: November 19, 2009
Spare Stage’s production of Lee Blessing’s A Body of Water (currently playing at the EXIT Theatre) examines the nature of personal identity as defined by memory and the extent to which we choose what we remember, and in doing so, choose our identity.Before the lights dim, the sound of birds...
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Afterlife of the Mind: an Imaginative Journey
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: November 19, 2009
How far will a person go to save a loved one? In the “anything is possible” world of Bill Bivins’ play The Afterlife of the Mind, Lydia will stop at nothing — even if it means hosting her husband’s brain in her own body! That may sound like a trip...
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Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Outstanding!
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: November 19, 2009
Actors Theatre of San Francisco’s production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, directed by Keith Phillips, is outstanding, exquisitely crafted and well worth seeing. It has been said that Edward Albee was never satisfied with productions of his work, and he preferred not to view them, having observed actors fail...
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The Pearls Over Shanghai -Spectacular Show Made More So
By Rink Published: November 19, 2009
One of them most spectacular shows seen in San Francisco in years, The Thrillpeddlers’ Pearls Over Shanghai is riding a wave of popularity, and it has been sold out for months. Now the Cockette musical remounting has been held over through Jan. 23. The show is being presented at the...
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Fringe of Marin Fall 2009 Opens to Big Crowd
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: November 19, 2009
The Fringe of Marin Fall 2009 recently opened its 24th season at Dominican University and is presenting thirteen new short plays and solos (Programs One and Two running in repertory) written, acted and directed by local Bay Area talent. Program Two features seven works (reviewed below).Opening the evening is “L’Amour...
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November: Mamet Takes on Corruption
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: November 12, 2009
In November, David Mamet’s latest comedy (currently running at American Conservatory Theater), President Charles Smith — the most corrupt boob ever to occupy the Oval Office — is in the last days of his bid for re-election. Not surprisingly, the country is a disastrous mess, and his polls are at...
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How I Stopped Worrying and Lost My Virginity: Surviving Heartbreak Without Becoming a ‘Ho’
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: November 12, 2009
Aileen Clark does not consider herself to be a playwright, but she certainly knows how to tell a rich story. Produced by Guerrilla Rep and Ann Marie Productions, she does so with the help of co-writer John Caldon in How I Stopped Worrying and Lost My Virginity. Premiering at the...
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Fat Pig – A Telling Comedy About Obesity
Published: November 12, 2009
By Annette LustNeil Labute’s Fat Pig (currently running at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre) grabs and holds your interest with its witty and cutting repartee between Tom, his newfound fat girlfriend Helen, his protective friend Carter, and jealous ex-girlfriend Jeannie. But this highly comical repartee gradually turns to a dark side when...
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Stateless: Wolf and Shepherd Find Their Roots
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: November 12, 2009
The Jewish Theatre of San Francisco (TJT) opens its first season under its new name (fka Traveling Jewish Theatre) with the world premiere of Dan Wolf and Tommy Shepherd’s Stateless: A Hip-Hop Vaudeville Experience.Stateless begins with a narrator telling the performers (and thereby the audience as well) that “your story...
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The Miracle Worker: Communication Saves a Life
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: November 12, 2009
As the second production of their 80th(!) season, Ross Valley Players presents The Miracle Worker by William Gibson. This production commemorates the 50th anniversary of The Miracle Worker, which premiered October 19, 1959 at Broadway’s Playhouse Theatre and ran 719 performances. Set in Alabama in the 1880’s the play recounts the...
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The Bald Soprano at EXIT Theatre: Would You Care for a Bite of Logic?
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: November 5, 2009
Written in 1949, Eugène Ionesco’s first play, The Bald Soprano, was created from his observation of the absurdity in British dialogue while he was learning English. Running slightly over an hour without intermission, The Cutting Ball Theater’s production (currently running), directed and translated from the French original by Rob Melrose,...
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Ghosts of the River: Seeking a Better World
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: November 5, 2009
“The rio is a ghost of what it used to be, and all the people who live nearby are ghosts.” But it’s not only a Halloween story. Octavio Solis’ Ghosts of the River are tales of love, loss, courage, and honor for the people who live at the border between Solis’...
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Mrs. Whitney: The Art of Persuasion
By Lily Janiak Published: November 5, 2009
“Was I convincing?” asks Mrs. (Margaret) Whitney, the title character of John Kolvenbach’s new drama, at the Magic Theatre. Though the query is nominally directed at Finn, the son of her ex-husband, this question of effective performance - of self, or some concept of it - is one that Kolvenbach’s...
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Oleanna: Sexual Politics 101B
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: November 5, 2009
Expression Productions recently opened its production of Oleanna, written by David Mamet and directed by Andrey Esterlis, at Royce Gallery, one of the newer venues for theater in San Francisco. Royce Gallery is clean and comfortable and, true to its name, features work on its walls currently by artist Don...
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Halloween in the Castro: A Horror Opera
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: October 29, 2009
If you have yet to experience Halloween in the Castro: A Horror Opera, there’s still have time before All Hallow’s Eve is all but over. Composer and librettist extraordinaire Jack Curtis Dubowsky has created a monster of a hit show featuring the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco and some spectacularly...
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The Who’s Tommy: Sense-sational!!
By Tom W. Kelly Published: October 29, 2009
So who had a rotten childhood? Well, in the rock musical The Who’s Tommy, the titular character sure qualifies. And yet, in this tribute to life and music the worst of times (and upbringings) is overcome and sensationally celebrated. This Ray of Light’s production, currently running at the Victoria Theatre,...
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The Creature Speaks!
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: October 29, 2009
Black Box Theatre is currently presenting the world premiere of Trevor Allen’s The Creature, a staged re-telling of Mary Shelley’s celebrated novel Frankenstein. In most versions of Frankenstein, the monster is nearly mute, expressing himself only in a series of inarticulate grunts and cries. In Allen’s version, the monster speaks....
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Tiny Kushner: Variable One-Acts
By Lily Janiak Published: October 29, 2009
Tiny Kushner, a series of five short plays by Tony Kushner takes us to (among other places) New York City, Indiana, two psychiatrists’ offices, heaven, and the moon. And the characters we encounter therein are no less diverse. But Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Angels in America, has...
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I Heart Hamas: And Other Things I’m Afraid to Tell You
By Albert Goodwyn Published: October 29, 2009
Jennifer Jajeh is a consummate impressionist as well as a dancer, actress, Arab, and a troublemaker. To be fair, trouble seems to follow her, as she recounts in her live show I Heart Hamas, extended 4 additional weeks at the Off-Market Theater until Nov. 21. For those with good memories,...
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Albert’s Fear and Dogsbody:Two Diverging Views of Childhoodd
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: October 29, 2009
Two Diverging Views of Childhood In Albert’s Fear — one of four plays recently presented as part of the International Czech Theater Festival at The Marsh — actor/creator Vojta Svejda examines the triumphs of a small boy over his timidity and indecisiveness. In one short hour, solo artist Svejda uses...
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The Hasheesh Eater: A Walk on the Wild Side
By Tom W. Kelly Published: October 22, 2009
You know how storytellers like to clean up their tales for a mainstream audience? Well, NOT the SF Buffoons! The all-male collective’s currently running show, The Hasheesh Eater, rolls in the squalor of dirty gutters and gives audiences perhaps their most realistic glimpse of gold-rush San Francisco ever. And somehow...
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Zombie Town: It’s a Metaphor
By Albert Goodwyn Published: October 22, 2009
Zombie Town by Tim Bauer (along with members of the Catharsis Collective) is a social and genre satire with a well-realized B-movie texture, even when interrupted by self-referential asides. Currently running at the EXIT Stage Left, the production focuses not only on the ridiculous theme of reanimated corpses, but also...
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Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionysus: Dazzling!!
By Tom W. Kelly Published: October 22, 2009
From silver-sequined tube top and accessories to in-your-face stage presence, Trixxie Carr as the titular character ROCKS! Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionysus may confuse at times, but it never fails to captivate. The music, visuals, and dance (supplied in abundance by a talented and supple young cast) wildly whisk the...
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Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical -The Doctor and His Demon
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: October 22, 2009
The Royal Underground Theatre Company is currently presenting a fresh new look at Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical, the smash Broadway musical hit based on the novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. The original stage concept was by Steve Cuden and Frank...
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The Clean House: Rationally Choosing Not To Make a Rational Decision
By Lily Janiak Published: October 22, 2009
In The Clean House (a Pulitzer finalist), Sarah Ruhl allows her characters to speak for themselves as few other playwrights can. The play, now being produced by Woman’s Will Theater Company, opens with soliloquies by each of the three female leads. Right away the brutally honest (“I did not go...
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Goldfish: A Fish That Can’t Be Trusted
By Lily Janiak Published: October 22, 2009
The artistry in Goldfish, now in its Bay Area premiere at the Magic Theatre, lies in its timing: Scenes always end in exactly the right places, and the confrontations within them are articulate and witty. But, in failing to differentiate his character’s voices during these intellectual sparring matches, playwright John...
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Shocktoberfest!! 2009 The Torture Garden
By Albert Goodwyn Published: October 15, 2009
Thrillpeddlers presents Shocktoberfest!! 2009 The Torture Garden, their tenth annual pageant of terror, now running at The Hypnodrome. The evening features two one-act plays: “The Phantom Limb” by Rob Keefe (commissioned by Thrillpeddlers) and “The Torture Garden” by Pierre Chaine and Andre de Lorde (based on the book by Octave...
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The Heidi Chronicles: Cerebral Excursions
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: October 15, 2009
The Custom Made Theatre Company’s production of The Heidi Chronicles highlights this Pulitzer prize-winning play by Wendy Wasserstein that brought women and their political status to a primary, rather than a secondary, place on the stage. Directed by Brian Katz, the play chronicles the life of feminist art historian Heidi...
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Look Out, Sf, Sandra Bernhard is in Town!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: October 15, 2009
Sandra Bernhard, singer, satirist, and irreverent comic, is bringing her new show, “Whatever It Takes” to the Rrazz Room at Hotel Nikko. Bernhard was kind enough to give an interview to Bay Times.(Bay Times) What is the meaning of the title of your upcoming SF appearance, Whatever It Takes? WHAT...
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Loveland is Brilliantly Funny
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: October 15, 2009
It’s a no-brainer. Ann Randolph is a comic genius… and not just any sort of hide-your-light-behind-a-bush kind of genius, but a hardworking, dare-to-put-it-out-there kind of genius. If you missed her first show Squeeze Box that played last year at The Marsh (and deservedly won Best Solo Show from LA Weekly...
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My Name is Asher Lev - An Artist Caught Between Opposing Worlds
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: October 8, 2009
When does one know they’re an artist? For someone named Asher Lev, it was early. At six years old he could not stop drawing pictures of his mother, his father and the Hasidic world of Brooklyn where he lived. In Aaron Posner’s play adaptation of Chaim Potok’s novel My Name...
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Sins Invalid - A Reminder
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: October 8, 2009
Sins Invalid returned to San Francisco this past weekend, Oct. 2 - 4, with three evening performances at the Brava Theatre. Co-founded by Patty Berne and Leroy Moore in 2006, Sins Invalid is a performance project reflecting the sexual world of the queer and gender variant disabled, a world that...
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Willows Theatre Needs You!
By Tom W. Kelly Published: October 8, 2009
“We need help!”Harsh economic times have hit us all. And theaters are no exception. Currently, the Willows Theatre faces a financial crisis that may force it to shut down both its mainstage facility in Concord and its cabaret in Martinez. Reason? Growing debt. Their goal? $350,000 by October 31! As...
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First Day of School
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: October 8, 2009
When The Kids Are Away, The Parents Will Play
The San Francisco Playhouse kicks off its new season with the world premiere of First Day of School by Billy Aronson.Married couple Susan (Zehra Berkman) and David (Bill English) have dropped off their two children on the morning of the...
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From Budapest to the Mill Valley Film Festival
By Erica Marcus Published: October 8, 2009
So I get off a plane from Budapest where I was helping out filmmaker and activist Douglas Conrad on a project about the recent threats against the queer community in Hungary and the dynamic Pride Celebrations that have been taking place in this Eastern European country for more than a...
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Our Huckleberry Friends at NCTC
By Lily Janiak Published: October 1, 2009
In Little Dog Laughed, Mitchell (Matt Socha), an aspiring movie star, and his agent Diane (Michaela Greeley) are horrified at the prospect of his acting in a play. Truly, what could be worse for an acting career than a dalliance with theatre? The answer, as Diane constantly reminds her client,...
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Cain and Abel, Reimagined in Angry Red Drum
By Lily Janiak Published: October 1, 2009
The comparison of playwright Philip Kan Gotanda to Samuel Beckett is apt. In his new play, Angry Red Drum, now in its world premiere by the Asian American Theater Company, Gotanda creates a post-apocalyptic sense of imprisonment that can only be reminiscent of the existentialist master. As with Waiting for...
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Highlights of the San Francisco Fringe Festival
By Tom W. Kelly Published: October 1, 2009
Blessing Her Heart — Subtle and PoignantThree southern ladies speak their minds in three short solo pieces which comprise “Blessing Her Heart” by local playwright Susan Jackson. Produced by Southern Railroad Company, this Fringe Festival entry excels with poignant writing, performances, and direction. Forsaking the prevalent wildness of the Fringe,...
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No Ordinary Nut — Decidedly Different
By Tom W. Kelly Published: October 1, 2009
“It’s insanity in stereo here.” Dwelling within a swirling miasma of madness, “No Ordinary Nut” written and directed by local gay playwright Jamie Daniel, perfectly fits the SF Fringe Festival goal to encourage “artists to take risks, explore ideas, pose questions and tell their stories in new and exciting ways.”...
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Spider Baby the Musical — Family Dis-chord
By Tom W. Kelly Published: October 1, 2009
Given the anything-goes nature of the 2009 SF Fringe Festival, the Bay Area premiere of Spider Baby the Musical introduces the audience to a bit of sensationalism via inbreeding, sexual repression, murder, and cannibalism. Remember the old-fashioned musical where boy meets girl, loses her, then gets her back? Well, forget...
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No Musical Idiot at Berkeley Rep
Published: October 1, 2009
By Ben SinclairOverall I had a great time with American Idiot: The Musical. Director Michael Mayer’s adaptation of Green Day’s last hit record exuberantly celebrates the tradition of the punk rocker within America’s mainstream. His embellished version - songs from the album rearranged with a couple politically relevant tracks from...
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Marriage: Hope for a Queer Institution
By Tom W. Kelly Published: September 24, 2009
“It’s a very complicated issue,” states Garrison Harward, the writer and director of Marriage: a queer institution (part of the 2009 SF Fringe Festival), regarding homophobia and Proposition 8, both vital topics in today’s glbt community. And with his innovative 60-minute play, this young Chico State University student bravely experiments...
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Tings Dey Happen: Going to Nigeria
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: September 24, 2009
Dan Hoyle’s Tings Dey Happen, which has returned briefly to San Francisco prior to departing for a tour in Nigeria, is well deserving of all its critical acclaim. Directed by Charlie Varon, this one-man tour de force is nothing short of amazing. We find ourselves within the underbelly of a...
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Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter at ACT
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: September 24, 2009
London’s Kneehigh Theatre Presents Something to Write Home About!
Theatre really occasionally gives you an experience that proves its value even to the doubting Thomases that have given up completely on the genre. Kneehigh Theatre’s production of Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter, co-produced by A.C.T. has done just that....
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A Dream in the Woods with Cal Shakes
By Albert Goodwyn Published: September 24, 2009
All the whimsy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is accentuated in the current Cal Shakes production, and the director brought out the warmth of the human love, even for those blinded by magic herbs. The fairy world opens up on a fanciful stage. The actors present strong, definitive characterizations. The...
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The Headless Woman: Privilege Reigns
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: September 24, 2009
The Headless Woman, written and directed by Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel, tells a story of mishap and privilege in negative space, a technique far more compelling than linear narrative. In Spanish with English subtitles, running 92 minutes, it is the story of Vero (short for Veronica), played by Maria Onetto,...
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Blue Velvet, the Movie, Comes to the Stage
By Albert Goodwyn Published: September 17, 2009
David Lynch’s movie Blue Velvet has become an underground cult classic since its release in 1986. Foul Play company has given it a live interpretation. On a small underground stage, they tell the same story as the movie, but with a distinctive technique that has the texture of a movie...
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Anne Galjour’s Engaging Solo at Artaud
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: September 17, 2009
You Can’t Get There From Here opens the Z Space at Project Artaud
Anne Galjour hails from Southeastern Louisiana but she’s lived in the Bay Area for 29 years and has been performing her solo work on the East and West coasts for many years. While earlier work has...
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Shapiro’s Legs and All at The Fringe
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: September 17, 2009
Legs and All, the brainchild of Summer Shapiro, in collaboration with Peter Musante, Brandi Brandes and Jeremy Shapiro, is a brilliant translation of the details of conversant life as we know it, taking these details a few steps beyond Harold Pinter and flinging them with utmost precision into comedy.As the...
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Theatre as Confession Booth?
By Lily Janiak Published: September 17, 2009
At the end of A (Bearded) Lady, a one-woman show at the Fringe Festival, our protagonist thanks her audience, “kindly priests,” for listening to her “confession.” Yet, “confess” the Bearded Lady does not; such a word implies secrecy with compulsion to reveal. The Bearded Lady merely narrates. Hers is a...
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“Premiere” to Open RVP’s 80th Season
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: September 17, 2009
The Ross Valley Players kicks off its 80th season with Premiere, the last play written by award-winner Dale Wasserman, the Tony Award recipient for his book of Man of La Mancha and the stage version of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.Author and journalist, Abby Wasserman, niece of Dale Wasserman,...
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Awake and Sing! Through the Depression
By Albert Goodwyn Published: September 10, 2009
Aurora’s current production of a Great Depression-era play provides intense involvement in the home-life of an impoverished Bronx family. Three generations populate this household, along with a boarder, a suitor and a well-off brother. Joy Carlin’s direction of Awake and Sing! by Clifford Odets, brings together some venerable and respected...
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A Felt-tip Pen: A Chekhovian Gun?
By Lily Janiak Published: September 10, 2009
Art matters, says Art, Yasmina Reza’s international dramatic phenomenon. Our reactions to even a single painting can reflect, or mask, deeply held beliefs, so what happens when different beliefs come into conflict? With what weapons should combatants wage a battle of aesthetics? Or, more importantly, a battle of the power...
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Local Comic Geduldig Heads for New York City After El Rio Gig
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: September 10, 2009
Having graced the stages of many local venues, including El Rio, the annual Kung Pao Kosher Comedy at Xmas in Chinatown, The Herbst Theatre, Dolores Café, local Jewish lesbian comic Lisa Geduldig is taking her talent east to meet up with other stand-up comedy colleagues for a run in Manhattan....
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Tom Orr’s Crass Act is A Class Act
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: September 3, 2009
Before I write anything more on the matter, I will warn you/ taunt you with the fact that in Tom Orr’s latest hilariously entertaining cabaret show, A Crass Act, the star appears totally nude - both frontal and backal – in a portion of his performance. Yes, I said naked,...
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The Face of Yellow Explores Racial Identity
By Albert Goodwyn Published: September 3, 2009
The color of the face is a strong element of racial politics, but the feeling of otherness, in such a context, is a vital subtext in many of David Henry Hwang’s plays, like in M Butterfly and in the more recent Yellow Face, now at TheatreWorks. Hwang has cast himself...
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August: Osage County in SF
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: September 3, 2009
A Long Day’s Journey into Oklahoma
It’s been over a year since Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County garnered seven Tony nominations on Broadway, winning five including Best Play as well as snapping up a Pulitzer Prize. Now, directed by Anna D. Shapiro, it’s playing through September 6 at the...
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A Historical Tragedy of Betrayal and Revenge
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: September 3, 2009
Julius Caesar, now at Marin Shakes, is hardly a straight tragedy; and if it were, it would not be mainly Caesar’s. It falls in the tragic-historical category and if anyone is a hero, Brutus is. In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare comes close to making a play out of sheer eloquence. The...
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Shame as a Grotesque Metaphor
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 27, 2009
Odd characters in eccentric costumes portray a sympathetic parody of gay life, customs and attitudes, using SF as a metaphor, in Shame! now at Mama Calizo’s. Subtitled An Original Grotesque Queer Performance, this acutely observed, very physical show uses elements of commedia dell’arte to satirize local notions, but all in...
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El Otro: A Play Without Borders
By Lily Janiak Published: August 27, 2009
The set of El Otro, now in revival at Thick Description, looks empty at first: the lines of the black-box playing space are interrupted only by a cluster of candles in the upstage left corner. But once the action of this fluid play spills outward, the initial vacancy of director...
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Good Boys and True at NCTC
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: August 27, 2009
Good Boys and True, which opened recently at New Conservatory, is a disappointing amateur production that fails to grasp fully playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s underlying intent. The acting consists of line recitations and playing emotion rather than embodying characters who realize the situation and experience its emotional impetus. The minimal physical...
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Actors Theatre Does Justice to Grapes of Wrath
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: August 27, 2009
John Steinbeck’s seminal novel The Grapes of Wrath, adapted for stage by Frank Galati (Steppenwolf Theatre, university professor of drama and inductee to the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of fame) is a powerful work that receives its just reward in Actors Theatre’s dynamic production, directed by Jennifer Welch. Over...
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Two Minds in the Same Body
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 20, 2009
Impressionist Joshua Walters bares his psyches — both of them — to the audience in his show w Madhouse Rhythm, now at the Climate. His well-defined character transitions lead from a human beat box, through an Afro-centric uncle to a series of psychologists and herbalists. The show is about the...
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People’s ‘Theater You Can Eat’ Serves Up a Tasty Dinner Treat
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: August 20, 2009
In their second production in the uniquely intimate chamber theater at Pena Pachamama in North Beach, The People’s Theatre has once more served up an entertaining and delectable treat with four humorous short plays about food. Under the larger title of Theater You Can Eat by local playwright John Robinson,...
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Buried in Another Heavenly Day
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 20, 2009
From atop a jumbled pile of artifacts and clayey soil, a clear voice exhorts. In Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, now at Cal Shakes, the clear voice is as jumbled as the soil heap, but cheery, even in the face of doom. Annie, buried in the soil up to her waist,...
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Putting The Cock Back in The Cockettes
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: August 13, 2009
Newly Revised, Perversionized Pearls Over ShanghaiAs you may know, at the June 17 opening, I gave a sterling review of Pearls over Shanghai, the all-singing, all-dancing Cockettes musical extravaganza produced by Thrillpeddlers – held over and now playing through September 20 at the Hypnodrome Theatre. My only complaint was, and...
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South Pathetic: A One-Man Streetcar
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 13, 2009
Jim David enacts A Streetcar Named Desire in his one-man show South Pathetic, now at New Conservatory. It would be difficult enough to play all the parts of the Tennessee Williams play, but to do it with a cast of small town southern losers at the worst community theater in...
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Meg the Nut (with Billy Philadelphia)
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 13, 2009
When Meg Mackay sings “Making Love Alone,” a slow ballad, her crotch-grabbing and blatantly suggestive mime telegraph that this performer is not afraid to look silly. She does it with a graceful style that trumps her tendency toward risqué humor, which she sprinkles liberally throughout this cabaret show now at...
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Traveling Light Subtly Delivers A Powerful Message
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: August 13, 2009
In Traveling Light, the latest sight-specific work that played to sold-out audiences during its brief two week-end run at the Mint, choreographer/director Joe Goode providds a visceral experience that demonstrated the extent of his sensitive and brilliant ear to the pulse of our nation’s current dilemma. What is the role...
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World Premiere of Ecstasy/a waterfable at Thick House Challenges the Linear Minded
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: August 6, 2009
Golden Thread Productions, whose aim is to nurture artists of Middle Eastern heritage, premiered Denmo Ibrahim’s Ecstasy/a waterfable last weekend at The Thick House. The ancient Sufi Story “When the Waters Were Changed”, the inspiration for the theatre piece Ecstasy, recounts a time when Khidr, the teacher of Moses, warned...
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Sondheim: A Little Light Music
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 6, 2009
Stephen Sondheim has written many songs, all the way from such big hits as Sweeny Todd, A Little Night Music, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and abomination Merrily We Roll Along. Then conceived an evening of his hits, as well as lesser known masterpieces, from...
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An Urban Rock Musical at The Boxcar
Published: July 30, 2009
By Carol DunneThey say that an existentialist attitude is an awareness of the absurdity of reality. If so, then Skid Row and its runaway teens are the quintessential existentialists, for their daily struggle to feed themselves and find a safe place to sleep would qualify as the ultimate existentialist dilemma,...
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All You Need Is Love, Mr. Shakespeare
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 30, 2009
The venerable works of William Shakespeare have been subjected to many different interpretations over the centuries, and Marin Shakes’ latest takes liberties The Bard could never have imagined. Co-director Lesley Currier described it succinctly as a journey to a “psychedelic far out Illyria.” The seventies garb and rock songs drive...
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Joely Fisher - One of Many Stars Who will Shine at REAF Fundraiser
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: July 30, 2009
The Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation (REAF) 15th Anniversary Gala, “Help is on the Way XV: No Business Like Show Business,” is coming to the Herbst Theatre on Sunday, August 2. The amazing cast includes two Tony Award winners, an American Idol star, and a bevy of other Broadway, TV, film, and...
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Tinyard Hill Hicks Sing
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 23, 2009
The ages-old theme of love torn apart by war is explored once again in TheatreWork’s world premiere of Tinyard Hill as part of their New Works Festival. This musical is full of songs and presents a story of small-town America being affected by ‘Nam and a sophisticated New Yorker. Summer...
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Six Lives of Loneliness and Desperation
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: July 23, 2009
The West Coast premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s Private Fears in Public Places opened last Saturday, produced by Ross Valley Players. This beautifully written play is about six lonely people whose lives intersect and overlap in ordinary places: offices, homes, bars, and hotels. The structure of the play is almost like...
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On Writing and Moderating Well
By Lily Janiak Published: July 23, 2009
Performance art entails logistical complication: a lot of people, audience and artists have to be in the same place at the same time — often for an extended period of time. Yet, while itt’s difficult to attract an audience to a show, it’s impossible to bring them to a rehearsal,...
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Jealous Passion and Revenge Sicilian Style
Published: July 23, 2009
By Dr. Annette LustOne can see Arthur Miller’s View from the Bridge, performed by the Off Broadway West Company and staged by other companies, as though each were treating it as a different play, theme-wise. This is because of the wealth of emotional themes the play contains. Off Broadway West...
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Summer in the Park with the Metropolitan Opera
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: July 23, 2009
Under a perfect sky on a balmy night in NYC, the Metropolitan Opera presented three young well-trained voices singing their hearts out to an enthusiastic crowd of 4,300 music lovers. The only distraction came from a few airplanes that flew surprisingly close. Opening the program were several selections of Mozart,...
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Victorian Cross-Dressing at Marin Shakes
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 16, 2009
Oscar Wilde’s comedy of manners The Importance of Being Earnest is a spoof of the hypocrisy of upper middle class Victorian English society. Marin Shakes’ production of the play remains true to its origins while occasionally spoofing the play itself. On a three-level outdoor set, in three acts, the action...
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Noel Coward’s Private Lives
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 16, 2009
When exes make a chance encounter after five years apart, the still-smoldering embers of passion flare up, new life breathed into them by new marriages. Noel Coward wrote the play Private Lives about the aftermath of that unexpected meeting, and Cal Shakes’ current production is a masterful realization of the...
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The Writer’s Reader, by the Writers’ Writer
By Lily Janiak Published: July 16, 2009
What do you do when you’re stuck on a train with the author of the book you’ve brought along, and you’ve got nothing else to read? Do you say something, do you just start reading, or do you do nothing at all? What if you’re the writer, and you see...
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Carrie Fisher Explains Her Family Tree
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: July 16, 2009
Berkeley Rep’s production of Wishful Drinking, written and performed by Carrie Fisher and directed by Tony Taccone, is a cozy, down-home visit with Hollywood celebrity and its harmful side effects. We join Carrie in her glass house, set appropriately as a living room with glass walls through which we view...
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SF Mime Troupe Going Strong at 50
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: July 9, 2009
A Winning Tale of Folklore and Finance “Too Big to Fail”
Fourth of July would not be the same without a rousing crowd at Dolores Park celebrating not only Independence Day but also the half century mark of SF Mime Troupe’s foray into dramatized independent thought about the...
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Published: July 2, 2009
By Carol DunneHow can one hold onto joy in an increasingly controlled society that is, by its very nature, soul-denying? That is the premise of Dale Wasserman’s play now at SF Playhouse, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, based on the novel by Ken Kesey. Bravo to Director Bill English...
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Porgy and Bess: A Rekindling of Hope
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: July 2, 2009
S F Opera’s final, sold-out performance of Porgy and Bess, by George and Ira Gershwin, was presented in its restored state as the Gershwins had written it, and was well worth experiencing. The original work premiered in 1935 and was subsequently revised to accommodate a shorter running time. This less...
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furyFACTORY 2009 Curates Serious Humor
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: July 2, 2009
In conjunction with the Network of Ensemble Theaters, San Francisco’s own foolsFURY concluded their annual furyFACTORY last weekend at Traveling Jewish Theatre and NOHspace with an array of theatre artists re-examining the concept of America and its place in the world.The three weeks of programming featured a diversity of international...
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Moving Men Dance at the Garage
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 2, 2009
As part of the National Queer Arts Festival, the SF Moving Men presented Dancing @ The Garage, a lively series of contemporary movement numbers. The nine short pieces by six artists explored many sensibilities. Moving Men is a new company of dancers that choreographer and Artistic Director of The Garage...
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Look where Baby Butch Landed Tonight
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 25, 2009
Raquel Gutierrez and Butchlalis de Panochtitlan present The Barber of East L. A. as part of FURY Factory 2009. This three-hander by women monologists creates a borrida of Eastside characters. The tales of the barber, an actual woman barber with her own shop in Eastside, the predominantly Hispanic communities lying...
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Jack Goes Boating at the Aurora
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: June 25, 2009
The Aurora’s latest production Jack Goes Boating by Bob Glaudini is the perfect play for a summer evening in Berkeley. It opens on the Aurora’s intimate space where three quarters of the audience seated around the stage listen to a couple of New York limo chauffeurs, Jack (Danny Wolohan) and...
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Unfulfilled Russian Dreams
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: June 25, 2009
The award-winning, professional Porchlight Theatre Company opened its annual outdoor summer season with Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, a story that takes place in the Russian countryside in the early Twentieth Century.Three Sisters is a naturalistic play about the decay of the privileged class in Russia and the search for meaning...
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Beyond the Mirror at the Fury Factory Fest
By Dr. Annette Lust Published: June 25, 2009
In their West Coast premiere of their world wide tour of Beyond the Mirror, the New York Bond St. Theatre, that has for a number of years organized theatre projects in teacher training and youth programs in crisis areas, and the Kabul Exile Theatre, that began this multi-media collaboration in...
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Get Kidnapped at Pearls Over Shanghai
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: June 18, 2009
Because The Cockettes Are Back, And Better Than Ever
I fondly recall through a drug haze memory when the Cockettes played live at the Palace Theatre in North Beach for ‘70s midnight productions of such gems as Pearls over Shanghai. Four decades later, I heard a scaled-down revival...
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Peter Retreats But... in Albee’s Zoo at A.C.T.
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: June 18, 2009
If you’ve ever seen the oft performed 1958 one-act play Zoo Story by Edward Albee, you probably remember two strangers who meet in New York’s Central Park. Jerry talks non-stop. Peter listens, sitting on a bench. What we learn about Peter’s life is what Jerry elicits from many questions to...
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Kenny Yun: Gaysian Salad Solo
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 18, 2009
It would be hard enough to waste your adolescence in “The Salad Bowl of America” Salinas California, but add the onus of being a 1980s gay Asian and the burden could become oppressive. Impressionist Kenny Yun finds humor and optimism in his recollections of personal experiences in just that situation....
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Opening Doors at MTC
By Lily Janiak Published: June 18, 2009
“Why are there so many doors in here?” asks Dr. Rance in Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw, now at Marin Theatre Company. “Was it designed by a lunatic?” It’s a humorous rhetorical question in the context of the mental hospital examination room where this classic farce is set, but...
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Golden Girls Are Back For Pride Season
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: June 18, 2009
The Golden Girls: More Gay Pride Episodes is now playing at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory through June 26. Two new shows based on the original scripts of the TV series that ran for seven successful seasons, “Goodbye, Mr. Gordon” and “Scared Straight,” are delightfully acted by an all-drag cast. That...
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Single Female Theatre Critic Seeks… Respite. (NSA).
By Lily Janiak Published: June 18, 2009
Jeffrey Self’s My Life on the Craigslist, an autobiographical solo show now at New Conservatory, begins, as most lives have, before Craigslist came into being. Self grew up and discovered his homosexuality in Rome, Georgia, where “if you meet another gay person, you feel obligated to have sex with him...
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Two Soloists Hit the Mark
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: June 11, 2009
Captain Stormfield’s Visit to HeavenIt’s a joy to find good theatre writing that is well performed. Hearing Mark Twain’s words brought to life at the People’s Theatre production in the intimate North Beach venue at Pena Pachamama is one of those joy-inducing experiences that makes for a bright evening.For their...
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Romeo Rocks Cal Shakes
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: June 11, 2009
As pop/rock rhythms energize the youth, Cal Shakes launches its 35th Anniversary Season with Artistic Director Jonathan Moscone’s production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, a passionate tale of young lovers caught in a dangerous and threatening world. Moscone delivers a modern-dress Romeo as the tragedy of a violence-wracked urban environment....
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Actors Theatre Takes On Betrayal
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: June 11, 2009
Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, now at Actors Theatre, is a refreshingly intimate portrayal of the playwright’s iconic story of infidelity. Skillfully directed by Keith Phillips and James Baldock, the inverted history of Jerry’s affair of seven years with Emma, the wife of Robert, Jerry’s best friend, is complemented by ingenious staging...
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“Some Men,” or All Gay Men, Ever?
By Lily Janiak Published: June 11, 2009
“There’s a place for us,” sings a voice in the darkness at the beginning of Terrence McNally’s Some Men, now in its West Coast premiere at New Conservatory. As the lights rise, the nine members of the all-male cast materialize, and “us” suddenly refers to a new antecedent: gay men...
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Krapp at Cutting Ball
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 4, 2009
Mister Krapp led a hard life in Samuel Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape. Not only that, he forced himself to relive it in excruciating detail through reviewing audio recordings he had made years earlier. Under Rob Melrose’s direction, Paul Gerrior plays Krapp with a strong sense of bemusement and nostalgia....
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Gangster Wannabes and Postage Stamps
By Lily Janiak Published: June 4, 2009
At first, Mauritius seems a curious title for the thrilling new drama by Theresa Rebeck that just opened at The Magic Theatre. Sure, Jackie, our young protagonist, inherits a couple of rare postage stamps that hail from thereabouts. But what could be farther away from a dank stamp collector’s office,...
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You, Nero: Ancient Roman Hijinks
By Tom W. Kelly Published: June 4, 2009
Hysterical! This theatrical romp through ancient Rome (64 AD) keeps the laughs coming. And with the jarring exception of some historically inaccurate homophobia, it’s bunches of fun. Berkeley Rep stylishly produces the world premiere of You, Nero by Amy Freed with great performances and stunning visuals. The 2-1/2 hours fliy...
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Spamalot’s Wild and Wonderful Quest
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: June 4, 2009
Lovingly “ripped-off” from the internationally famous comedy team’s most popular motion picture, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Python’s Spamalot is deservedly the winner of three Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Director (Mike Nichols), as well as the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards for Best Musical....
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The One-Eyed Man is King
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: May 28, 2009
/* /*]]>*/ Love emerges in strange circumstances, sometimes mistaken and sometimes real. Carter W. Lewis’ The One-Eyed Man Is King, currently presented by Triple Shot Productions at the Phoenix Theatre in San Francisco, is an apt illustration of the strange circumstances under which it may appear. Directed by Bahati Bonner,...
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Amy X with Subways: an Interview
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 28, 2009
Amy X Neuburg talked to me from her home in Oakland about her upcoming CD release concert. She has worked for years with The Cello ChiXtet on her own composition The Secret Language of Subways. She and the three female cellists will play the work at Great American Music Hall...
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The People’s Theatre Debuts with Mark Twain’s Captain Stormfield
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: May 28, 2009
While many of our larger theatres are closing or taking forced vacations because of the economic crunch, The People’s Theatre is making its debut and it’s going to be intimate. Opening this Friday at Pena Pachamama in North Beach is their first production: Tim Hendrixson’s adaptation of Mark Twain’s Extract...
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An Actual Lesbian Relationship?
By Lily Janiak Published: May 28, 2009
/* /*]]>*/ The theatre theorist Paul Auslander once offered an explanation for the frequent disconnect between female comedians and their male audience members: Men often distrust such performers, he said, because of an “unconscious fear that the ultimate joke will be the size of their sexual apparatus.” But in That’s...
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Mr. Marmalade Is Not Sweet
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 28, 2009
The titular Mr. Marmalade in Custom Made’s darkly comic play is the product of a young girl’s fevered imagination. The remarkable part is that a four-year old could have such sophisticated and perverse erotic dreams. When Lucy plays house, there is no play; it is deadly serious, just as when...
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Three on a Party - Literality at Rhino
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 21, 2009
The Rhino celebrates America’s greatest LGBT writers with the recent opening of Three on a Party. Prose works by Gertrude Stein, Tennessee Williams and Armistead Maupin are presented in cooperation with the Word for Word, a company dedicated to turning literary masterpieces into dramatic stage presentations without changing any of...
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A Show, a Discussion, and a Q&A with Armistead Maupin
By Rink Published: May 21, 2009
Acclaimed Tales of the City writer Amistead Maupin appeared on May 17 at a Theatre Rhinoceros and Word for Word Performing Arts Company triple play show at Theater Rhino’s 16th Street locale for a Three on a Party presentation, on stage through June 7.Calling Maupin “Our muse,” Theatre Rhinoceros Executive...
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Strings: Complex Emotional Terrain
By Tom W. Kelly Published: May 21, 2009
In Strings by Terrence Beswick, two young men grapple with putting on a play comprised of indeterminate amounts of fact and fiction. Memories of painful childhood dynamics are densely packed within multi-layered theatricality. But do the theatrical devices enhance or distract? Guerrilla Rep, working in residence at Mama Calizo’s Voice...
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Magic in The City’s Oddities
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 21, 2009
The Magic Parlor is presenting a show as a history lesson wrapped around magic acts. Four performance artists in Eccentrics of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast relate stories of The City’s real characters ranging from Alma Spreckels to Oofty-Goofty, and of course Emperor Norton. Some of the card tricks were impressive,...
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Love and Marriage Puerto Rican Style
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: May 21, 2009
“Marriage is hell on earth if you’re unhappy,” confides mother to daughter in Jose Rivera’s Boleros for the Disenchanted now playing at A.C.T. As they discuss the rumored infidelity of daughter Flora’s fiancé Manuelo (Dion Mucciacito), Flora (Lela Loren) shares the idealism that her good Catholic parents Dona Milla (Rachel...
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Bridge: A Cautionary Tale
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: May 21, 2009
Ross Valley Players opened Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge. Miller sought to achieve the rapid flow and tragic inevitability he admired in Greek drama. Using Alfieri (Rick Williams) as a narrator-chorus, Miller traces the descent of a Brooklyn longshoreman, Eddie Carbone (Eric Burke) through a labyrinth of libidinous...
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Git Yer Hair Did and Go See Stale Magnolias!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: May 14, 2009
This will be your first opportunity to see a play in a hair salon. I am talking about comic playwright Sean Owens’ latest masterpiece, Stale Magnolias, a spoof on all those ‘80s heart-wrenching dramas of strong Southern women gossiping and coping and crying and dying – the likes of Steel...
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Please Turn off Your Cell Phone
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 14, 2009
In a quiet café, Jean finishes the last of the lobster bisque as the cell phone of the man at the next table rings incessantly. She asks him to answer it, but he does not hear her. She picks up his phone and answers it … and answers it. She...
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Playground Fest Features the Best One-Acts
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 14, 2009
PlayGround’s annual festival presents fully staged productions of short plays selected from their regular Monday night reading series. This year theyl feature seven one-acts with a variety of styles and subjects, from the deadly serious to the whimsical. The production values are of the highest quality, under various directors, the...
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Irish Grand Guignol: Berkeley Rep’s Bloody Lieutenant of Inishmore
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: May 7, 2009
Dead cats and carved-up humans ooze over the stage in brilliant Martin McDonagh’s explosive and astonishing The Lieutenant of Inishmore now playing at Berkeley Rep. If you aren’t squeamish or worried about actors sliding through the dark red puddles, you’ll find yourself laughing out loud at McDonagh’s tightly woven, daring...
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Northern California Hippie Magic
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 7, 2009
The world premiere of Magic Forest Farm, now at Marin Theatre, gives a highly personalized insight to the results of hippie living in the ‘70s and a later search for explanations. This play by Zayd Dohrn won the Company’s first Sky Cooper New American Play Prize. The staging and acting...
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Paul Plays Krapp
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 7, 2009
“Krapp and I have some things in common, but I’m a happy Krapp,” Paul Gerrior told me. He will soon be starring in Samuel Beckett’s one-act play “Krapp’s Last Tape” at Cutting Ball. Paul thinks he and the single character in the play have a lot in common, “living alone...
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Fringe of Marin Award Ceremony
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: May 7, 2009
For 23 seasons, Dr. Annette Lust and the Dominican Players have brought entertaining and thought-provoking new performances to the Bay Area. Theatre Critics Circle Awards for Best Play, Best Actors and Best Director were announced on Sunday May 3 at Meadowlands Assembly Hall of Dominican University.The first awards presented were...
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A Night at the Black Hawk
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: April 30, 2009
One of San Francisco’s newest venues for theatre is the Community Benefit Corporation (CDC) Center at 134 Golden Gate Avenue in the Tenderloin. San Francisco Recovery Theatre’s Night at the Black Hawk brings into focus the glorious days of the Black Hawk Jazz Club, a jazz club located at Turk...
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A Universe Disturbed by the Powerful Music of the Atom
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: April 30, 2009
“Do I dare disturb the Universe?” asks the title role atomic scientist in Custom Made’s production of Carson Kreitzer’s The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer, extended for three more shows through Saturday May 2 under the able direction of Brian Katz. Deservedly winning the Rosenthal New Play Prize for...
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Fringe of Marin Presents its 23rd Season
Published: April 30, 2009
By Gaetana Caldwell SmithWith two programs comprising twelve new short plays, Dominican Players’ Spring 2009 Fringe of Marin, pulled off its 23rd season. Here are brief reviews of plays presented in Program One.VB Leghorn’s “Stuff It,” a comedy directed by Billie Cox, deals with an overbearing, wealthy, two-faced, widowed Mother,...
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Robot’s Revenge Steals the Show at Fringe of Marin’s Program II
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: April 30, 2009
“Robot’s Revenge — A Relevant Pantomime” by Dr. Annette Lust (Artistic Director for 23 seasonss) and directed by Sasha got this critic’s vote for most outstanding production of the Fringe Festival. Erica Badgeley also gets my vote for Best Actress as The Robot. Christine Clemmons was delightful as the Engineer’s...
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Every Little Step: Chorus Line Rises Again on Broadway
Published: April 30, 2009
By John BramhallEvery Little Step – set to open in Bay Area theatres May 1 – is a film documentary about the Herculean job of casting for the Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, one that also managed to pay tribute to the original musical, its original cast and its...
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Rabbi Sam Faces the Board at the Marsh
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: April 23, 2009
Playwright and solo performer Charlie Varon is in fine form at the Marsh again as he depicts a dozen personalities in his latest effort Rabbi Sam. Directed by and developed with David Ford, Rabbi Sam tells the story of Sam Isaac, a rabbi who wants to reinvent American Judaism, and...
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Miss Julie Seduces at Aurora Theatre
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 23, 2009
Mark Jackson has mounted at Aurora one of the sexiest and deadliest modern dramas, Miss Julie. August Strindberg’s play about a lustful countess and a concupiscent servant presents a story of manipulation and, oddly, true love, in a manor-house setting. Jean (Mark Anderson Phillips doing well as a clever and...
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1906 Quake Memorialized With Special Show at Castro Theatre
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: April 23, 2009
This year on April 18, San Franciscans commemorated the devastating 1906 earthquake in the City. It has been so long since the City has recovered from this earth-shattering disaster, that some citizens might not feel the urgency to be prepared for the next Big One. But on Saturday morning at...
By Dr. Annette LustLiebe Wetzel’s revival of her Executive Order 9066 uses puppets created with found objects in a heart-wrenching creation about the incarceration of the West Coast Japanese and Japanese Americans in camps in the Utah desert after the 1941 Pearl Harbor bombing. Similar to Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s...
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War Songs and Helen of Troy
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 16, 2009
War Music, now running at ACT, is a retelling of an ancient Greek epic, based on Homer’s Iliad. Lillian Groag’s direction and Christopher Logue’s adaptation of the classic lends some dramatic and very human moments to the story of warfare over a woman.Members of the core ACT acting company play...
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Wash the Bone, Twice
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 9, 2009
Bisexuality mixes with artistic ambitions, philandering and weapons in Baptized to the Bone, now at New Conservatory, and all with music. Texan Dave Johnson’s dark comedy plumbs the depths of evangelism and marital infidelity in the rural Carolinas.“I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to produce the world’s...
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Solis’ Lydia: Gripping Poetic Drama at MTC
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: April 9, 2009
Nominated for the coveted Steinberg Award, Octavio Solis’ play Lydia is now running at Marin Theatre Company in its West Coast premiere. Set in 1970’s El Paso, this drama about the Flores family runs the gamut of emotion from outspoken grief, rage and guilt to unspoken yet imaginatively revealed passions...
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Confessions of a Refrigerator Mother
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: April 9, 2009
Demystifying Autism At the Marsh“April is the cruelest month” wrote T.S. Eliot. April is also aptly Autism Awareness Month. In her dynamic, not-to-be-missed 90-minute solo show, Carolyn Doyle shares the complete emotional range of her and her family’s experience navigating through the daily demands of life with her own young...
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Search for “Enlightened” Dating
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: April 9, 2009
The Fool in the Lotus Productions is currently presenting Zen Boyfriends, a musical comedy by Mariana Caplan with music, lyrics and stage adaptation by Mark Steighner. Upon arrival, Eric Olsen sets the mood by playing a sitar. Zen Boyfriends is a survival guide for “enlightened dating.” “Spiritual Bypassing” is an underlying...
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Kitten on the Keys Rocks and Shocks
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 2, 2009
Kitten Suzanne Ramsey is going for the gold in trying to be as outrageous and offensive as she can. She almost succeeds, and some of her implications are thought provoking. Her lively Does This Piano Make My Ass Look Big? (now at Mama Calizo’s) keeps the action moving like SF...
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The First Amendment and Then Some
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: April 2, 2009
Tracey Scott Wilson’s The Story, a co-production of The SF Playhouse and Lorraine Hansbury Theatre, takes race, gender and truth and cooks them into a spicy stew that leaves mouths agape and watering for more. The play, running approximately 90 minutes without intermission, starts slowly enough on familiar racial ground...
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Act a Lady Camps It Up at NCTC
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 2, 2009
“So are you scared there’s a woman in you waitin’ to get out?” Spoken in a Midwestern 1920s drawl, that question becomes central to Act a Lady, the outlandish farce now at New Conservatory. The play takes these farm-boy hicks from Prohibition-era Twentieth Century to the mannered excesses of Eighteenth...
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Keely’s Still Got It: Magnetism on Stage
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 2, 2009
Keely Smith tells the vociferous audience member, “You couldn’t handle a woman like me. You don’t have the balls to do that.” This female vocalist played straight-man to the wild antics of Louis Prima in their ‘50s Las Vegas acts. She has brought her singing back to the circuit, to...
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Grease Is A Word
By Paul Sinasohn Published: April 2, 2009
A new national tour of Grease has opened as part of the Shorenstein’s “Best of Broadway” series at the Golden Gate Theatre. This production is notable for two reasons: it has former American Idol champion Taylor Hicks and it’s very different from the movie (except for Sandy’s hair at the...
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Love, Acceptance and Ballyhoo
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: March 26, 2009
The Last Night of Ballyhoo opened at Ross Valley Players, and the inevitability of World War II and the film debut of Gone with the Wind intersect for the backdrop. The Freitags, a Jewish family, living in 1939 Atlanta Georgia are much more concerned with who is going to Ballyhoo, a...
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Sex in the Nunnery from Thrillpeddlers
By Albert Goodwyn Published: March 26, 2009
Do not expect Thrillpeddlers to pull their punches. Their latest collection of grisly one-acts gives a new, erotic tone to their Grand Guignol-style productions, including a giant, levitating, glow-in-the-dark penis and a pair of willing lips.Their current outing features four short plays in one show. Each one gets more bizarre...
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High Spirits in Coward’s Blithe Spirit
By Albert Goodwyn Published: March 26, 2009
The spirits are high in 42nd Street Moon’s current production, a somewhat musical rendition of Noel Coward’s play Blithe Spirit. Coward himself directed the musical adaptation for Broadway in 1964, but he stayed true to his subject matter. High Spirits tells the same story as the play, but adds musical...
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The Palo Alto Blues
By Albert Goodwyn Published: March 19, 2009
It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues delivers the music in a fine rendition of the so-called blues scale, an American art form devised from the heritage of black slaves. TheatreWorks’ current show at Lucie Stern also depicts the development of a bygone era of our culture that persists today. The...
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Machinal, An Apropos Choice for Brava
Published: March 19, 2009
By Dr. Annette LustThe title of Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 Machinal, derived from French meaning mechanical or involuntary, is based on the true life story of murderess Ruth Snyder who followed all the conventions of the women of her day at home, at the office and in marriage, obeying her spouse...
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The Pain of Nothing
By Albert Goodwyn Published: March 19, 2009
Cutting Ball again risks warming the tepid waters flowing from the pool of newer plays destined to be durable productions of hot theatre with their current show Thom Pain (based on nothing). This rambling monologue might seem like nothing, but the desultory nature of the one-man show is deceiving. The...
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Holocaust Memories: Unforgotten, Imagined
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: March 19, 2009
The Model Apartment by Donald Margulies, just opened at Traveling Jewish Theatre, is a brilliant and bizarre black comedy about a pair of elderly Holocaust survivors and their outlandish, deranged daughter. A series of sometimes hilarious, sometimes moving scenes traces the pervasive effect of their earlier trauma on the “better...
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Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos’ Stick Dance
By Rink Published: March 19, 2009
The new dance show Stick bloomed sensuously and then exploded violently on the stage at Madame Calizo’s Voice Factory stage on March 13. Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos’ solo portion of the show was sensual and unusual. His continuing steady gaze while moving and standing was revealed later to be connected...
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Crime and Punishment: Straight to the Heart
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: March 12, 2009
Now at Berkeley Rep, Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky’s seminal novel Crime and Punishment has been distilled by Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus into a taut 90-minute drama, skillfully directed by Sharon Ott. The three-person cast carries us through the interrogation of Raskolnikov, a young murder suspect played with intense passion and...
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5 Star Evening at New Conservatory Theatre
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: March 12, 2009
As anyone who is a theatergoer knows, the stage is also suffering during this economic hell. Just look at all the Broadway shows closing! So it was no surprise that the New Conservatory Theatre Center put on a special Challenge Campaign fundraiser on its behalf. In a match campaign, NCTC...
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Judy Kaye is the Diva of Din at ACT
By Albert Goodwyn Published: March 12, 2009
The hardest thing for a good singer to do is deliberately sing badly. Judy Kaye as the “Diva of Din” manages this task superbly in ACT’s current production of Souvenir. Her long-suffering pianist plays excellently and tries to get this doyenne to hit the right notes, but it never happens,...
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Where the Sidewalk Ends
By Albert Goodwyn Published: March 12, 2009
Shel Silverstein was an iconographical artist of the late Twentieth Century. His drawings, poems, songs, and humor graced pages ranging from his own publications to Playboy magazine. Obviously, he was not catering just to the young folk. Boxcar’s new production of Where the Sidewalk Ends explores the adult aspects of...
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Lucky Dog Theatre at The Marsh
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: March 5, 2009
The excitement and wonder of Improvisational theatre is that the script is always changing. You can keep coming back to see the same troupe working over and over, enjoy being part of the process of creating the new material and never see the same show twice. At it’s best it...
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Skin: When Does Lust Turn to Love?
By Albert Goodwyn Published: March 5, 2009
Who knew that one little hotel-room double bed could be the staging ground for so many diverse relationships? Steve Yockey’s Skin, now at Climate, examines some possibilities, among them being questions of when does lust turn to love and when does love become a past-tense memory.With independent personalities, five people...
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Gorky’s Philistines at the Zeum: Generations in Conflict
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: February 26, 2009
Well-chosen titles tell you a lot. Maxim Gorky’s title Philistines describes to a “t” the main characters of his 1902 play — censored under the czarist regime — of generational and class conflict in a 2007 version by Andrew Upton that completes its run this weekend at the Zeum. Energetically...
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Family Conflict Grips A Delicate Balance
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: February 26, 2009
The production of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance, now at Custom Made, is a well-tuned masterpiece of a play that is not easy to perform well. This Pulitzer Prize-winner is about a comfortable family in crisis after their best friends, Harry and Edna, drop by to stay … and stay....
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Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! An Interview
By Albert Goodwyn Published: February 26, 2009
The Queen of the Underground will be bringing her internationally touring show to The City this week. Performance artist Penny Arcade says she explores all aspects of unity and tolerance in Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! She calls it “rock and roll theatre” and “a blend of erotic dancing and political...
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Jump! Theatre Presents Innovative Cuckoo
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: February 26, 2009
Cuckoo tells Madison Clell’s true story of living with multiple personalities and surviving to tell the tale. Adapted from her 2002 graphic novel of the same name, Cuckoo recounts Clell’s own struggle with, and eventual recovery from, Dissociative Identity Disorder (once known as Multiple Personality Disorder). Cuckoo chronicles the true adventures...
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Swan Lake: A Revisitation by Tomassonn
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: February 26, 2009
As the curtain falls on San Francisco Ballet’s Swan Lake, in an all new production choreographed by Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson, it remains as heart-wrenching as ever. The nearly sold-out program runs through February 28 and features new costumes along with revised choreography and compelling new sets in three acts....
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Berkeley Repertory’s Vibrator Play Is More than Titillating
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: February 19, 2009
Who would think a play about vibrators would encompass in playwright Sarah Ruhl’s own words “all the emotions of intimacy, marriage and the mind-body split”. Set in the Victorian era in America, her In The Next Room (or the vibrator play) does just that and is one of the most...
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Burn the Library, and the Witch
By Albert Goodwyn Published: February 19, 2009
This dreamy enactment of imagined interactions at historic events is an ambitious work that succeeds on many levels. Spare beauty, simple grace and personal devotion all occupy the CounterPULSE stage in Artship’s Burning of the Ancient Library of Alexandria. The library of third century BC Egypt was once the largest...
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Lorraine Hansberry Ends Hell
By Albert Goodwyn Published: February 19, 2009
Some vital questions about human relationships permeate the subtext of Waitin’ 2 End Hell, now being presented by Hansberry Theatre. But the story of the slightly comedic drama involves marital infidelity and dissolution of family.Dante and Diane are celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary in a definite party atmosphere. Two other...
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Betrayed Arabs: Questions at Aurora
By Albert Goodwyn Published: February 19, 2009
Betrayed, now at Aurora, addresses the question of ethnic identity for some Arabs. Against the backdrop of a ruined arch with bullet holes, two reporters, one a Sunni Muslim and the other a Shi’a Muslim, sects historically at odds with each other, are joined in the deserted Baghdad hotel by...
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Wicked Shines at the Orpheum
By Albert Goodwyn Published: February 12, 2009
Wicked is as wicked does. But does the Wicked Witch of the West practice evil? The story of the touring musical Wicked, now at the Orpheum, is a spectacular one of magic, mystery and rivalry. The presentation is sweeping and energetic.Even before Dorothy, there was the Land of Oz, and...
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Guare’s Landscape of the Body
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: February 12, 2009
Playwright John Guare’s fertile visions assault the important questions of life, like how easy is it to lose everything? How do people face the idea that nothing is permanent, including happiness? And if everything we love in the world is taken from us, how do we start over? When happiness...
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SF Follies Defines The City
By Albert Goodwyn Published: February 12, 2009
This show defines San Francisco in a way that the long-running North Beach parody never managed. Spoofing our home has always been easy. We are eccentric, and the whole world knows it. Joe Bisceglie’s SF Follies, now at Actors Theatre, is a high-energy send-up of the entire history of the...
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A Song for Coretta Inspires at BRAVA
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: February 5, 2009
A woman sits in front of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta Georgia, inside of which Coretta King’s body is lying in repose for public viewing. The woman’s name is Helen (Marjorie Crump-Shears) and she has been waiting patiently among the thousands to pay her last respects to Mrs. King, whom...
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Tennessee in the Summer at NCTC
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: February 5, 2009
Joe Besecker’s Tennessee in the Summer, now playing at New Conservatory, gives us an up-close and personal view of the playwright’s psyche on a journey through Tennessee’s abusive relationship with Frank Merlo (Jeremy Forbing), his long time lover of 14 years. Directed by Christopher Jenkins, the play’s notion of inherited...
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Jason Gilkison Feels the Burn
By Paul E. Pratt Published: February 5, 2009
Ballroom Dancing Sensation Burn the Floor Takes Over Post Street TheatreTelevision rating juggernauts like Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, and Superstars of Dance, where out dancing champion Jason Gilkison led choreography for the team from Down Under, have reawakened interest in ballroom dancing. As a...
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Lampley’s Last Play: Tough Titty
By Albert Goodwyn Published: February 5, 2009
“I asked the lord,” Angela says in Tough Titty, “not to let this be cancer. It is.” Oni Lampley’s last play is now at the Magic. This is a poignant, touching story about a thirty-seven-year-old breast-feeding mother of two who receives a startling cancer diagnosis. The personal and societal adjustments...
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Le Roi Est Mort; Vive Le Roi!
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 29, 2009
“It is your duty to die with dignity,” one of the King’s court proclaims. Eugene Ionesco’s Absurdist drama Exit the King leaves no question about its ending. Even the title tells us what to expect. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley has produced a viable but not especially compelling mounting of this...
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The Secret World of the Smalls
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 29, 2009
Michael Phillis mimes a fantasy world of dolls he is intimately acquainted with in his current show at New Conservatory. The title of the show expresses his character’s obsession, but the art is in Phillis’ technique. We do not see the actual dolls, except occasionally in an upstage projection, but...
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African Bigotry and Romance
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 29, 2009
South African playwright Athol Fugard had many things to say about apartheid; he focused sharply on the nature of forced racial separation and its consequences. His My Children! My Africa! runs now at Marin Theatre. This three-character story of doomed love succinctly expresses the debate between black and white, power,...
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Where is Here?
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 29, 2009
Where is Here? The answer provided by Michael Frayn’s play, now at EXIT, is a story of adjustment between people. Not only does the newly formed couple have to accommodate themselves to a new, shared living space, but they also must adapt themselves to the intrusive landlady — and her...
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Beckett in Winter III Intrigues
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: January 29, 2009
The annual workshop showcasing three short plays by Absurdist master Samuel Beckett had a short run of six performances that ended last weekend at the Off Market Theatre. With limited but perfectly chosen sets, lights and costumes, the Custom Made troupe focused on the beauty of Beckett’s poetry and raw...
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Sic Transit the Twentieth Century
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 22, 2009
Aboard a Chicago-to-New York luxury train in Depression-era America, a maniacally egotistical and failed producer attempts to re-sign his neurotic, self-absorbed starlet and former partner to her next big hit. She is reluctant and another high-power producer will soon board to compete for her. These events form the core story...
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ACT’s Revival of Rich and Famous
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: January 22, 2009
John Guare may not be a household word but he has coined a phrase or two that have crept into common vocabulary, e.g. Six Degrees of Separation—the title of one of his Broadway plays that went on to be as riveting a film. Author also of The House of Blue...
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Victorian Vibrators Set for Berkeley Rep
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 22, 2009
The world premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room is the fiftieth world premiere mounted by Berkeley Rep as a part of their bold pledge to commission another 50 new plays by 2013. Otherwise, we would watch only Shakespeare, Ibsen or Neil Simon for the rest of our lives....
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Meadowland at Phoenix
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 22, 2009
Second Wind’s play Meadowland recounts a murder, but with no reliable witness. Every character who claims to have witnessed the stabbing has a different story. In the end, there is no conclusion except that someone is dead, whether by hanging or stabbing.The play is set in a small town sometime...
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Glengarry Glen Ross: the Life of a Salesman
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: January 22, 2009
On the 25th anniversary of its U.K. premiere, David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross opened at Ross Valley Players. Winner of the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, this explosive drama follows four small-time real estate salesmen in Chicago pushing plots of worthless land on reluctant buyers and trying to make a living by...
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Cutting Ball’s Mud a Clear Picture
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 15, 2009
Cutting Ball follows their tradition of taking risks with a new production of Mud. The play by María Irene Fornés follows the interactions of three doomed characters as they move from antagonism to pity to acceptance. Paige Roger’s direction of the one-act develops the tension between the characters with a...
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Josh Kornbluth Opens the Door to Warhol
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: January 15, 2009
“I: it or I: thou.” They aren’t ratios. They are a way of relating to the world according to Martin Buber, the great philosopher/theologian. Buber was one of ten Jews chosen by Andy Warhol to include in an extraordinary series entitled Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century, now...
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Varla Jean’s Lap Dance
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 15, 2009
Varla Jean Merman’s show is high energy and decidedly camp. The stage, film and cabaret star performs with a small backup ensemble, now at Hotel Nikko. Between her songs she delivers extended non-stop patter with interjections as she tries to find a Varla virgin, someone who has never seen her...
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The Trench Coat Flasher at Magic
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 8, 2009
San Francisco’s rent-control laws have caused the creation of a unique type of living arrangement, the tenants-in-common agreement, where each person holds an equal share in the residence. Encore’s peculiar, frenetic comedy, now at Magic, explores the possibility that there be strange relationships between strangers. Award-winning playwright Peter Sinn Nachtrieb...
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No Parole at The Marsh
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 8, 2009
Carlo D’Amore’s autobiographical one-man show is more about his wily mother than it is about himself, but even though the story is told through his reactions to her antics, his impressionism mimics her with much life and detail. As a con artist she could be anything from a lawyer to...
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Chinese New Year Spectacular
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 8, 2009
In the Chinese lunar calendar, the Year of the Ox is about to be ushered in. Divine Performing Arts presents “Chinese New Year Spectacular” at the Opera House, a truly different show than most Italian and German ones mounted in that venue. The “Spectacular” has been mounted there before, but...
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Paige Rogers Brings Mud
By Albert Goodwyn Published: January 8, 2009
Paige Rogers of Cutting Ball will be making her directorial debut for the company with Mud. No, not an auspicious title, but this play has poignant human moments and is a stark, funny and penetrating work by one of the legends of New York’s downtown experimental arts scene, María Irene...
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Tenderloin Xmas Hustler: The Anti-Drug, Pro-Prostitution, Christmas Musical Parody
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: December 31, 2008
Following the adventures of a misfit boy from “Walnut Bleak” on his journey to find acceptance, Seraphim’s Tenderloin Christmas Hustler is a mash-up parody of just about every Christmas television show, movie or play. With many familiar seasonal tunes, TCH is a very cheeky, heartbreakingly sweet new holiday alternative. It’s...
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A Contemporary Macbeth by Shotgun
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 31, 2008
Greedy ambition and regicide are never pretty sights, especially when surrounded by chaos and moral darkness, such as in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, currently being presented by Shotgun. Mark Jackson’s portrayal of the conflict keeps the original tone of a flexible moral structure, but lightens up the stage palette and modernizes the...
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The Coverlettes Mock Girl Groups
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 31, 2008
The Coverlettes? Yes, they do covers of well-known songs. And yes, they have bee-hive hair dos. Their fictitious sister act show at Aurora was a spoof of 1960s girl groups ranging from The Ronettes (songs produced by Phil Spector: “Be My Baby,” “Baby, I Love You”), Motown’s first successful female...
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Moore Love: Melba & Darlene
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 31, 2008
Rock & roll favorite pop artists Darlene Love and Melba Moore are presenting a cabaret show at Nikko. Darlene has a powerful voice and has worked with producer Phil Spector and singers Sam Cooke, Dionne Warwick, The Beach Boys, Elvis Presley, and Sonny & Cher, as well as singing back-up...
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Ennio’s Origami
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 31, 2008
Ennio Marchetto, the Italian master of caricature came back to BRep with an all-new show. With his inventive, surprising imagery of paper costumes with movable parts and his boundless energy, he created a quick succession of people. The quick-change artist races through 50 costumes in barely over an hour. Some...
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Golden Girls Are Back With Solid Gold Performances
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: December 25, 2008
You simply have NOT completed your list of holiday shows to see if you missed The Golden Girls – the Christmas Episodes now playing at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory. Where else can you relive two classic episodes of TV’s golden age of the Golden Girls sit-com, reinterpreted by stage actresses...
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SF Ballet’s Nutcracker a Wintry Taste Of Elegant San Francisco Victoriana
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: December 25, 2008
With so many choices of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker in the Bay Area, SF Ballet’s would fit into the genre of the more traditional - offering excellent dancing, pleasing to both the visual and aural senses with the added plus of a San Francisco Victorian setting and a snow storm fit for...
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Lesbian/Gay Chorus Sang Crap for Christmas
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: December 25, 2008
The Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, under the direction and piano accompaniment of Stephanie Lynne Smith, presented a very crappy Christmas show again. Now don’t get me wrong. That was a compliment. This was their second annual “Christmas Crap-Array,” a very irreverent, hilarious show held at the EXIT Theatre. The...
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Sisters Do Bingo For Holidaze!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: December 25, 2008
This year on Dec. 17, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Inc. put on their monthly charity Bingo game with a holiday theme, of course. Sisters Grinchetta, Jezabelle, Eunice X, Sara Femme, Margarita, and Guard Tiny Tim Tighty Whitey came out and did a choreographed dance number in many-colored tutus to...
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Abraham Lincoln’s Big, Gay Dance Party Brings Freedom to Choose One’s Mores
By Ann Rostow Published: December 18, 2008
By Dr. Annette LustAaron Loeb’s play about Abraham Lincoln begins with a scene in which three elementary school children interpret forefathers Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, divulging the truth about Lincoln having on a certain occasion shared a bed with another male. “Who was I?” asks the child...
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An Innovative Christmas Carol Sings
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 18, 2008
The venerable ghost story returns to ACT with a vengeance and some innovative twists. James Carpenter as Ebenezer Scrooge is meaner and more callous than ever, which makes his transformation all the more touching. Domenique Lozano’s direction makes good use of the big stage, but when Carpenter is solo, he...
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Black Nativity Lights Up the Holiday Season
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: December 18, 2008
Did you know there was a “no-good” Shepherd? Neither did I, but you’ll know him when you see him in the Hip-Hop number in the midst of Lorraine Hansberry Theatre’s fully realized, best yet Black Nativity: A Gospel Celebration of Christmas lighting up the stage and the holiday season at...
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Absurdist Family The Empire Builders
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 18, 2008
Nameless terror is the elephant in the room that no one — almost — acknowledges in Boris Vian’s Absurdist comedy The Empire Builders, now at Boxcar. The family lives in one room of their home at a time, allowing themselves to be chased around by The Noise. As they abandon...
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Wondrously Weird Walken Wonderland
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: December 18, 2008
If you are a fan of those old Rankin/Bass Christmas stop action animated TV special features, you will enjoy I Am Snow Miser: Walken in a Winter Wonderland, now playing at the Dark Room Theatre through Dec. 20. And if you are a fan of Christopher Walken and his impersonators,...
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Perfect Holiday Fare: NCT’s Zanna, Don’t!
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: December 18, 2008
New Conservatory’s musical fairy tale, Zanna, Don’t!, which opened last Saturday, is both a rollicking frolic in the park and a poignant tale about life on the flip side of reality. With book, music and lyrics all written by Tim Acito and directed by F. Allen Sawyer, the story unfolds...
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Lunatique Fantastique’s Wizardry
Published: December 18, 2008
Liebe Wetzel’s newest version of her popular Wrapping Paper Caper at The Marsh is enriched with dramatic elements such as the use of words, vocal sounds, acrobatics, and clowning and miming by her found-object characters. Her piece has preserved its original imaginative charm and freshness in a unique fantasy world...
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Christmas for Queers at the Rhino
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 11, 2008
The mimicry of everything originated in ancient Greece, survives as a Christmas tradition in Great Britain and its spirit is now brought to The Rhino stage by Director John Fisher. The Rhino Christmas Panto includes many of the standard elements of pantomime, including messy substances and gender confusion, but it...
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Ben Franklin Falls in Love Again
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 11, 2008
In the fateful year of 1776, the seventy-year-old scientist and diplomat Benjamin Franklin did sail to France in an attempt to persuade King Louis XVI to recognize the American colonies’ quest for independence. The musical Ben Franklin in Paris, now playing at the Eureka, presents with song and comedy a...
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The American Dream
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 11, 2008
Mommy says to Daddy, “You’re indecisive. You’re a woman.” This is typical of Edward Albee’s play dialogues: identification of characters only by rôle and not by name, plus hostile, loving relationships. In Boxcar’s The American Dream, now set in a living room near you, Albee’s earliest play takes on immediacy...
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Long Story Short — OUCH!!
By Tom W. Kelly Published: December 11, 2008
We’ve all seen musicals that deal with boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, then boy-gets-girl for a c-major, happy ending. But the twist with Long Story Short, currently at Lucie Stern, is that the same formula is applied to a couple’s entire lifetime together, from first date to death. TheatreWorks has mounted a superbly...
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The Phantom of the Opera: A Challenging Spectacle
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: December 11, 2008
If you are into stage effects a la smoke and mirrors and fabulous costumes, The Phantom of the Opera, now at the Orpheum, provides all that in spades. Directed by Hal Prince, this Webber, Hart & Stilgoe musical tells of a masked figure who lurks in the catacombs beneath the...
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Fringe of Marin Awards
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: December 11, 2008
Dominican University and the Fringe of Marin began their awards ceremony with a standing ovation for Dr. Annette Lust, Artistic Director and Festival Coordinator, at Meadowlands Assembly Hall in San Rafael on December 6. This completes the 22nd season of new one-act plays and solo performances by Bay Area playwrights,...
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Dame Edna Is Live And Intimate!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: December 4, 2008
Stand up and cheer, for Edna Everage is here! Notorious giga-star and Aussie beauty (in the eye of the beholder) is in EssEff at the Post Street Theatre. This up-close and personal piece is called “Dame Edna — Live and Intimate in Her First Last Tour..” Known for her flaming...
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Around the World in 80 Days
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 4, 2008
Circumnavigate the globe in a mere eighty days? Can’t be done, at least not likely using Jules Verne’s Nineteenth Century technology. Now it’s a different story, but the tale of Phileas Fogg and his journey is still an intriguing adventure. San Jose Rep’s dramatization of Verne’s novel uses a fanciful,...
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Evie’s Waltz - A Parent’s Reality
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: December 4, 2008
Carter W. Lewis’ play Evie’s Waltz, presently at The Magic Theatre and extended through December 21, takes us on a journey that is probably not so uncommon for families following the Columbine shooting of a few years ago. Directed by Magic’s Artistic Director Loretta Greco, Evie’s Waltz, a new play...
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The Seafarer Wins
By Albert Goodwyn Published: December 4, 2008
The characters in Conor McPherson’s Seafarer do not paint a pretty picture of Irish life. Not only do they stagger around blindly searching for the next drink, they also play with the devil. Marin Theatre’s production of this striking new play features some of the best acting talent in the...
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Hilarious Moments of Love, Sex and Madness in Squeeze Box at The Marsh
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: December 4, 2008
Finishing an extended run at The Marsh, Ann Randolph’s Squeeze Box is a hilarious, painfully honest account of her search to get her life on course. Working the graveyard shift in a shelter for mentally ill homeless women and trying to impress impassioned accordion player Harold by pretending to be...
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City Queens: Battle of the Blonds
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: November 27, 2008
There’s a hot new drag show in town, Queen City starring Cockatielia and Donna Sachet at Mecca every Friday night. This nonstop dragathon of live singing and lip-syncing features two of the City’s most talented drag divas teamed up to create a one-hour nightclub show of music and dance, not...
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The Arabian Nights: Exotic & Erotic
By Tom W. Kelly Published: November 27, 2008
Tell me a story! The legends of a culture reflect the people’s values, beliefs, ideals, morals, and more. Much is revealed about the community of ancient Iraq (as well as Persia and India) in BRep’s brilliantly shining production of The Arabian Nights, written and directed by Mary Zimmerman (adapted from...
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Drowning Bees at NCT
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 27, 2008
Evan Wyler has just published a book and is being pursued by the media. Mike is a painter. You can tell by all the colorful smudges on his costume. He also pursues Evan. They eventually hook up. But the main vulture circling overhead is publicist Alexa Vere de Vere. When...
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Depression Era Mice and Men
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 27, 2008
John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men is set in California during the Great Depression, when jobs were scarce and migrating agricultural workers were being supplanted by machinery. Nevertheless, the pragmatic George and the gentle giant Lenny took off to California to find work on a ranch. Actors Theatre has...
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Sabrina Fair Cinderella
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 27, 2008
Sabrina Fair, now The Barn theatre, is a light drama, almost a comedy. If does have some laugh lines and there is a happy ending, after two hours. The production values of the set and costumes are high. For the opening, a father-son contrétemps establishes that this family is very...
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Joe Turner Comes to Berkeley
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 27, 2008
Joe Turner does not appear in the play now running at BRep, named Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, except metaphorically. That’s just a line from an early blues song by W. C. Handy. Who does appear in August Wilson’s play about the African American experience is Herald Loomis, who has...
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The Last Yiddish Poet at TJT
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: November 27, 2008
To begin the celebration of their 30th anniversary season, TJT is reprising an updated version of The Last Yiddish Poet, its first new rendition of the play since 1994. Directed by Naomi Newman and performed by Artistic Director Aaron Davidman and Corey Fischer with musical direction by Dan Cantrell, Poet...
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Seven “On the Fringe” - Program Two
By Flora Lynn Isaacson Published: November 20, 2008
Thanks to the inspiration and leadership of Dr. Annette Lust – who occasionally contributes to Bay Times - we have a Fringe of Marin Festival which is now in its 22nd season.This critic attended opening night, Saturday, Nov. 15 for Program Two consisting of four plays and three solo performances...
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Fringe of Marin Fall 2008 -Program One
By Tom W. Kelly Published: November 20, 2008
Fringe festivals! They not only provide an opportunity for playwrights to present their new works, but they’re a great time for community to unite via art. And the Fringe of Marin Fall 2008 — Program One, currently running at the Dominican University, is just such a great time. On alternating...
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Brava’s Opener Friends Offers Love with Bruises
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: November 20, 2008
“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” George Bernard Shaw once quipped and so it is for the Man (Anthem Salgado) whose living space is invaded by an itinerant family in Kobo Abe’s not-so-absurdist-as-it- first-seems Friends, going into its final performances this weekend at Brava. Produced in the...
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Dame Edna’s First Last Tour Lands At Post Street Theatre
By Paul E. Pratt Published: November 20, 2008
Sporting a hot pink dress striped with silver sequins, her trademark oversized glasses and perfectly-coiffed violet hair, internationally-acclaimed comedienne Dame Edna Everage relaxes on what appears to be an antique sofa. Like her historic Whitcomb Hotel suite atop Nob Hill, she is everything one would imagine: refined, perfectly aged and...
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High Stakes in His Heart Belongs To Me
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: November 13, 2008
In the wake of the tragic defeat of Proposition 8, Jerry Metzker’s play at Theatre Rhinoceros couldn’t be more timely and heartbreaking. In His Heart Belongs To Me, Dan (Matt Weimer) comes home from a business trip one day early to find out that his beloved partner of 14 years...
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The Devil’s Disciple Overcomes the Redcoats
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 13, 2008
During the American Revolutionary War, British General Burgoyne arrested a treasonous minister, or so he thought. Actually, a rebellious local man was visiting the minister’s wife when Burgoyne and his crew burst in. Taking him to be the minister that they sought, they captured him and took him away for...
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Seth Eisen Performs in “Blackbird”
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: November 13, 2008
Blackbird: A Queer Vocal History is a world premiere, full-length, historical, musical hodgepodge of LGBT music written and performed by Seth Eisen (the chameleon / trickster in Keith Hennessy’s Circo Zero productions) depicting gay performers from the 1930s to the present who, despite their then outsider status, found inventive ways...
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The Perfect Path
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 13, 2008
The perfect path is traveled by traditional Spanish steps in Theatre Flamenco’s El Camino Perfecto, opening at the Cowell November 14. Artistic Director Carola Zertuche and her company search for the perfect road to happiness in their new performance. Optical illusions, extraordinary footwork, and invigorating live music stir the senses...
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Ghost Train Coming for the Whore
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 6, 2008
The ghost of Elvis saves a love affair in Charles Pike’s off-the-well retelling of the prostitute with a heart of gold story. Ghost Train Coming, now at The Garage, takes place entirely in a Los Angeles single-room-occupancy hotel room, where Jackie-O entertains her clients while Elvis occasionally pops out of...
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The Gershwins’ Girl Crazy
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 6, 2008
The setting of Girl Crazy, now at Eureka, is decidedly Wild West, as are the costumes — mostly — and that is part of the charm of 42nd Street Moon’s revival of this George and Ira Gershwin musical. The show uses several well-known songs and a familiar love story. The...
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The Quality of Life Involves Suicide & Dope
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 6, 2008
ACT addresses several controversial subjects with their current production of The Quality of Life by Jane Anderson. The deepest running theme is mutual suicide, but family ties, religious fundamentalism and medical marijuana figure prominently. A straight couple from Ohio visits their hippie cousins in North California and learns the intricacies...
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A Surfeit of Splendid Chamber Music
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: November 6, 2008
“If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it!” ~ShakespeareSo sayeth the Bard in Twelfth Night and his thoughts may easily have referred to the Friends of Chamber Music marathon with sixteen of the hottest ensembles in the Bay Area presented in October at Meyer...
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The Absurd Victims Confront Meaning and Nothing
By Albert Goodwyn Published: November 6, 2008
In the beginning of Eugène Ionesco’s Absurdist one-act Victims of Duty, now being presented by Cutting Ball, a bourgeois couple in a domestic scene are discussing the theory of drama. Little do they suspect that the drama is about to come to them. In this parody of conformist life, the...
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O’Neill Masterpiece Sees Lee Meriwether’s CCSF Return
By Paul E. Pratt Published: November 6, 2008
It took Lee Meriwether more than a decade to find out who nominated her for the Miss San Francisco pageant. Turns out an African-American fraternity anonymously suggested the pretty City College of San Francisco coed, drama student and sorority girl who, months later, was crowned Miss America 1955 in front...
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Elemental Horror: Shocktoberfest with Blood
By Albert Goodwyn Published: October 30, 2008
Thrillpeddlers mounts unabashedly gory plays, in the tradition of the Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol of Paris, which specialized in grisly horror shows. Thrillpeddlers spare no stage blood in their productions, and their current offering, just in time for Hallowe’en, is perfectly suited to the season. Shocktoberfest!! 2008 continues their elemental...
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March to November: More Right Wing Plays?
By Albert Goodwyn Published: October 30, 2008
A local theatre critic threw down the gauntlet to playwrights and producers, and Sleepwalkers’ March to November is one response. Reviewer Chloe Veltman asked whether the theatre needs more right-wing plays or just better left-wing ones. Tore Ingersoll-Thorp’s play examines both sides of the issue in an hour and one-half....
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Animal Kingdom Satirizes Today’s Elections
Published: October 30, 2008
By Dr. Annette Lust First appear the elephants, then the Bear family and the Evil Queen about to retire, who demands that her son, the Young Prince, become King. Next Lionhearted discusses the kingdom’s needs with the Young Prince concerning an economic crisis and the livelihood of the kingdom that...
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Fifty Russian Composers on the Side
By Albert Goodwyn Published: October 30, 2008
“Now we all knew that Pyotr Tchaikovsky was gay.” This is the sort of historical detail that Mark Nadler includes in his review of 50 Russian composers. For Russian on the Side he obviously did a great deal of research, digging up some obscure details and musicians. The brother George...
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The History Boys Matriculate
By Albert Goodwyn Published: October 23, 2008
Did you know that Christ had 14 foreskins? The boys learn such diverse things, like French and show tunes, in a history class. Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, now playing at New Conservatory, depicts the efforts and trials of eight senior-level boys in a prep school. They all seek to...
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My HOT Lobotomy: A Fascinating Journey
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: October 23, 2008
There’s an old aphorism in theatre that warns, “If you’ve got to send a message, use Western Union.” Fortunately, My HOT Lobotomy, now showing at CounterPULSE, is a multi-media theatre/dance work, created and directed by David Szlasa, with enough imagination to escape that piece of advice. While played against a...
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Wrestling with Politics: Whup Ass
By Ann Rostow Published: October 23, 2008
Another political farce, following on the heels of the Aurora Theatre’s Best Man, and opening just in time for the fall election, American Whup-Ass by New York playwright Justin Warner, opened Oct. 18, continuing the fourth season of the Alter Theater (the Alternative Theater Ensemble) in San Rafael. American Whup-Ass...
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Splitting Infinity over the Years
By Albert Goodwyn Published: October 23, 2008
These are the voyages of the starship Infinity. SJRep’s current production of Splitting Infinity does make a significant journey, but it is through time, with passing references to space. This is a touching love story with the addition of blind ambition. The set is futuristic in some ways and mundane...
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100 Years OF QUEER THEATRE with Eastenders and Theatre Rhinoceros
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: October 16, 2008
It’s time to celebrate ourselves, and two Bay Area Theatre Companies are collaborating to do just that. Eastenders Repertory Company, based in the East Bay, is working with Theatre Rhinoceros to present 100 Years of Queer Theatre. The line up is astonishing with plays from the beginning of the last...
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Radio Golf Completes the Cycle
By Albert Goodwyn Published: October 16, 2008
In Radio Golf, the final play in August Wilson’s ten-play cycle about the African American experience in Twentieth Century America, a successful entrepreneur seeks to become the first black mayor of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1997 but his past actions prove to be more of a challenge for him than his...
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Oscar Wilde’s Vera Wilde
Published: October 16, 2008
By Dr. Annette LustAlthough aesthete Oscar Wilde and 19th Century revolutionary Vera Zasulich never met, they had several traits in common that made them an inspiration to one another. They both attempted to introduce change in a conservative environment and they both had the courage and ferocious will to stand...
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Orchards and Chekhov Custom Made
By Albert Goodwyn Published: October 16, 2008
Talking dogs, enchanted frogs, rats in Nikes and running shorts, it’s all there in the stories of Anton Chekhov. Or is it? Orchards, now being presented by Custom Made, is a collection of one-acts derived from Chekhov’s short stories by contemporary American playwrights. The styles range from melodrama to fairy...
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Dark Secrets Illuminated in Shining City
Published: October 16, 2008
By Flora Lynn IsaacsonThe San Francisco Playhouse is pleased to launch its 2008-2009 season with the Bay Area premiere of Shining City written by Conor McPherson and directed by Amy Glazer.Amy Glazer’s smartly staged production becomes a master class in Irish storytelling. The action unfolds in five scenes in the...
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Russian Toward Broadway, Nadler Stops in SF First
By Paul E. Pratt Published: October 16, 2008
Nearly five years ago, Mark Nadler found inspiration in “Tchaikovsky and Other Russians.” Nadler credits the tune, which rapidly lists 49 famous Russian composers, for taking comedian Danny Kaye from Hollywood hopeful to legend in just 60 seconds. Soon it could take the award-winning pianist and his one-man show Russian...
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I’m Yours! (or Deranged by Love)
By Tom W. Kelly Published: October 9, 2008
Passion IS the Fashionn
Wander far back in time to an age where men would do anything to get laid and then turn into absolute rogues once they did. Oh yeah, that’s right now. But in the world of I’m Yours! (or Deranged by Love), inspired by and adapted...
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foolsFURY’s Rigorous All You Can Eat
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: October 9, 2008
Following on the heels of their very original production of Monster in the Dark, foolsFURY Theater Company now presents All You Can Eat, a backstage pre-show show of a rock band on the first night of their reunion concert. The audience gets to watch the soap opera of conflicts between...
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Third Eye: the b-side monologues
By Albert Goodwyn Published: October 9, 2008
In certain spiritual traditions, the third eye — or inner eye — is a pathway to self-enlightenment. In Guerrilla Rep’s production of f Third Eye: the b-side monologues, which ran at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory, the characters each exhibited their own examples of self awareness. The set was minimal and...
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Before The Dream: A Tribute to the Life and Mysterious Death of Richard Wright
Published: October 9, 2008
By Annette LustIt was in 1950 when I was a student in Paris that I met Richard Wright through a Middle Eastern tailor whose shop was on a small street in the Quartier Latin called Rue Monsieur le Prince. Whenever I passed by the tailor’s shop he kept insisting that...
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Theatre Rhino New Season Party: Cavalade Of Carol Channings
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: October 2, 2008
Theatre Rhinoceros, America’s longest running professional queer theatre, had planned for their 31ST season benefit to feature the inimitable Carol Channing to judge a Carol look-alike contest. Unfortunately Miss Channing suffered a bad fall in her Modesto home and had to cancel the Rhino engagement, as well as her show...
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Stoppard’s Rock and Roll Mixing Music with Marxism
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: September 25, 2008
Tom Stoppard dips into his own autobiographical past to serve up a mélange of themes and characters from the long days of English summers to the darker nights of Czechoslovakian politically oppressed winters in his latest effort Rock ‘N’ Roll. Covering the period of political and rock history from 1968-1990,...
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Late Nights With The Boys Is Boisterous Reading
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: September 25, 2008
Alex Bond is in process of completing what would appear to be a hilarious new novel, Late Nights with the Boys: Confessions of a Leather Bar Chanteuse, giving an up close and personal peek back at the fast and furious leather scene during the late ‘70s. Those of us at...
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The Wild West
By Albert Goodwyn Published: September 25, 2008
In the days of old, in the days of gold, many needs were forsaken in 1949 California. The Widow West, now at Stagewerx, explores some ramifications of this sexual imbalance.The Widow (Gwyneth Richards, who also plays Jake and Mr. Carlton) contrives to put a long brunette wig on Billy (Nate...
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Off Broadway West’s “Shrew” Set in 1920s
Published: September 25, 2008
By Flora Lynn IsaacsonOff Broadway West opened a “freely adapted” version of The Taming of the Shrew on Friday, September 19. Veteran Shakespearean Director Joyce Henderson has updated the show to the Hamptons in the 1920’s. You might not recognize it as “Shrew” since the names of the lcoations—Lower East...
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Jungle Red: Like Nail Polish on a Pig!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: September 18, 2008
You might have seen the 1993 or 1996 productions of Jungle Red. You might have seen the original, classic 1939 George Cukor movie, The Women, based on the play by Claire Booth Luce and made into a screenplay by Anita Loos. You might even see the new updated movie, The...
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Sins : the Sacred Nature of Fierce Desire
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: September 18, 2008
Subtitled “An Unashamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility,” Sins Invalid presented their evening of erotic spoken word performance, dance, song, and performance at Brava Sept. 5 and 6. Seven artists from California to Georgia stripped taboos off of sexuality and disability. While some of the less experienced...
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More Word for Word in More Stories by Tobias Wolff at the Magic
Published: September 18, 2008
By Dr. Annette LustWord for Word is back with a dramatization of More Stories by Tobias Wolff for the company’s 15th anniversary. On this occasion master story-teller Tobias Wolff’s tales offer content that is not only simple and original but also lends itself so well to the “physicalized” dramatization that...
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Late Nights With The Boys is Boisterous Reading at The Fringe
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: September 11, 2008
Alex Bond is in process of completing what would appear to be a hilarious new novel, Late Nights with the Boys: Confessions of a Leather Bar Chanteuse, giving an up-close and personal peek back at the fast and furious leather scene during the late ‘70s. Those of us at the...
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Rough and Tumble’s Candide
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: September 11, 2008
The Bay Area’s award-winning Rough and Tumble company has a hit on its hands in their latest endeavor: Candide, Voltaire’s sardonically satiric masterpiece about an innocent man whose optimism, gained from growing up in the “best of all possible worlds,” is challenged by one disaster after another once he leaves...
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17th Annual San Francisco Fringe Festival: A Surfeit of Solo Works
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: September 11, 2008
Along the Path of Larks and SwallowsMia Paschal performs in her own poetic narrative a solo odyssey through lovers in the near and distant lives she occupies. The hour-long journey may be likened to gangsta rap performed by the Kronos Quartet in a musical transposition, though language is the medium...
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The Real Story Behind Gone with the Wind
Published: September 11, 2008
By Flora Lynn IsaacsonJust in time for the 70th Anniversary of the first release of Gone with the Wind, the Ross Valley Players opened their new season with Ron Hutchinson’s hysterical off-Broadway farce Moonlight and Magnolias, about the legendary film and how it was almost never made! Movie mogul David...
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Too Much to Do About Everything
Published: September 11, 2008
By Flora Lynn IsaacsonShakespeare set the the Comedy of Manners tone in Much Ado About Nothing, now at Marin Shakes. The sparring lovers, Beatrice and Benedick can be compared with Congreve’s Mirabel and Millamant in The Way of the World (1700), a famous Restoration comedy.As Much Ado begins, Leonato (Christopher...
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Yellowjackets: Controversial Berkeley High in the 1990s
Published: September 11, 2008
By Dr. Annette LustBerkeley Rep finds dramatic inspiration in its own backyard by commissioning former Berkeley High student Itamar Moses, an eminent young playwright, to write a play about his experience as a student there. Yellowjackets (the name of the school’s mascots) consists of a series of real life scenes...
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The Best Man: Pertinent to Today’s Politics
Published: September 4, 2008
By Flora Lynn IsaacsonJust in time for our fall election, Aurora’s Artistic Director Tom Ross helmed Gore Vidal’s The Best Man. Shedding light on some of the issues surrounding today’s bid for the White House, the play is a timely morality tale which takes place during a national political convention....
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The Listener: A Memorable Future Tale
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: September 4, 2008
Crowded Fire theatre company dares to leap into the unknown world of producing new work, and with their latest premiere of New Dramatists Resident Playwright Liz Duffy Adams’ The Listener, the leap takes us into the post-apocalyptic world of Junk City, Planet Earth — where the pop-culture icons and slang...
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Frozen: The Bonds of Evil and Forgivness
Published: September 4, 2008
By Ben SinclairAgnetha the psychiatry student asks her colleagues in Bryony Lavery’s Frozen, “Can serial killing be considered a forgivable act?” From that premise Lavery displays the challenging psychology of three characters, brought together by evil and forgiveness. Act one contains little interaction between these different players. Mostly we’re...
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Skittish at Stagewerx: Six Shortsto Savor
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: September 4, 2008
Minimalist theatre where the actors and not the set are the most important part of the experience is the basis of National Lampoon’s Bruce Moody’s Skittish, an evening of six self-contained comic skits each with two actors, two chairs, a table and a door. Directed by the renowned Argentinian director...
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Friends Are Forever: Sweet, Sexy & Fun
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: August 28, 2008
Friends Are Forever, a comedy now at New Conservatory, takes a dip into the “Sex and the City” part of town with a different threesome, James, Steve and Mike, played respectively by Dann Howard, Gerrad Bohl and Leo Lawhorn, and their respective lovers, George, Bill and Roger (Christopher M. Nelson,...
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Grey Gardens, a Comic Musical about Aging
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 28, 2008
Grey Gardens, the musical now at TheatreWorks, is about American royalty, and about how the mighty have fallen. The character interactions involve humor, especially in Act I, then pathos and insight in Act II. The songs are of a wide variety (twenty of them, plus some reprises) and mostly short....
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Tom Orr Gives Fabulous, Fetishy, Filthy 1-Man Show
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: August 28, 2008
Tom Orr, America’s musical comedy cabaret porn star, has mounted his newest, possibly funniest, definitely filthiest show, I Feel a Thong Coming On, at New Conservatory Theatre. In checking out the set, you can tell right away there will be numerous costume changes, by the racks and shelves of dresses,...
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Auntie Quentin Tells Us to Be Ourselves
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 28, 2008
Whatever your sexual orientation might be, Quentin Crisp has an important lesson for you: your own style is everything. Actor Richard Louis James portrays the witty English actor, model and raconteur in Sunday Tea ‘N’ Crisp at SF Playhouse. Crisp (born Dennis Charles Pratt; “Wouldn’t you change your name?”) explains...
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A Bowl of Rose Leaves
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: August 28, 2008
One of San Francisco’s newest theatrical venues, Studio 300 Theatre, presents a thought-provoking comedy in three acts by Fred Smith, who until recently lived in The City. A Bowl of Rose Leaves, an Imaginative Productions play directed by Shari Carlson, is described adeptly by the playwright as a comedy “in...
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Broadway with a Twist II: Pizzazz & Emotion!
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: August 28, 2008
Imagine two beautiful men in cowboy gear singing the lyrics of Oklahoma’s “People Will Say We’re in Love” and you’ll get what producer/director Michael Ozawa means when he says Broadway with a Twist. It works so well and the whole show fits right into San Francisco’s diversity with a range...
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Custom Made’s Heartfelt Musical
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: August 21, 2008
The final performances of William Finn and James Lapine’s modern musical A New Brain completed the Custom Made Theatre Company’s season last weekend at Off-Market Theatre. A New Brain is a “see the humor in the dark experiences” kind of story that draws from Finn’s life as a composer during...
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The Bay Area Rhythm Exchange
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 21, 2008
In an hour and a half on the stage of Herbst, Stepology present the 2008 Bay Area Rhythm Exchange, an evening of all tap dancing, all the time. On a set with a baby grand piano, a music stand for the electric bass player and a drum kit, the performers...
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: Tango X 3: The Ultimate Dance
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 21, 2008
This Nineteenth Century dance form originated in the slums of Argentina. The sensual, erotic nature of this dancing can still be shocking to this day, even when performed fully clothed. Extreme Tango Production put on Tango X 3 at the Palace of Fine Arts to benefit the Breast Cancer Emergency...
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Brit Star Coogan Makes U.S. Splash in Hamlet 2
By Paul E. Pratt Published: August 21, 2008
After reading the Hamlet 2 script, Steve Coogan says he immediately understood his character Dana Marschz. Yet, after becoming a sitcom star playing the United Kingdom’s favorite loathsome, narcissistic former talk show host Alan Partridge, Coogan found the film’s sympathetic, loveable hero a challenge.A failed-actor-turned-teacher, Marschz (Coogan) strives to save...
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2boys.TV is Not On TV; It’s On Stage
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: August 14, 2008
This might be confusing, but the latest, wildest, weirdest show in town, 2boys.tv, is not in fact on your television nor your computer. It’s only titled that way. This very black comedy is now playing at the New Conservatory Theatre Center on the main stage. At first when the show...
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Terrence McNally’s Bad Habits
Published: August 14, 2008
By Ben SinclairMcNally’s work is always a cynic’s delight. Fortunately this attitude is far from lost on the Rhino players, who’ve put together an ensemble performance of Bad Habits, his off-Broadway show. Perhaps the best way to describe the onslaught of relationship issues (love, hate and need) on the one...
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Avant GardARAMA
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 14, 2008
Cutting Ball Theater always pushes the limits. Their new installment of Avant GardARAMA, now at EXIT on Taylor, is no exception. This production comprises three experimental one-acts by women artists. The material is not easily assimilated. Director Rob Melrose has made a competent attempt to bring these slightly Absurdist dramas...
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The Ballad of Edgar Cayce: A Bluegrass Operetta
Published: August 14, 2008
By Ben SinclairEdward Cayce was one of America’s great hucksters. He was a theatrical psychic, and Gary Aylesworth’s performance of his metronomic readings plays that up for all it’s worth.Theatrics aside, his biography is entertaining on its own merit. While young and just discovering his “psychic” abilities, a hypnotist brought...
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Thwarted Desire in Uncle Vanya
Published: August 14, 2008
By Dr. Annette LustChekhov’s The Wood Demon failed in provincial theatres and was rewritten by the Russian playwright as Uncle Vanya when staged at Moscow Art Theatre by Stanislavski in 1900. Now playing at Cal Shakes, it is a tragicomedy about sexuality and thwarted desire, but the play offers philosophic...
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The Mikado: Yum-Yum Moves to SF
By Albert Goodwyn Published: August 7, 2008
In music theatre there is grand opera, then there is the more accessible operetta. Many of the songs from the comic operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. have sunk into our subconscious playbook. Such is the case of several works from The Mikado, now being produced by Lamplighters. Their production carries...
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A Don Giovanni To Die For!
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: August 7, 2008
Now in its fifty-first year, the Merola Opera Program is widely regarded as the nation’s foremost young artist training program and with good reason. They pick the best candidates and turn them into even finer opera singers. With a perfectly chosen cast, Catherine Malfitano, stage director and Gary Wedow, conductor...
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Amadeus: Salieri Washed out
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 31, 2008
Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus is not actually about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It is about the artistic rivalry between Mozart and Antonio Salieri. Okay; let’s go ahead and address a subtle point that the playwright did probably not intend. A vulgar interpretation of the play’s name is “I’m a Douche.” At...
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Fool for Love at Actors Theatre
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: July 31, 2008
Actors Theatre, in association with Off the Mountains Productions, presents Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love, a one-act iconic classic of the Shepard repertoire, directed by Jean Shelton. The events revolve around the less-than-platonic relationship between Eddie and his half-sister, May, a relationship that took hold without their realization of the...
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“Just a Minute” Performance Workhop
Published: July 31, 2008
By Flora Lynn IsaacsonFrom the moment we step into the theatre at the College of Marin’s Senior Performance Workshop, Director Suresa Dundes has made us very aware of time. Her magnificent set contains a large clock dial on the floor with Roman numerals and 8 clocks on the wall stage...
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Kinsey Sicks Say Wake The F*@k Up America
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: July 17, 2008
The Kinsey Sicks, an all-male dragapella beautyshop quartet breezed into town to perform a one-night-only program, “Wake The Fuck Up America” at Herbst Theatre on July 11 to a sold out crowd. They had a new concept this time, where the audience had been invited to a live taping of...
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A Journey through Life in the South
Published: July 17, 2008
By Flora Lynn IsaacsonDriving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry was a smash hit that won both a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 and an Academy Award in 1989. The time of this play is 1948, the setting is Atlanta, Georgia and the play starts with the sound of a big crash.Daisy...
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Roger Rees’ Solo What You Will at A.C.T.
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: July 17, 2008
You’ve seen him on TV in “Cheers,” “Boston Legal,” “Law and Order,” “West Wing,” and a host of other shows and films. But Roger Rees has been doing Shakespeare for most of his life and was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1967 onward for over twenty years....
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A (Mostly Fun) Sermon in the Park
By Ed Brownson Published: July 10, 2008
A San Francisco Mime Troupe production is a one-off experience. Few theater companies even try to offer what they do: original outdoor melodramas harking back to old public theater where catcalling, applauding audiences made their likes and dislikes loudly known. At their best, Troupe shows are great fun and topical....
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Come to the Cabaret at SF Playhouse
Published: July 10, 2008
There was a cabaret and there was a Master of Ceremonies and there was Berlin. Between the 1st and 2nd World Wars, there was a period in Germany which was characterized by terrible poverty, terrible decadence and inflation. Going to the cabaret was a way to escape. The S.F. Playhouse...
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Retro HAIRSPRAY Stands Up to Time!
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: July 10, 2008
In HAIRSPRAY the Musical that whirled in and out of town for a short run last month at the Orpheum in the Best of Broadway season hairdos are big, stiff and quick to change color. Just right for the exaggerated style of 1962 where Tracy Turnblad, a big Baltimore girl...
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Reduced Great Books
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 10, 2008
“Sanity is overrated,” states one of the three actors in Reduced Shakespeare Company’s All the Great Books, now at San Jose Rep. In their frenetic summary of great literature, mixed with improvisation and slapstick, one could believe it.The Company has taken their gimmick to many lands, even to the Bible....
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Harvey Fierstein’s A Catered Affair; A Delightfully, Moving, Heartfelt Script
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: July 3, 2008
If your summer plans take you to New York City this month and you’re looking for a show to see that will give you something to think about and still entertain you, get tickets for A Catered Affair by and including Harvey Fierstein in the role of Winston, the family’s...
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Possibilities for 42nd Street
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 3, 2008
You’ve Got Possibilities was the fundraiser for our local musical revival juggernaut 42nd Street Moon. That company produces musicals that might have slipped into oblivion. But for the promotional event, they brought out some of the best, including a personal performance by Charles Strouse.Okay, yes. A little background here. Charles...
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Millie Comes To Bay Area
By Albert Goodwyn Published: July 3, 2008
Long-time partners Dennis Lickteig and William Giammona will be teaming up for their Broadway By the Bay debuts in Thoroughly Modern Millie. This musical about a determined small-town girl who finds a rich husband in the big city will open in San Mateo July 10.Dennis will be directing a cast...
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Dylan Thomas’ Poetry in Milk Wood Comes to Life in Porchlight Staging
Published: June 26, 2008
By Annette LustDylan Thomas’ poetic Play for Voices about small town characters living their life styles and dreaming of their hopes and ideals is converted into a dramatically viable stage play by director Randall Stuart and the cast of the Porchlight Theatre Company. After Thomas, the Welsh poet who wrote...
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Hushed at Aurora Theatre
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 26, 2008
Is the Episcopal minister evil, or merely misguided? Does Keith Bunin’s play make her out to be a self-serving manipulator or a well-meaning, doting mother? The Busy World Is Hushed explores these themes, and perhaps more than the playwright can handle.The minister in her white Roman collar (Anne Darragh, an...
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Tuna Does Vegas: (The Fish Does the Strip)
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 26, 2008
The third smallest town in Texas takes a trip to Las Vegas. In reality, the town’s only two inhabitants, Joe Sears and Jaston Williams, creators of Greater Tuna, enact all twenty-two of the townspeople as they discover the joys and annoyances of Vegas. What plays in Vegas stays in Vegas?...
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Renaissance Incest; Who Knew?
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 19, 2008
While dramatist John Ford in his day (1633) tried to be more shocking than even Shakespeare, the most outrageous aspect of ACT’s new production of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore is the amount of stage blood poured out in the finale. The extremely aberrant behavior of the characters seems tame...
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Dell Arte: Between Two Winters
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 19, 2008
The physical theatre of Dell’ Arte was on view at the Magic last weekend when nine of the second-year MFA students enacted their original work, Between Two Winters which poignantly tied the Gulf War to the war in Vietnam. The cross-generational plot sounds eminently plausible, and the influence of past...
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Golden Girls Are Gayer Than Ever!
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: June 19, 2008
The Golden Girls classic sitcom is getting a huge drag makeover in the all-drag (both queen and king) production of two actual, queer-themed episodes of the popular TV show. The live play features San Francisco drag personalities Heklina, Cookie Dough, Matthew Martin, and Pollo Del Mar as television’s favorite Miami...
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The Voice of Magic Presented by Siegfried and Roy
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 19, 2008
Darren Romeo’s act comprises illusion and song. The magic routines he presents are entrancing, but his singing and stage persona are the substance of his show. A finely honed crew and cast of dancers help him pull off his tricks, but the real show is Darren himself, expending non-stop energy...
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Trapped by the War: Opera at The Lab
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 12, 2008
Trap Door could be the start of something big. Right now Lisa Scola Prosek’s opera is a work in progress, but is promising. This production ignores the shortcomings of the presentation and the underdeveloped story-line. The voices, singing and interactions of the performers are stunning. It is gratifying to hear...
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Jihad Jones Attacks Arab Stereotypes
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 12, 2008
Golden Thread focuses on Middle Eastern themes.Their new play Jihad Jones, now at the Thick, takes place in a Hollywood office and addresses the Arab plight in a very humorous way. The production of this eighty-minute play is tight and fast paced. The characters are easy to understand, without being...
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Men In Uniform Is Charming, Not Challenging
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: June 12, 2008
The playbill for Men in Uniform, now playing at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, asks the intriguing question: “can real men drop their masculinity issues long enough to actually connect with one another?” The answer, sadly, is: I guess not, if this series of little play-ettes is any example. The...
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Thrillpeddlers Brings Us Theatre Of The Ridiculous
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: June 12, 2008
Thrillpeddlers usually get a couple of weeks to kick back this time of year. Not so now! They have jumped right into their next big project, Thrillpeddlers’ first-ever high camp comedy festival, The Theatre of the Ridiculous Revival, which opens on Friday the 13th with Charles Busch’s Theodora, She-Bitch of...
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Goode’s Wonderboy No Longer an Outsider
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 12, 2008
Local movement artist Joe Goode takes a refreshing approach to contemporary dance. His new Wonderboy, at Yerba Buena, demonstrates his interest in both choreography and writing. His style of “high velocity dancing” is accompanied by new music compositions. The story of an outsider is succinctly and touchingly told in a...
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Fresh Meat Festival Moves to Bigger Venue
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: June 12, 2008
After 6 years and 20 sold-out performances at ODC Theater, the Fresh Meat Festival is making the move to big, beautiful Project Artaud Theater. The bigger-than-ever 2008 Fresh Meat Festival - the 7th annual transgender & queer performance series - bursts onto the stage June 19-22 at Project Artaud Theater....
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Octopus Extends at the Magic
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: June 5, 2008
Octopus, now extended at the Magic, is described as a play that, “examines the fallout of one night of lust on four men. This universal story of love, jealousy, and commitment commingles with a mysterious telegram delivery boy and a ravenous monster from the ocean floor.” That is, though accurate...
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August: Osage County - A Long Day’s Journey into Oklahoma
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: June 5, 2008
Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize winning August: Osage County, now playing on Broadway, has seven Tony nominations. In spite of its length, the play picks up speed after a slow first act that opens with a lengthy monologue by patriarch Beverly Weston (Michael McGuire), who sets up the family dynamic from...
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Jacques Brel Lives
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 5, 2008
The opening of Marin Theatre’s Jacques Brel revue is in a cabaret style, but the audience is not invited to join the show. Brel’s haunting music is performed on the proscenium-arch stage by four singers, who also act, and an on-stage music combo, with no circulation among the audience. The...
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The Group Lampoons the Culture of Healing
Published: June 5, 2008
By Benedict SinclairYou’re greeted by a variety of name tags, set out on a red tablecloth in a dim room. Each tag is grouped by a cause of suffering, including AIDS/HIV, poverty, loneliness, allergies, long-windedness … everything from the weightiest and tragic to the banal and egotistic. Here at The...
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Yumble Doesn’t Stumble
By Paul Sinasohn Published: June 5, 2008
Yumble isn’t defined anywhere, but it could be a yummy jumble, and that’s what this mixture was, yummy. And funny, too.Under the auspices of A Traveling Jewish Theater, composer Brian M. Rosen, and choreographers Pearl Marill and Jade Raybin created a thoroughly enjoyable mélange of performance pieces that will grow...
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You Won’t Tyre of Pericles
By Albert Goodwyn Published: June 5, 2008
In Pericles, one of Shakespeare’s later plays, the title character, the King of Tyre, journeys around ancient Greece to save his own skin. Cal Shake’s current production keeps the period setting, while adding some anachronisms and humorous bits. The overall effect is a beautiful looking play, even though the sequences...
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Beware The Blob
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: June 5, 2008
The Dark Room theatre has done it again, in the third of its series of Attack of the Killer B-movies. This time it’s a takeoff on the really bad ‘50s horror sci fi chiller diller, The Blob! The Blob was a poorly made 1958 horror flick about a gigantic red...
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Asian America Festival Cooks
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 29, 2008
The Asian America Festival continues. Look for the upcoming American Idyll, about coming out as an American of Pacific Islander descent, the Queer Women of Color Film Festival, and other programs through June 28. Most of the shows are presented at SomArts, but other venues range from The Garage on...
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The Secret Buried Underground & the Child
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 29, 2008
Prevarication, incest and murder: a typical Sam Shepard play. Actors Theatre has mounted this new production with exacting, excruciatingly accurate views into the psyches of three generations of a troubled family. No moment of internal torment or delusion is left unexplored. The minimal, claustrophobic set serves the production excellently by...
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Are You Ready To Explore The Negative Potential Of Positive Thinking?
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: May 29, 2008
The world premiere of The Group is coming to San Francisco to save us all from too much self realization. Lord knows that Sister Dana is a self improvement addict (as are most of his friends, past lovers, and many of you Bay Times readers as well), so, thank The...
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Best of Playground Festival
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 29, 2008
The Best of Playground annual festival mounts full productions of plays from Playground’s weekly reading series. This year, seven actors took differing parts in seven one-acts. They ranged from comedies and mystery to absurdist.In “O Happy Dagger,” Mr. Stewart (Ken Sonkin as a predatory casting agent) was looking at Ronald’s...
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Murder, Mary! Steals from the Best
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 22, 2008
As comedian Milton Berle (Uncle Miltie), who readily confessed to stealing his material from others, said, “Only steal from the best.” It’s Murder, Mary!, now at New Conservatory, follows Uncle Miltie’s dictum to the letter. Playwrights Patricia Milton and Andrew Black have used plot elements from everything from The Rocky...
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Yip, Yip, Yooray! Peddling Rainbows
By Paul Sinasohn Published: May 22, 2008
If you were asked “What made Yip Harburg famous?” could you answer? After seeing the current production of Peddling Rainbows at the Eureka you could answer that Harburg wrote some of the most famous songs of the mid-20th century. You’ve sung them: “Over the Rainbow,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,”...
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A Midsummer Night’s Hallucination
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 22, 2008
The stories and themes of Shakespeare are universal, but the language is key, as is amply proven by SNH’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, now at the Curran. Even though the tale is well known by many, the mixture of languages in this production is confusing and could fend...
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Jekyll and Hyde, the Original Bipolar Disorder
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 22, 2008
Who killed the kindly Dr. Jekyll? Was he executed or did he kill himself? Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher’s answer, now on display at SJ Rep in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde provides a psychologically provocative interpretation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novella. Four of the eight actors play multiple characters in...
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Bad Seed Spreads All Over Dark Room
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: May 22, 2008
The Bad Seed, part of the triad of hilarious horror film send-ups, “Attack of the Killer B’s,” is second in the series, following the smash hit interpretation of Hitchcock’s The Birds, and preceding The Blob. Jim Fourniadis directs the show that opened May 15 and runs through May 24. The...
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Brooklyn Boy Goes to Hollywood
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 15, 2008
Eric Weiss writes a best-selling novel, achieves critical acclaim, takes a groupie, moves to Hollywood to make the movie, and buries his father. Donald Marguiles’ two-hour Brooklyn Boy, produced by Ross Valley Players, details Eric’s journey with wit and sharply observed characters. We share with Eric, acted with an awkward...
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SF Playhouse’s Itchy Edgy Bug
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: May 15, 2008
Holed up in a remote Oklahoma motel, cocktail waitress Agnes White (Susi Damilano, SFPlayhouse Producing Director) has all that she needs to survive: maid service, a refrigerator, a ready supply of liquor, snortable coke and marijuana — her drugs of choice — brought in by her equally drug-loving lesbian friend...
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The Ladies of the Camellias
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: May 15, 2008
Off Broadway West’s The Ladies of the Camellias by Lillian Groag is a delightful history lesson in dramatic art from a French salon at the turn of the century. The ladies are none other than Sara Bernhardt, deftly played by Barbara Michelson-Harder, and Eleonora Duse (Joyce Henderson), two of the...
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Nilaja Sun Leaves No Child Behind
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 15, 2008
Nilaja Sun began her sixty-three minute monologue as a gimpy legged, loquacious janitor sweeping the linoleum floor of a schoolroom as a janitor and ended it the same way. In between, as a harried drama teacher in a Bronx middle school, she attempted to stage a play for hopelessly untalented...
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Thrilling High Flying Shadows And Ground Spinning Breakdancing At Brava
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: May 8, 2008
“And if we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended … “—- a line from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream that inspired the title of City Circus’ amazing show And If We Shadows now playing at Brava Theatre deep in the Mission district. This urban circus arts...
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Curse of the Starving Class
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: May 8, 2008
Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class, directed by Peter DuBois at ACT, is a refreshing immersion in Shepard’s universe of bad family relationships, albeit with rocky patches and belabored portrayals of the dysfunctionality. Shadows are cast with monologues alongside the story, beginning with Wesley’s (Jud Williford) strained and barely...
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Birds Attack Dark Room Theatre
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: May 8, 2008
May Day! May Day! Hordes of vicious birds are assailing en masse at Bodega Bay. Yes, as the first in a trio of low-budget live horror movie takeoffs known as “Attack of the Killer B-Movies,” Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds gets royally skewered by comic producers Cameron Eng and Sean Owens...
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A Highly Effective Monkey Room
By Albert Goodwyn Published: May 8, 2008
Magic Theatre’s world premiere of Monkey Room is very effective under Mark Routhier’s direction. Kevin Fisher’s story is about more than a laboratory technician racing against time in order to maintain her source of research funding. There is also a love story involved, and it’s not just about her and...
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House Of Crawford Takes On Baby Jane
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: May 1, 2008
My all-time fave-rave Joan Crawford cult flick has to be Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? co-starring JC’s fiercely hated rival, Bette Davis. That is why it was imperative that I attend House of Crawford’s drag interpretation of the hilarious horror film on April 25 at the Metro bar. Joan Crawford...
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Future Me: A Difficult Subject
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: May 1, 2008
The difficulty in understanding a play about a subject that no one wants to talk about is made even more difficult to understand when none of the characters talk about the subject either — the subject being obsessive attraction to underage girls and boys … i.e. sex offenders. In Future...
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Diane Amos Headlines Funny Girlz
By Paul E. Pratt Published: May 1, 2008
‘Pine Sol Lady’ Brings Stories of Lesbian Moms to May 10 Comedy Showcase
Nearly 15 years as “The Pine Sol Lady” have made Diane Amos’ face almost instantly recognizable. Of course, there’s more to the affable San Francisco resident than how many bottles of the leading brand it takes...
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The Maids Are Men
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: April 24, 2008
Theatre Release’s presentation of Jean Genet’s The Maids, directed by Tom Bentley, begins off the mark and remains off the mark throughout the slightly more than 90 minute uninterrupted performance. The play opens with two actors who apparently don’t have a clue about what they are saying and who resort...
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Coco Chanel Musical Comes To Eureka Theatre
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: April 24, 2008
An Interview with The “Scene-Stealing Whore” Tom Orr
When Coco (the 1969 Andre Previn-Alan Jay Lerner musical play about the legendary fashion designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel) opens this week at San Francisco’s 42nd Street Moon, the spotlight will be on another legend. “Queen of Cabaret” Andrea Marcovicci is in...
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War Hostage Women in Troy
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 24, 2008
The ancient drama of the wars betweens competing tribes in the Aegean seas has been retold many times. Elaine McLaughlin’s reinterpretation of some incidents, now playing as The Trojan Women at Aurora, and Barbara Oliver’s design, brings the story of war-time hostages into the present day.The back-story of the Greek...
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Diversity is Key to Fringe of Marin’s Season
Published: April 17, 2008
By Flora Lynn IsaacsonThe Fringe of Marin Festival presents 13 new plays in two separate programs. Program Two opened with 7 of these. The first was “Soul,” based on the Faustian legend of a man who sells his soul to the devil. In this play, the devil is sexily played...
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Actors Theatre Delivers Fickle Luv
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: April 17, 2008
Actors Theatre of San Francisco, as always, delivers an evening of drama which plunges the depth of human experience, however comedic it may be. In Murray Schisgal’s Luv, directed by Jean Shelton, the fickleness of man is humanized by the absurd and yet credible events that unfold. Luv is a...
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Butterfly Effect Is Flawless Fundraiser For Cancer Fund
By Sister Dana Van Iquity Published: April 17, 2008
Well-known Bay Area talents Veronica Klaus, Matthew Martin, Connie Champagne, Leigh Crow, Trauma Flintstone, David Bicha, P.A. Cooley, and other San Francisco stage luminaries will gather on Sunday, April 20 at 7:30 p.m. on Theatre Rhinoceros’ main stage for The Butterfly Effect, an all-star gala benefiting the Jeffrey Hartgraves Cancer...
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Souvenir of a Diva
By Albert Goodwyn Published: April 10, 2008
The hardest thing for a good singer to do is deliberately sing badly. The “diva of din” manages this task superbly in SJ Rep’s Souvenir. Her long-suffering pianist plays excellently and tries to get this doyenne to hit the right notes, but it never happens, even when she gets to...
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Thrill Killers Leopold and Loeb on Van Ness
Published: April 10, 2008
By Dr. Annette LustIn Stephen Dolginoff’s award-winning musical drama Thrill Me the passion of a young law student, Nathan Leopold, for his future law-student lover Richard Loeb leads from smaller to larger and more and more crimes that eventually land them in prison. Based on a true event in Chicago...
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hotshot Opens in The Haight
By Eryka M. Fraczek Published: April 10, 2008
Terrence Beswick’s hotshot is a haunting, close-up portrayal of the interdependence of drug addiction and domestic violence in the gay community. It takes place in the present and provides a well-written, intensely driven glimpse of life in San Francisco. Guerrilla Rep’s presentation is not intended for those under 16 or...
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Government Inspector: A Light View Of Badly Behaving Politicians
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: April 10, 2008
Translated from the Russian and adapted by Alistair Beaton, ACT’s Government Inspector is Nikolai Gogol’s take on just how silly and stupid town council members can behave when their own necks are threatened. It all hinges on a rumor. Playing out in what might be construed as a typical tiny...
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Coronado: Consequences from the Underbelly
Published: April 3, 2008
By Eryka M. FraczekDennis Lehane’s Coronado spins a tale of unforeseen consequences within the underbelly of humankind. They are revealed as the element of time emerges in the second act. The play is set in a seedy bar somewhere in the South with episodes involving three sets of characters. As...
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Locally Lauded Playwright Will Dunne Has World Premiere in Chicago
By Linda Ayres-Frederick Published: April 3, 2008
As is often the case for playwrights, finding a venue for their work is not an easy task. Many local playwrights enjoyed premieres in other U.S. cities and abroad before getting their work produced in the Bay Area.Although playwright Will Dunne enjoyed success in San Francisco and abroad while living...
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Grand Guignol: It’s Grand, and It’s Thrilling
By Ann Rostow Published: April 3, 2008
By Paul Sinasohn Thrillpeddlers, the masters of arcane and unusual theatre, have come up with a must-see show for anyone who is a fan of Noel Coward or psychological thrillers. They are presenting “Grand Guignol” theatre, a form invented in Paris in the late 1800s that aimed to titillate and...
