Show #29: Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, March 3.
Oy vey, this play. There’s a lot of interesting subject matter in Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s world premiere of Naomi Iizuka’s Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West about the introduction of photography to Japan in the 1800s, but what we get...
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Show #28: Mirrors in Every Corner, Intersection for the Arts, March 1.
When you walk into Intersection for the Arts to see Mirrors on Every Corner, the new play by 25-year-old playwright Oakland native Chinaka Hodge, it looks more like a gallery exhibit than a stage set. Evan Bissell’s art installation and set design run...
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3:30 Live-tweeting the Oscars, because clearly you need to know what a cultural commentator such as myself is thinking every second of the day.
3:35 Oh lord, Cameron & wife showed wearing Na’vi blue. Of course they did.
3:38 Maggie Gyllenhaal and Tina Fey look freaking fabulous. No surprise there either.
3:39 Yes, E! guy: “No-brainer” totally...
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Show #27: An Anonymous Story by Anton Chekhov, Central Works, February 28.
Let’s get this out of the way first. An Anonymous Story by Anton Chekhov isn’t one of Chekhov’s plays. Like most Central Works plays, it’s by company co-director Gary Graves in collaboration with the cast and crew. It is, however, based on a...
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Show #26: Don’t Feel: The Death of Dahmer, Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory & 1 1 11ArtGroup, February 27.
In the program notes for Don’t Feel: The Death of Dahmer, director Eric Wilcox describes some of the concerns he had about the one-man show about “corpse-fucking cannibal” Jeffrey Dahmer written and performed by Evan Johnson: “Why...
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Show #25: The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, Brava! for Women in the Arts, February 26.
Postponed from artistic director Raelle Myrick-Hodges’s inaugural season last year at Brava! for Women in the Arts, the West Coast premiere of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles was finally unveiled at Brava! last Friday to an enthusiastic opening-night crowd that guffawed...
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Show #24: The Caucasian Chalk Circle, American Conservatory Theater, February 24.
Director John Doyle previously came to American Conservatory Theater to kick off the national tour of his acclaimed stripped-down Broadway staging of Sweeney Todd, in which all the instruments were played by the actors. Now he’s back at ACT taking a similar tack with...
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Show #23: Pearls over Shanghai, Thrillpeddlers, February 21.
Pearls over Shanghai opened in June of last year as part of Thrillpeddlers’ Theatre of the Ridiculous Revival and had just kept going ever since, playing to sold-out houses and extending its run repeatedly, most recently to August. It’s been a phenomenal success for the San Francisco...
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Show #22: The Gilded, the Curiouser Group, February 21.
The first show at San Francisco’s Thick House since founding company Thick Description cleared out, The Gilded is a new musical written, composed and directed by Reynaldi Lolong and presented by the Curiouser Group (which may or may not exist outside of presenting The...
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Show #21: Learn to Be Latina, Impact Theatre, February 20.
It’s funny that the night after I saw The Breach, in which racist imagery is offered up as an exhibit of the continuing harmful legacy of slavery, I’d see a show that’s also critiquing ethnic stereotypes, this time by gleefully reveling in their very...
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