Homeric Legend
In post-apocalyptic Northern California, The Simpsons becomes the stuff of myth.
My review of Mr. Burns, a post-electric play is on KQED Arts. Read more
Masochism Tango
American Conservatory Theater’s masochistic backstage comedy isn’t exactly hard-hitting.
Buried Child Revived
Magic Theatre brings back one of its most famous premieres, 35 years later. My review of Buried Child is on KQED Arts.
Witch’s Brujaja
Playwright Luis Alfaro dazzled Magic Theatre audiences two years ago with Oedipus el Rey, his lyrical barrio gangster update of Sophocles’ ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex. It was hardly his first go-round with the Greeks; his 2003 play Electricidad explored the Electra tale in the same modern setting. Everyone knows Greek tragedies come in threes, so now Alfaro completes his trilogy of sorts (drawing from three completely different story cycles in different eras of classical mythology) with Bruja, a new version of Euripides’ Medea set among recent Mexican immigrants in San Francisco’s Mission District. This world premiere reunites Alfaro with Magic producing artistic director Loretta Greco, who directed his Oedipus and now helms Bruja.
But We Regress
French playwright Yasmina Reza seems particularly interested in how small things become blown out of proportion. In her ubiquitous play Art, the close friendship between three men is threatened when one of them buys an expensive painting that another one thinks is crap. The Unexpected Man depicts two strangers on a train obsessing over the coincidence that one of them is reading a book that the other one wrote. And in God of Carnage, her 2006 comedy now making its Bay Area debut at San Jose Repertory Theatre, two couples meet to discuss an incident of playground violence between their sons, but their pleasant and civilized chitchat gradually gives way to chaos and savagery.
Hollywood Neverending
American Conservatory Theater has kicked off its season with an oddity: Once in a Lifetime, a revival of a 1930 Hollywood satire by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, the writing team much, much better known for the comedies You Can’t Take It With You and The Man Who Came to Dinner.
Frustrating Coworkers Are Frustrating
It’s hard not to compare the world premiere of What We’re Up Against to the last (and first) time artistic director Loretta Greco staged a Theresa Rebeck play at Magic Theatre, with 2009’s Mauritius, a whip-smart crime caper about rare stamps with funny, rapid-fire Mametian dialogue. The comparison is more tempting still because more than half the cast of the new play–Rod Gnapp, Warren David Keith and James Wagner–was in the prior production.
