Our Stars and Bars, Ourselves
A presidential candidate’s daughter’s very bad decision comes back to haunt her in Confederates.
Return of the Prodigal Son
Playwright Luis Alfaro returns to Magic Theatre with the start of an epic American trilogy.
Read my review on KQED Arts. Read more
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.
Hot Shot Time Machine
Hey, who am I? Who are you? What are we doing here? Where is here, anyway? What’s this needle doing in my arm? And shouldn’t there be a baby in that crib, instead of just a chicken leg? Playwright Octavio Solis explores life’s eternal questions in the world premiere of Se Llama Cristina, and I give you the full report on the KQED Arts blog.
Baker’s Quarter-Dozen
For someone whose work was unseen in the Bay Area before this year, East Coast playwright Annie Baker is suddenly all over the place: Body Awareness at Aurora in February, The Aliens at SF Playhouse in March, and now Circle Mirror Transformation at Marin Theatre Company. I reviewed the latter in the Marin Independent Journal, conveniently readable right over here.
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.
Cop Dependency
Hot off the presses: my review of Keith Huff’s noir melodrama in today’s Marin Independent Journal. So head over there to read about it before the ink cools and the world collapses into chaos and void.
