The Doctor Is Outrageous
In reviewing theater, all too often I have to call out a production for playing the comedy too broadly in a way that just seems clumsy. The humor in Steven Epp’s latest show at Berkeley Repertory Theatre is broad as can be, but it’s so well executed by the cast of eight that it’s usually flat-out hysterical even if it doesn’t bear much thinking about. A Doctor in Spite of Himself is a 1666 comedy by Molière (the artist seldom known as Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) that star Epp and director Christopher Bayes have considerably revamped and updated in a way that only ramps up the hilarity. The play’s a satire about doctors being a pack of frauds, and Epp and compatriots accentuate the already ample farcical element to elephantine proportions, shifting the focus to the common idiocy of humankind.
Grim Fairy Tale
“You know, for a feminist folk tale, this book isn’t half bad.” It’s the devil who says that in The Wild Bride at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, but in this case he’s not steering you wrong. The only misleading thing is that he understates the case.
Ruination and Redemption
Suddenly there’s a small Lynn Nottage festival going on in the Bay Area, with two of the acclaimed contemporary playwright’s works running simultaneously on two sides of the bay: Ruined at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre’s production of Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine at Fort Mason’s Southside Theater (across the hall from, and formerly part of, Magic Theatre).
