Talk About the Passion
THEATER REVIEW: BERKELEY
Show #38: Passion Play, Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, April 22.
No One Expects the Russian Revolution
Shotgun Players’ 2008 premiere of Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage was such a resounding success—winning the Glickman Award for best play to premiere in the Bay Area that year—that it’s no wonder that Shotgun commissioned Beowulf playwright Jason Craig and composer Dave Malloy to write another song-play for the company. Beardo is another raucous musical celebration of a legendary badass, this time Grigori Rasputin, the mystic “Mad Monk” who advised the last of the Russian Tsars, Nicholas II, and his wife, the Tsaritsa Alexandra.
We Two Are One
THEATER REVIEW: BERKELEY
Show #17: I Dream of Chang and Eng, UC Berkeley Department of Theater Dance & Performance Studies, March 4.
Quite Becoming
THEATER REVIEW: BERKELEY
Show #126: Becoming Julia Morgan, The Julia Morgan Project, December 19.
Can’t Tease Everybody
I rarely miss a show at Berkeley’s Impact Theatre, because I’ve always liked the company’s fast and loose energy and its knack for finding outrageously funny new comedies. And from the name alone, The Play About the Naked Guy looked to be one of them. I’ve enjoyed several of the cast members in other things, and have been impressed with some of the shows director Evren Odcikin has helmed lately at Brava and Boxcar.
