Whale Songs
Central Works remakes Moby-Dick as a musical about radical conservationists in the 1970s.
Read my review in the Contra Costa Times and other Bay Area News Group papers. Read more
Talk and Talk and Talk About a Revolution
Shotgun Players is taking on The Coast of Utopia,Tom Stoppard’s mammoth trilogy about the budding Russian intellectual life of the mid-19th century, planting seeds for the revolution that will come much later. Having done chapter one, Voyage, last year, Shotgun now presents part two, Shipwreck, in repertory with a limited revival of Voyage. My review‘s up on KQED Arts for the intrepid explorer.
Tis the Season to Be Melancholy
The Cutting Ball Theater is marking the centennial of August Strindberg’s death in a very big way, performing all five of the seminal Swedish playwright’s Chamber Plays together in repertory for the first time in any language. They’re all in new translations by Paul Walsh, three of them commissioned by Cutting Ball, and all newly published as a book by Exit Press. The plays are split into three separate bills that have been rolled out gradually since October 12, allowing one double bill to get on its feet before opening the next, but last weekend and this coming, final weekend all five plays are performed in all-day marathons from noon to close to midnight.
Bitter Swede Symphony
The Cutting Ball Theater is performing all five of August
Strindberg‘s Chamber Plays in rep (the first time it’s been done in any language), and I tell you all about it in today’s Marin Independent Journal, reporting back on the first installment, The Ghost Sonata. I will say that it makes me awfully jazzed to see the rest of them. Read more
