Think Inside the Box
The cool thing about Stuck Elevator, the latest world premiere at American Conservatory Theater, is that it’s a sung-through musical about a Chinese delivery guy getting stuck in the elevator of a Bronx apartment building for 81 hours without food or water. That’s also the problematic thing about it. The show’s based on a true story, and while the fact of this guy getting stuck in an elevator is fascinating, actually watching someone stuck in an elevator gets tedious after a while. The creators of the play have to work very, very hard to keep things interesting, and the strain shows.
Cycle of Abuse
Let’s get this out of the way first. Dael Orlandersmith’s solo show at Berkeley Repertory Theatre is very good, but man, it’s not pleasant. Black n Blue Boys/Broken Men is a series of portraits of abused young boys, most but not all of them speaking as adults, or as close to adulthood as they’ve managed to get while grappling with the demons of their childhood. If that’s the sort of thing you’re going to find triggering, go in forewarned.
