Theatre Saves TV–Maybe
Can live television be saved? What, in 2014? Is that even a thing? Find out in Thunderbird Theatre’s Show Down! Or you could
read my review on KQED Arts. Read more
Throwing Muses the Musical
An indie-rock icon’s memoir is adapted for the stage at DIVAfest. My review is on KQED Arts.
Hanky Panicky
Let’s get this out of the way first: There is no fantasy club in The Fantasy Club. A lot of the play is about sexual fantasies, but there’s no group of people in it who assemble to discuss them or act them out or anything like that. It’s about a young housewife and mother of two, Frances (an entertainingly conflicted Siobhan Marie Doherty), who’s decided to get back into writing, and she’s decided her new project is to write a whole book of erotic poetry. Nobody’s very supportive about this new “hobby” of hers; her best friend Sam (played by Claire Rice as wry but sluggish and zoned-out) cautions her that she hasn’t a prayer of getting published, and her husband Max (Tavis Kammet as an amiable and oblivious regular schmoe) finds the idea of her publishing something so carnal awfully embarrassing. Also, like her cooking, Frances’s writing stinks.
Zombie Jamboree
We always knew this day would come. Suddenly, zombies are everywhere, oddly concentrating their infestation on small theater companies in San Francisco’s theater district. The good news is that if the plays they’re in are to be believed, they seem to be mostly harmless.
San Francisco Values
I was born and raised in Berkeley, where most people can be safely assumed to be pretty liberal, and nothing sets my teeth on edge more than the belittling portrayal of the place I grew up as some kind of wacky radical madhouse, the view embodied in terms like “Berserkeley” or “San Francisco values.” My native Bay Area may make a mockery of itself on occasion—hometowns do that sometimes—but I’m always mighty sensitive about anything coming along to make it look silly.
