The Queen Anne Bible
MTC’s Anne Boleyn radically reenvisions “the harlot queen” as the mother of the Anglican Church.
Read my review in the Marin Independent Journal. Read more
Disconnected in the Connected Age
New Caryl Churchill play breaks in ACT’s shiny new Strand Theater. Read my review on KQED Arts.
The last time I’d been in the Strand was 25 years ago, back when it was a grimy old movie theater, attending the Rocky Horror Picture Show because I was dating somebody in the live cast at the time. It looks a whole lot different now.
Faust Talking
So Hamlet, Martin Luther and Doctor Faustus walk into a college, and that thing’s the play.
My review of Wittenberg at Aurora Theatre Company is on KQED Arts. Read more
American History Mex
California Shakespeare Theater’s season opener, Richard Montoya’s American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose, is completely bonkers. KQED Arts has my review.
Fire in the Home
How far would you go along to get along? Find out when Mark Jackson directs a new translation of Max Frisch’s 1958 play The Arsonists at Aurora Theatre Company. My review‘s at KQED Arts.
Sentimental Medley
A funny thing happened at TheatreWorks’ opening night of Upright Grand at Palo Alto’s Lucie Stern Theatre. Before the show started, my dad turned to me and asked if a certain piece of preshow music was Hoagy Carmichael or not. I didn’t know, I said, because while I’m into old-time jazz I’m not much for schmaltzy stuff. It’s not schmaltzy, he objected—it’s sentimental. Then the play started. In the second scene, 12-year-old daughter Kiddo rolls her eyes at the song her dad, Pops, is playing, “Smile” by Charlie Chaplin, and she mocks how schmaltzy it is. “It’s not schmaltzy, Kiddo, it’s sentimental. There’s a difference.”
Stages of Grief
It’s hard enough dealing with grief when you understand what happened, and why and how it happened, but when what’s happening to someone you love is completely incomprehensible, it’s mighty hard to get your mind around it and resign yourself to anything. For whatever reason, plays all over Berkeley depict families dealing with highly unconventional versions of loss.
Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth
Ever since Jonathan Moscone started adding late 19th and early 20th century classics into California Shakespeare Theater’s seasons early in his decade as artistic director, the company has done an outstanding job with the works of George Bernard Shaw, Anton Chekhov and Oscar Wilde. Former San Jose Rep artistic director Timothy Near, who helmed Cal Shakes’s near-perfect 2008 production of Uncle Vanya, now takes on George Bernard Shaw’s 1893 play Mrs. Warren’s Profession, which was initially banned for its no-nonsense discussion of prostitution and particularly of society’s culpability for providing few economic alternatives for women.
Sprawling Pastures
There was an appropriately agricultural scent in the air for opening night of California Shakespeare Theater’s world premiere of John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven. The company’s brand new Sharon Simpson Center with café, store, offices and the like under a verdant living roof was not quite completed, and the prosperous smell of fertilizer wafted through the outdoor amphitheater.
