Rumble on the Mountain
You don’t usually expect to find an inner-city gang war atop a woodsy mountain.
Read my review in the Marin Independent Journal. Read more
It’s Greatly to Their Credit
Lamplighters polishes its Pinafore so carefully that now it is the operetta show to see.
Read my review in the San Jose Mercury News. Read more
Homeric Legend
In post-apocalyptic Northern California, The Simpsons becomes the stuff of myth.
My review of Mr. Burns, a post-electric play is on KQED Arts. Read more
The Apartment, the Musical
Neil Simon and Burt Bacharach made The Apartment into a musical, and I wish they hadn’t.
My review is in the San Jose Mercury News and other Bay Area News Group papers. Read more
The Best of All Possible Musicals
Leonard Bernstein’s operetta of Candide clinging to optimism in the face of countless horrors has a troubled history of its own.
Assassin Nation
That Stephen Sondheim has picked some perverse subjects for his musicals shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone, given that one of his most beloved classics concerns a certain serial-killing barber who provides the secret ingredient for his neighbor’s meat pie shop. But a musical about the various people who have killed or attempted to kill the President of the United States from John Wilkes Booth down to John Hinckley Jr.? Now that’s really pushing the boundaries of good taste.
