Family Reunion of the Dead
Shotgun Players presents an unforgettable Eurydice.
Read my review on KQED Arts. Read more
Lady Windermere’s Fan Club
A stunning local cast makes a sparkling Oscar Wilde classic a must-see at Cal Shakes. You can read my review over on KQED Arts.
The Perils of Pericles
Acclaimed British director (and original Zaphod Beeblebrox) Mark Wing-Davey is back at Berkeley Rep with Shakespeare (& co.’s) troubled shaggy-dog drama Pericles, Prince of Tyre. KQED Arts has my review.
Stood Up Comedy
I went to see Waiting for Godot at Marin Theatre Company, and the headliner didn’t even bother to show! That’s just rude. Despite a promising cast, I wasn’t wild about this one, and you can head over to today’s Marin Independent Journal to find out why. So, shall we go? Yes, let’s go.
Children of Godot
It’s the first time kids have been in a Marin Theatre Company show in well over a decade, so what’s the youth-friendly vehicle in question? Annie? Oliver!? Peter Pan? Of course not. It’s Waiting for Godot! I have an article in today’s Marin Independent Journal about all the logistics of having minors in a major cast, so let’s go take a look. Well, shall we go? Yes, let’s go.
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
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.
Going to Moscow?
The luminous playwright Sarah Ruhl has been a frequent visitor to the Bay Area, and to Berkeley Repertory Theatre in particular, where director Les Waters helmed her breathtaking Eurydice and Glickman Award-winning In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), which went on to become her Broadway debut. Now, just as Actors Ensemble of Berkeley is giving her mammoth Passion Play its belated West Coast premiere across town, Ruhl and Waters are reunited at Berkeley Rep with Ruhl’s new version of Anton Chekhov’s 1901 classic Three Sisters.
It Will Have Blood
For a play that’s supposedly cursed, whose title theater people make a big show of not speaking aloud, the bloody tragedy Macbeth is performed so often that it’s a credit to William Shakespeare that it retains as much power as it does the umpteenth time around. And it’s a credit to director Joel Sass and his strong, multitasking cast that the California Shakespeare Theater production feels as electrifying as if it were entirely unfamiliar and perilous ground.
