Singing in the Basement
Hey, it’s my first review in the Contra Costa Times! Go forth and
read my review of Center REP’s doo-wop popsical Life Could Be a Dream. Read more
The Importance of Being Wilde
There must be something in the water in the South Bay and Peninsula. TheatreWorks has unveiled a new musical version of Oscar Wilde’s classic comedy The Importance of Being Earnest in Mountain View, not long before San Jose Rep opens another musical adaptation of a great British play of the 1890s written by a renowned Irish wit: A Minister’s Wife, based on George Bernard Shaw’s Candida. While the latter is set in the original period, Being Earnest has been transplanted to the swinging London of the 1960s for some reason, or for no reason at all.
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.
