Four Brides for Four Dudebros
One of Shakespeare’s less popular comedies gets the musical treatment.
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
Embarrassment of Riches
Boy, this was a hard year to reduce to a Top Ten. When I look over the list of the 117 shows I attended in 2012, eight strike me as shoo-ins for the list, and then there are fifteen other shows vying for the remaining two slots. Mind you, that’s a good problem to have; there really was a lot of good theater in the Bay Area this year—and, of course, some so-so and not very good theater as well. And of course there’s not any inherent virtue in the vast theaterscape of 2012 being reducible to a list in the first place, so maybe I should quit my kvetching, suck it up, and get to it. Although I’m restricting myself to ten, these shows aren’t ranked or numbered and are listed in chronological order.
Blood Red, White and Blue
The presidential debates are upon us, Election Day is just a few weeks away, and two local theater companies are getting into the spirit of the thing by staging gleefully perverse musicals about the U.S. presidency.
Mourning Sickness
God’s Ear is a curious concoction. The 2007 play by New York writer Jenny Schwartz is now at Berkeley’s Ashby Stage in a lively staging by dance theater artist Erika Chong Shuch. The plot, such as it is, would make you think it’s an examination of grief, but really it’s much more an examination of language—the triteness and insufficiency of it, the way it often feels like it doesn’t matter what you say as long as you say something.
