Putting the Nick Back in Antigone
Shotgun Players’ Antigonick is the third bold new interpretation of Sophocles’ ancient tragedy Antigone to be produced by a Bay Area theater in the last couple of months.
Read my review on KQED Arts. Read more
Super, Thanks for Asking
I was bummed to miss Super:Anti:Reluctant the first time around, in 2006, because I’m interested in the San Francisco ensemble Mugwumpin’s collaboratively devised work, and it’s a whole show themed around superheroes. I don’t want to shock you or anything, but I’m a big ol’ geek about superheroes. Fortunately, Mugwumpin’s celebrating its tenth anniversary with a celebration mysteriously titled Mugwumpin10 (what could it possibly mean?!), which includes revivals of favorite old pieces such as S:A:R and 2010’s
This Is All I Need. Mugwumpin was going to follow these revivals in rep with the premiere of a new piece in September, Blockbuster Season, but the show has had to be postponed for health reasons. Read more
Seven Against Illyria
A magnificent seven local actors–all female–take on Shakespeare’s ever-durable comedy Twelfth Night. My review is on KQED Arts.
Marley We Roll Along
Marin Theatre Company’s holiday show riffs on Dickens through the dead eyes of Scrooge’s partner.
My review is in today’s Marin Independent Journal. 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.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Talking
What exactly is being communicated, and how is it different from what’s being said? For that matter, why’s it being said the way that it is? These questions underlie a lot of the conversations in Precious Little, the latest show at Shotgun Players, but they’re questions that could as easily be asked of the intriguing, entertaining and elusive play itself. It’s written by Madeleine George, a New York playwright whose work I’m not familiar with, but I’m delighted to see that another one of her plays is titled Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England. She’s also from Amherst, Massachusetts originally, just like Circle Mirror Transformation playwright Annie Baker—or like Emily Dickinson, for that matter.
Tesla Foiled
It’s hard to imagine what Future Motive Power would have been like if the ensemble Mugwumpin hadn’t managed to obtain use of San Francisco’s Old Mint to stage it in. It’s not that the Mint has anything to do with the story of inventor and electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla being told in the collaboratively devised performance piece, but so much of the experience is defined by the interactive experience of the crowd moving through the historic building’s basements and vaults at the prompting of the actors that one wonders what people would get out of it in a traditional theater space.
Homeric Undone
After creating a propulsive contemporary take on George Orwell’s Animal Farm for Shotgun Players’ summer show last year, this summer writer-director Jon Tracy followed it up with The Salt Plays, Part 1: In the Wound, a stunning, kinetic, poetic riff on the Trojan War that both was and wasn’t an adaptation of The Iliad. And if that wasn’t ambitious enough, Tracy followed his Iliad up this December with–what else?–his Odyssey, following his cold-blooded, business-suited strategist Odysseus on his long-delayed voyage home to his waiting wife Penelope.
Ethnical Difficulties
It’s funny that the night after I saw The Breach, in which racist imagery is offered up as an exhibit of the continuing harmful legacy of slavery, I’d see a show that’s also critiquing ethnic stereotypes, this time by gleefully reveling in their very offensiveness. Impact Theatre’s world premiere of Enrique Urueta’s Learn to Be Latina is an often screamingly funny show offering a heaping helping of “oh no he didn’t,” plus what’s no doubt the most priceless glory hole moment I’ve ever seen on stage.
