Reflection in a Portrait
Show #46: Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews?, The Jewish Theatre San Francisco, April 16.
Girlfriend Is Better
Let’s just get this out of the way at the outset. It’s inevitable that Berkeley Rep’s latest world premiere, Girlfriend, is going to be compared to the one that opened the theater’s season: the Green Day pop-punk opera American Idiot, which opened on Broadway this week to enthusiastic reviews. They’re both new rock musicals based on iconic albums, but while the huge spectacle of American Idiot uses all the songs in order without dialogue and leaves you to glean a vague story between the lyrics and the way the propulsive songs are staged, the much more intimate Girlfriend doesn’t bring some perceived implicit story on Matthew Sweet’s best-known album to life. It’s just the achingly sweet, funny love story of two boys fresh out of high school.
The Lighter Side of Death
I’ve been feeling a little like a sucker going to American Conservatory Theater lately, because I haven’t liked anything there this season aside from the season-opening import Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter. But even with that sense of trepidation, Vigil seemed like a pretty good bet.
Tragedy, a Comedy
For some reason Berkeley’s getting its fill of Anton Chekhov adaptations lately. Last month Central Works did its own stage version of Chekhov’s novella An Anonymous Story, and Berkeley Rep just announced its next season including the West Coast premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s new Three Sisters translation next spring. Right now Shotgun Players is doing the West Coast premiere of another adaptation of a different classic Chekhov play: Emily Mann’s update of The Seagull called A Seagull in the Hamptons, which debuted in 2008 at McCarter Theatre Center in New Jersey, where Mann is artistic director and has adapted other Chekhov plays in the past.
