A Lad, Two Lasses and a Lasso
WONDER WEDNESDAY
Marin Theatre Company’s Lasso of Truth seems like it was pretty much made for me. It’s a play about the creator of Wonder Woman (and his wife and their lover), as well as the cultural legacy of America’s favorite superheroine. And yeah, I’m pretty much in the bag for that one from the start. But at the same time I’m a pretty tough room, because I know things about Wonder Woman, to put it mildly. I’d pretty much have to, writing about her past adventures every week.
The Sky’s Unlimited
The prolific Lauren Gunderson is back with another play about SCIENCE! I tell you all about it on KQED Arts.
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.
Letters Entertain You
Playwright Sarah Ruhl and director Les Waters reunite to bring to life the lifelong correspondence between poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. My review of Dear Elizabeth at Berkeley Rep is up at KQED Arts.
Family Portrait
There sure are a lot of plays about wealthy Manhattanites. I guess that makes sense, because New York is a large theater market, a lot of playwrights choose to live there, and wealthy Manhattanites are a significant target market. But a lot of these plays wind up playing, and even premiering, in San Francisco, to the point where it feels like there are more plays on our stages about the lives and concerns of the New York rich than anything that might speak to ordinary San Franciscans. It’s the cultural imperialism of the Empire State, and local theaters seem to be only too happy to bow down before it.
Rephrasing Cain
If crime doesn’t pay, it’s not for lack of trying. Though it’s a quick and pulpy read, hardboiled crime writer James M. Cain’s 1935 novella Double Indemnity gives some of the same moral lessons as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s literary classic Crime and Punishment—that murder, no matter how carefully planned or covered up, has a tendency to hound the perpetrators to the ends of the earth.
It’s All About Rita
Berkeley resident Rita Moreno is a bona-fide show business legend, one of the first people to win an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony award. She’ll be 80 in December, but boy, you wouldn’t know it from her performance in her autobiographical show at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup. The play was postponed from June to give Moreno time to recover from knee-replacement surgery, which has slowed down her dancing somewhat, but her energy and stage presence.
Female Shavianism
From Mrs. Warren to Joan of Arc, George Bernard Shaw adored his strong women characters, and was fierce in his condemnation of the gender inequality in Victorian society. His 1895 play Candida takes an interesting approach to this concern, using the situation of one man in love with another man’s wife to explore which gender really holds the power in a traditional married household.
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.
