What’s Going On
Scottish playwright Linda McLean’s back with another disturbing play at the Magic, and it’s a weird one.
What Are They Building in There
Aaron Loeb’s latest play in San Francisco Playhouse’s Sandbox Series of second-stage world premieres, Ideation is a suspenseful and hilarious business-world thriller. You can read my review on KQED Arts.
LaBrutality Beneath the Surface
Neil LaBute is known for unflinching depictions of human cruelty, so what happens when he takes on race in the American heartland? This Is How It Goes. My review is up on KQED Arts.
On the Radio
Hey, remember last week when I linked to my feature in the Marin Independent Journal about It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play at Marin Theatre Company and said I’d be reviewing it this week? Well, that happened in today’s Marin IJ, so you can read all about it over yonder.
Live on Radio on Stage
I interviewed the cast, director and set designer of It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play at Marin Theatre Company, and the feature is in today’s Marin Independent Journal. I know it says “Theater review” up top, but just ignore that; the review won’t be until next week. It looks like my “‘Tis the season” lead didn’t pass muster–dunno if it was that pesky initial apostrophe or just too corny.
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.
We’re a Happy Family
“Happy families are all alike,” Leo Tolstoy writes in Anna Karenina; “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Two classic examples are on display at two Berkeley theatres, both of which are celebrating their 20th anniversary seasons right now, albeit in different ways. Shotgun Players are in the middle of a whole season of commissioned world premieres, while at Aurora Theatre it’s old home week, bringing back key artists from throughout the company’s history. But the plays they’re doing depict two houses, alike in comfortable wealth, that have both been unhappy a very long time.
“Light” Could Be Brighter
Marie Curie notwithstanding, the contributions of women to the field of science is an oft-neglected topic, so it’s generally a good thing when something like the 2009 movie Agora or Karen Zacarías’s play from that same year, Legacy of Light, comes along to set the record straight about great female scientists of history.
Things Fall Apart
Some days it’s all you can do just to hold it together, and sometimes every day is like that. That’s the feeling one gets from Minneapolis playwright Allison Moore’s latest comedy, Collapse, which plays Aurora Theatre in a National New Play Network rolling world premiere that will subsequently play Curious Theatre in Denver and Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas in different productions. Collapse was one of the plays read last season as one of the finalists in Aurora’s Global Age Project new works initiative, and is the second GAP play to go on to a main stage production at the theater.
