Munro Doctoring
Word for Word converts Alice Munro’s short stories to plays without changing a word.
The Empathic Duo
Before the opening of the Bay Area premiere of Becky Shaw, SF Playhouse artistic director Bill English gave a stirring speech about theater as a gym for compassion, for developing the muscle of empathy. The sentiment rings true, but it’s also ironic going into a comedy about people who either lack compassion for anyone outside of their chosen circle or whose empathy draws them into trouble. Whether or not you empathize with these characters, you’re such to be entertained by them in this tantalizing first local glimpse of playwright Gina Gionfriddo’s work, thanks to an excellent cast and director Amy Glazer’s sharply paced staging.
A Rosensweig by Any Other Name
Although San Jose Rep and TheatreWorks had both done the play in the past, the late Wendy Wasserstein’s 1992 Broadway hit had somehow never made it to San Francisco until now, so I’d never seen The Sisters Rosensweig before Saturday night—nor, if truth be told, had I seen any of Wasserstein’s plays. I had some vague notion that it had something to do with Chekhov’s Three Sisters, because of my unexamined assumption that anything with three sisters had to be informed by that play, from Lear’s daughters to Daisy Duck’s nieces. Turns out the Rosensweigs aren’t Chekhovian in the slightest, although Wasserstein tosses in a few Three Sisters references in the same offhand, apropos-of-nothing way that distinguishes a lot of play’s bon mots.
