TheatreFirst’s Bold Third Act
Longtime East Bay company TheatreFirst reinvents itself with a bold new mission.
Read my company spotlight for Theatre Bay Area. Read more
The Original Romcom
TheatreFIRST tries its hand at free Shakespeare in the park with Much Ado.
Read my review in the San Jose Mercury News. Read more
Knot in Your Gut
Gidion’s Knot is a hard play to take. As seen in director Jon Tracy’s brutally effective Bay Area premiere staging at Aurora Theatre Company, Johnna Adams’s drama is 75 minutes of nonstop tension, alleviated only by moments of grim humor.
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
Strangers Will Make You Uncomfortable
Scottish playwright Linda McLean returns with an eerie, elliptical portrait of a life in five scenes.
Bonnie and Clyde’s Barn Dance Jamboree
Bank-robbing couple Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow have been objects of popular fascination since their heyday of the 1930s—a sexy young couple whose crime sprees were blown up into folklore even while they were active, and were then gunned down in their prime by law-enforcement officers in the course of, you know, enforcing the law. From the classic 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde to the Serge Gainsbourg/Brigitte Bardot pop song of the same name released that same year, they’ve been elevated to the level of mythic figures, like their fellow American outlaws Jesse James and John Dillinger.
Tales to Astonish
Mark O’Rowe’s Terminus at Magic Theatre is a spellbinding, dizzying play in which it doesn’t matter a whit that it’s made up of three people standing around telling their stories. KQED Arts has my review.
She’s So Quirky
You’ve scoffed about the romantic comedy wish-fulfillment archetype, now see the play! Katie May’s “graphic novel play” Manic Pixie Dream Girl is playing at ACT’s new Costume Shop Theater, and I wrote it up for the KQED Arts Blog. Head over there to read all about it.
Embarrassment of Riches
Boy, this was a hard year to reduce to a Top Ten. When I look over the list of the 117 shows I attended in 2012, eight strike me as shoo-ins for the list, and then there are fifteen other shows vying for the remaining two slots. Mind you, that’s a good problem to have; there really was a lot of good theater in the Bay Area this year—and, of course, some so-so and not very good theater as well. And of course there’s not any inherent virtue in the vast theaterscape of 2012 being reducible to a list in the first place, so maybe I should quit my kvetching, suck it up, and get to it. Although I’m restricting myself to ten, these shows aren’t ranked or numbered and are listed in chronological order.
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.
