George and Martha — Sad, Sad, Sad
The booze and barbs flow in Shotgun’s stylized new take on Virginia Woolf.
Read my review in the East Bay Times and Mercury News. Read more
Soup Kitchen Confidential
Shotgun cooks up redemption in soup kitchen drama Grand Concourse.
My review is in the East Bay Times and Mercury News. Read more
Bun in the Oven, Fire in the Loins
Shotgun Players gets uncomfortable with Penelope Skinner’s The Village Bike.
Read my review in the East Bay Times and Mercury News. Read more
A Better Mousetrap
Shotgun Players plays ubiquitous Agatha Christie whodunit with just enough camp to make its flaws into virtues.
Read my review in the San Jose Mercury News. Read more
Family Reunion of the Dead
Shotgun Players presents an unforgettable Eurydice.
Read my review on KQED Arts. Read more
Two People, Three Relationships
Megan Trout and Mark Jackson play two closely intertwined people living three different lives.
Read my review on KQED Arts. Read more
Dancing Around the Genocide
Earnest young actors get in over their heads grappling with colonialism in Just Theater’s sharply cutting play within a play.
My review of We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, from the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884–1915 is on KQED Arts. Read more
Dracula Rises from Graves
Shakespeare’s cool and all, but the cultural legacy of Bram Stoker is incalculable, especially for someone who’s really only known for one book. (He wrote others, but how many can you name?) Sure, he based the character on Count Dracula very loosely on a 15th century historical figure (although there’s some debate about how much he knew or cared about that and how much has been projected onto his work by enthusiastic scholars and fans), but what we think of when we think of Dracula is entirely Stoker’s invention. For that matter, our whole conception of vampires in general is inextricably tied up in Stoker’s imagination, though certainly it was influenced by folk tale and some earlier, lesser known vampire tales of the 1800s, like Carmilla and Varney the Vampire. It’s a safe bet that if Stoker had never written Dracula, the vampire craze in popular culture over the last century-plus would never have happened.
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.
Talk and Talk and Talk About a Revolution
Shotgun Players is taking on The Coast of Utopia,Tom Stoppard’s mammoth trilogy about the budding Russian intellectual life of the mid-19th century, planting seeds for the revolution that will come much later. Having done chapter one, Voyage, last year, Shotgun now presents part two, Shipwreck, in repertory with a limited revival of Voyage. My review‘s up on KQED Arts for the intrepid explorer.
