The Family That Hates Together Grates Together
Imagine spending time with a family full of absurdly inconsiderate people who can’t stand each other and constantly push each other’s buttons. And it’s not even your family. My review of The Lyons at Aurora Theatre Company is in the Marin Independent Journal.
Heavy Viewing
A play about a 600-pound man, performed by a skinny guy in a fat suit, is a tricky proposition.
Read my review of Samuel D. Hunter’s The Whale at Marin Theatre Company in the Marin Independent Journal. Read more
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
A Reconstruction
Matthew Lopez’s The Whipping Man sees a wounded Confederate soldier and two of his former slaves scraping together a makeshift Passover seder just a day or two after the Civil War. You know, like you do. Marin Theatre Company gives the play its local premiere, and my review is in today’s Marin Independent Journal.
A Transparent Menagerie
I reviewed this Tennessee Williams chestnut for today’s Marin Independent Journal. So it’s all over yonder if you want to read all about it.
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.
It Will Have Blood
For a play that’s supposedly cursed, whose title theater people make a big show of not speaking aloud, the bloody tragedy Macbeth is performed so often that it’s a credit to William Shakespeare that it retains as much power as it does the umpteenth time around. And it’s a credit to director Joel Sass and his strong, multitasking cast that the California Shakespeare Theater production feels as electrifying as if it were entirely unfamiliar and perilous ground.
