Bogarting Romance
Town Hall revives a Woody Allen romcom from way back when the phrase “Woody Allen romcom” didn’t give you the creeps.
Read my review in the East Bay Times and Mercury News. Read more
A Midsummer Night’s Sequel
Shakespeare is a hard act to follow.
Read my review of Demetrius Unbound in the San Jose Mercury News. Read more
Time Passes
I know he’s a fellow Berkeley High alum and all, but I could never get into Thornton Wilder. I’ve seen polished professional productions of Our Town and I’ve seen shakier community ones, but never one that I didn’t find mawkish. It’s just not my thing. So I’m maybe not the best audience for Wilder Times, Aurora Theatre Company’s assemblage of four short plays by Wilder, two from 1962 and two from 1931, but because it has a fabulous cast I decided to check it out anyway. I’m pleased to report that I found myself pleasantly surprised by two of the plays, even if the other two left me cold.
New Review Zoo
I reviewed both ACT and AlterTheater’s new shows for today’s Marin Independent Journal, so you can check out my Round and Round the Garden review here and my Owners review here. Or pick up a copy if you’re in the North Bay, because it looks way better in print.
Anonymous by Chekhov by Graves
Let’s get this out of the way first. An Anonymous Story by Anton Chekhov isn’t one of Chekhov’s plays. Like most Central Works plays, it’s by company co-director Gary Graves in collaboration with the cast and crew. It is, however, based on a novella by Chekhov, as was Central Works’ 2004 play The Duel. Nor is the anonymous narrator truly anonymous: he goes by a couple of different names in the story, but we first meet him as Stepan, a servant in the house of a St. Petersburg government functionary named Orlov.
