Battle cocks ruffle feathers in Impact's rowdy Rooster
For Gil Pepper, the world as he sees it is a "big fuck-you machine." He lives with his aging mother in a crumbling Oklahoma house his late father built. He has a go-nowhere job as a McDonald's cashier, where his name tag is misspelled "Girl." And though his prospects are bleak, there is a sliver of light: cock fighting.
This ancient sport, Gil tells us, goes all the way back to the Greeks, so there's nobility in allowing feathered beasts to do horrible things to each other in the ring. Gil wants to be a winner at something in life, and this just might be his ticket.
What's so interesting about Eric Dufault's Year of the Rooster, the season opener from Berkeley's Impact Theatre.
Cal Shakes ends season with a vibrant Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a landmark play for California Shakespeare Theater. When the company really became the company, then known as Berkeley Shakespeare Company, the first show produced at John Hinkel Park was Midsummer. Since then, the play has been performed seven more times, and now Cal Shakes concludes its 40th anniversary season with a version of the play that feels unlike any other production of it I've seen.
Porn, feminism and laughs in Aurora's Rapture
There's an observation about Internet porn in Gina Gionfriddo's Rapture, Blister, Burn now at Berkeley's Aurora Theatre Company that is at once hilarious and trenchant. A college woman encapsulates the ease of access to porn this way: "Once you get directions from Google Maps, it seems such a hassle to unfold an actual map."
Generational differences and technology come into play a lot in Rapture, a crackling season opener for the Aurora. Gionfriddo is a smart, feisty writer who knows her way around a joke that always contains more than a laugh. She tackles the gargantuan issue of feminism and its evolution into the 21st century and comes through with a stage full of surprising, complicated characters having passionate, always intriguing discussions.
Cal Shakes sculpts a vital, vivacious Pygmalion
When real life comes in and smacks Prof. Henry Higgins across the face, it's a wonderful thing to see this brilliant yet stunted man consider, perhaps for the first time in his life, that kindness may have worth akin to genius.
The force representing the real world – a world of messiness and emotion and connection – takes the form of Eliza Doolittle, an extraordinary young woman who is the intellectual if not social equal of Higgins and his superior when it comes to living life as most of humanity experiences it.
One of the great things about the California Shakespeare Theater production of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion is how balanced it is.
Grief, puppets collide in TheatreWorks' great Pretender
You don't often think of puppets and drama together, but playwright David West Read makes a strong case for the combination in the world premiere of his The Great Pretender, the first show of TheatreWorks' 45th season.
Original, funny and genuinely moving, Pretender is set in a very specific world – a "Captain Kangaroo"-like children's television program with a mild-mannered host interacting with spunky puppets – and discovers universal strains of grief, comfort and emotional evolution.
Double good, double fun in Cal Shakes' Comedy
A visiting stranger makes a keen observation: "Your town is troubled with unruly boys." The trouble is, he ends up being one of the unruly boys, and that's the fun of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, a masterfully chaotic comedy now at California Shakespeare Theater's Bruns Amphitheater.
As farces go, this Comedy requires us to believe that two sets of not-so-bright twins with the same names – the upper-class set is called Antipholus, the slave set is called Dromio – cause confusion, consternation and furious frustration when roaming the streets of Ephesus of the same day. Once over that hump (and Shakespeare makes it pretty easy), the farce clicks along like a finely tuned laugh machine until brothers are reunited, a father's search is fulfilled and a courtesan gets her diamond ring back.
Director Aaron Posner strikes the right tone from the start...
Mamet with heart (and humor) at Aurora
Berkeley's Aurora Theatre Company concludes its season with David Mamet's American Buffalo, an early (1975) Mamet play that has all the telltale Mamet qualities (staccato dialogue sprayed in four-letter directions, life among conmen and criminals, pointed criticism of the "great American way," etc.), but unlike some of the later, more intentionally provocative and disturbing work, this one has a core of compassion and human connection.
Part of that is Mamet's play and part of it is director Barbara Damashek's production headed by two Bay Area greats: James Carpenter and Paul Vincent O'Connor. Watching them spar is theatrical bliss.
ACT's epic Orphan dusts off ancient tale
American Conservatory Theater concludes its season with The Orphan of Zhao an epic tale of revenge that some scholars think stretches back to the fourth century BCE. It's a tale as old as time, and the first act of this 2 1/2-hour show feels like a millennia itself. But once the revenge gears really start grinding, there's an interesting story here. I reviewed the production for the San Francisco Chronicle.
MTC's Failure blends death, music and whimsy
Philip Dawkins writes about the inevitable ending of all our stories in Failure: A Love Story, but his version of death is pretty darn upbeat. His beguiling play, now having its West Coast premiere at Marin Theatre Company
, is technically a "play with music," but there's a LOT of music, and it's charmingly played and sung by the five-person cast. I reviewed the play for the San Francisco Chronicle:
Hansberry's Sun blazes brightly in Cal Shakes opener
If you can't make it to Broadway to see the latest star-studded version of Lorraine Hansberry's classic American drama A Raisin in the Sun, you'll probably do just as well to head out to Orinda and catch California Shakespeare Theater's season-opening production.
Director Patricia McGregor's production offers a superb cast and makes a case for Hansberry's play to be in the pantheon of American dream plays alongside Miller, Williams and O'Neill.
Kushner unleashes a familial flood of words at Berkeley Rep
There are probably more English words in Tony Kushner's new play than not in the new play. So many things about The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures are staggering (including the title), but chief among them is the amount of dialogue – the number of choice words, the overlapping layers of lively conversation, the sheer volume of communication, attempted and otherwise.
If Angels in America was Kushner at his most Kushnerian – fantastical, political, emotional, hysterical, profound – then iHo (as the play is known) is Kushner at his most ktichen sink-ian.
Far from mangy, this Mutt is a gut buster
Between the Shakespearean twists of House of Cards and the utter inanity of Veep, you'd think that we'd have Washington politics pretty well covered by pop culture. Well clearly not because we need to make room for Mutt: Let's All Talk About Race!, the absolutely hilarious and crazy smart new comedy from San Francisco playwright Christopher Chen.
Writers' souls crushed, hilarity ensues in Rebeck's Seminar
The ego, the insecurity and the courage of fiction writers are all on hilarious and intriguing display in Theresa Rebeck's Seminar, a one-act comedy that derives laughter from pain and theatrical pleasure from whiplash-smart word play.
The premise is simple: four New York writers have paid $5,000 each for 10 weekly classes with a famous writer. They meet in the beautiful (and rent controlled) apartment of one classmate and wait anxiously for the globe-trotting famous guy, who can't really be bothered to remember their names, to pass judgement on their work.
Simplicity, beauty woven into ACT's Suit
Simplicity translates into great beauty in The Suit, a skillfully wrought tale that originated as a story by South African writer Can Themba and has been directed for the stage by the legendary Peter Brook who adapted the story with Marie-Hélène Estienne and Franck Krawczyk.
The Suit, adapted from a previous stage version by Mothobi Mutloatse and Barney Simon, is offered as a contemporary fairy tale in the Grimm style. A charming narrator (Jordan Barbour) tells us that this is the kind of story that could only come out of oppression (such as apartheid), but while that feels heavy and ominous (and for good reason), Brook and his team demonstrate such a light touch that we're charmed as the trio of musicians emerges.
Dear Comrade: No love posted in Aurora's tense Letters
After hosting three cabaret performances, the Aurora Theatre Company's rehearsal/black box/office space (the Dashow Wing, to be specific) known as Harry's UpStage at last beings life as a playhouse. The first play in the space, John W. Lowell's The Letters, a tense, 75-minute two-hander about abuse of power and the triumph of smart people.
Director Mark Jackson is known for his kinetic, dynamic productions, but this time out he's confined to one small office...
Exploring extraordinary Tribes at Berkeley Rep
There is not another drama about family, about communication, about the very essence of language like Nina Raine's Tribes. The 2010 British play now on Berkeley Repertory Theatre's Thrust Stage is among the funniest, most moving and deeply engaging shows we're likely to see this year
Wilson's Fences hits hard at Marin Theatre Co.
I've always been moved by August Wilson's Fences, the 1950s installment of his extraordinary Century Cycle of plays depicting African-American life in the 20th century. But the current production of the play at Marin Theatre Company under the direction of Derrick Sanders made me feel the play in a whole new way.
This has largely to do with Carly Lumbly's wrenching central performance as Troy Maxson.
To laugh or not to laugh: that's the question in Wittenberg
You don't have to have a college degree to enjoy David Davalos' Wittenberg a the Aurora Theatre Company, but it sure will help.
If 16th-century academia is your thing, then you probably already know all about Wittenberg, the German university made famous as the seat of higher learning from which young Prince Hamlet of Denmark returned home after his father's murder.
Wittenberg also happens to be where Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk, theologian and lecturer, nailed his 95 provocative thoughts on a church door and sparked the Protestant Reformation. And, to keep things interesting, the hallowed university happens to be where Christopher Marlowe's fictional Dr. Faustus practiced his dark arts.
Magic's Five Minutes misses the mark
I loved Linda McLean's Any Given Day so much that I proclaimed it my favorite show of 2012 (read my review here). And that makes it all the harder to convey just how much I disliked her world premiere Every Five Minutes at the Magic Theatre.
Va-va-va Venus! ACT's Fur flies
Is it just me, or is it hot in this theater?
Live theater is not usually a hotbed of eroticism – so often attempts at sexiness inspire laughs more than they do accelerated heart rates – but the Bay Area of late has been home to some theatrical sexy time. First we got hot and heavy with polyamory in Carson Kreitzer's Lasso of Truth at Marin Theatre Company (read my review here), which featured Wonder Woman's creator happily submitting to the many strengths of his wife and his girlfriend (who also generated their own heat independent of the man).
And now we have David Ives' scintillating (for lots of reasons) Venus in Fur, in which dog collars, leather bustiers, thigh-high black leather boots and degradation play significant parts.