Fo-pas: Laughing (or not) through Accidental Death
Maybe you have to be in the right mood for a satirically slapstick political farce. I can tell you I was definitely in no mood for satirically slapstick political farce – not that I knew that when I sat down to watch the Berkeley Repertory Theatre/Yale Repertory Theatre production of Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo.
The last time director Christopher Bayes and his merry band of clowns came to Berkeley Rep – two years ago with Molière's A Doctor in Spite of Himself (read my review here), I was thoroughly delighted by the expertly calibrated zaniness. Now...
Bouncy Island breezes blow at TheatreWorks
Last Saturday I reviewed the TheatreWorks production of Once on This Island, the charming musical fairy tale by the Ragtime/Rocky team of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. My review ran in the San Francisco Chronicle, and you can read it here.
Director Robert Kelley's production captures much of the show's charm and energy, and the cast is delightful. But I've been thinking about...
Blood, gore, giggles galore at Impact Theatre
Blood is fun – at least it is within the confines of Impact Theatre's omnibus presentation Bread and Circuses, a collection of nine short plays fairly dripping with the thick red stuff.
As you'd expect with such an assortment, there's a wide variety in style and substance here. There's also one easy-to-draw conclusion: endings are hard.
The most satisfying entries in this two-hour experience at LaVal's Subterranean include...
Life, love, kick-ass music in Bengsons' Hundred Days
In those moments, when the music and voices are soaring, the drums are pounding, the feet are stomping and the hands are clapping, there's no better place to be than sitting in Z Space fully immersed in the glorious new rock musical Hundred Days.
A creation by The Bengsons, the musical duo comprising spouses Abigail Bengson and Shaun Bengson, Hundred Days is an unconventional musical that is so much more than it seems.
Fifty shades of Wonder in Marin Theatre Co.'s Lasso
You're bound to like Carson Kreitzer's Lasso of Truth if you like Wonder Woman...and a heaping helping of S&M on the side.
If you didn't know the two were related, first of all, think about it for a minute (the golden lasso, the bustier, the metal bracelets, etc.), and second of all, has Kreitzer got an origin story for you. Commissioned by Marin Theatre Company, the play is part of the National New Play Network, which means this is what they call a "rolling world premiere." The show begins in Mill Valley then heads to Atlanta and Kansas City.
So where did Wonder Woman come from (and we're not talking about Paradise Island, home of the Amazons)? For many of us, she sprung fully formed in the 1970s looking like Lynda Carter in a patriotic bathings suit and gold accessories. That famous TV show is actually a jumping-off point for Kreitzer's play.
Chita! The liveliest living legend of all
In her opening number, Chita Rivera sings, "You're alive, so come on and show it. There's such a lot of livin' to do." She finishes the song, and the 81-year-old legend adds, "I mean it." And she's not kidding. After a triumphant turn in the Fairmont's Venetian Room in 2010, Rivera returned to the Bay Area Cabaret as part of the company's 10th anniversary season. Rivera's performance four years ago was spectacular (read my review here). This time out, she was beyond spectacular.
Greed not so good in ACT's Napoli!
Scuzza me, but you see back in old Napoli that's...
In the play Napoli!, it's not so much "amore" as it is "controlling the market." American Conservatory Theater's new translation of Eduardo De Filippo's 1945 play eschews the Italian title, Napoli milionaria!, in favor of translators Linda Alper and Beatrice Basso's choice, Napoli!. The exclamation point might suggest a musical (Hello, Mussolini!), but it's probably meant more ironically. Naples during World War II, especially before the allies arrived, was a pretty dismal, bombed-out, typhus-infested place with no shortage of shortages.
Neither a chest-beating drama nor an uproarious comedy, Napoli! resides in an in-between zone...
Simply put, Just Theater's A Maze is just amazing
There's only so much you can say about Rob Handel's delectably intriguing play A Maze without spoiling the fun. The first thing to know is that the play was first produced in the Bay Area last summer by Just Theater at the Live Oak Theater. That production generated such buzz, both from critics and audience members, that the astute folks at Shotgun Players pricked up their ears and decided to re-mount that production at the Ashby Stage.
The re-mount brings back the original cast of eight under the direction of Molly Aaronson-Gelb, and though I didn't see the show last summer, it's hard to imagine these performances are not sharper and more astute this time out.
Shhhh! Fizzy Speakeasy fun until it's not
So I met a fella in a yellow fedora on the steps of a museum, and he told me where to go to find The Speakeasy, a new interactive theater experience created by Nick A. Olivero and Boxcar Theatre.
I reviewed the show for the San Francisco Chronicle, and I have to say this was a hard review to write only because I so wanted to love this ambitious enterprise.
Gardley's House stands best when it sings
Music is so ingrained in New Orleans culture that it's no surprise when a play set in the area turns out to be full of wonderful choral singing, voodoo chanting and other musical surprises. But what's interesting about Marcus Gardley's The House that will not Stand, now receiving its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, is that music elevates the show in ways the plot and characters do not.
This play about a mixed-race family in New Orleans circa 1836 really wants to be a musical.
Fit to be tied in Aurora's powerful, provocative Knot
To call Gidion's Knot, Johnna Adams' play now at the Aurora Theatre Company, a mystery is accurate but only to a point. Certainly there are things we don't know and need to find out, but there's a whole lot more to this complex, disturbing and even devastating drama.
Looking at Nina Ball's incredibly realistic fifth-grade classroom set – complete with tiled ceiling and fluorescent lights – it's easy to think, "A play about a parent-teacher conference in a bright, friendly classroom. How intense could this be?" Oh, it's intense all right.
Bucky's back and better than ever
I've probably seen D.W. Jacobs' R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe five times now, and I get something new out of it every time. I saw the one-man show starring the extraordinary Ron Campbell about 14 years ago when it opened in San Francisco at Theatre Artaud. That production ran for over a year, went on tour, then came back about a year later. I thought I might get weary of Bucky and his fascinations, but that was never the case.
Now History/Mystery is back...
Turning on a paradigm in Magic's HIR
The last time Taylor Mac was in town, he gave us the five-hour Lily's Revenge with glitter, drag queens, a cast of 40 and so much dazzling theatricality that we were able to withstand his absence in the following three years (read my Lily's Revenge review here)
Mac has continued to wow audiences in shows like his two-man outing with Mandy Patinkin or La Ma Ma's acclaimed The Good Person of Szechwan, but the Magic Theatre was able to lure him back to present the world premiere of something entirely different than Lily's Revenge. This time out, Mac is the playwright of HIR (pronounced like "here"), a fairly traditional two-act, two-plus-hour play that seems like a sitcom filtered through Mac's gender-fluid, ragingly intelligent, funny and passionate artistry.
Aaron Loeb wins Glickman for Ideation
Ideation was a good idea from the start.
Berkeley-based playwright Aaron Loeb is the winner of the 2013 Glickman Award for the best new play to premiere in the San Francisco Bay Area. Loeb won for Ideation, which had its premiere last fall at San Francisco Playhouse as part of the company's "Sandbox Series" for new work.
Why won't Baryshnikov smile?
Perhaps not surprisingly, Mikhail Baryshnikov has once again crossed paths with high art. The legendary dancer has aged into a successful career as an actor/performance artist. At 66, he could simply retire. Or teach. But he continues to push himself in new directions.
?
This time out he is working with Big Dance Theater's Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar to adapt to Anton Chekhov short stories ("Man in a Case" and "About Love") from later in the celebrated writer's career. But these aren't simple, straightforward adaptations. No, these are video installations. These are dance-movement pieces. These are...
Complex Jerusalem unfolds at SF Playhouse
San Francisco Playhouse deserves tremendous credit for tackling Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem, a multi-award-winning play in London and New York whose success hinged, in large part, on a central performance by Mark Rylance, one of our greatest working actors.
Minus Rylance's dazzle, the rambling, shambling play must stand on its own, and there's not much there there, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein.
Jason Brock pops a cork at Society Cabaret
If you only know Jason Brock from his appearances on Simon Cowell's X Factor televised singing contest and flashing light show, you only know part of Jason Brock. Sure, he's a fabulous showman with a distinctive sense of style and a killer set of pipes. But he's not all sequined flash and bravura attitude. He's also a serious singer and a thoughtful performer who knows how to punctuate his performances with sparkle and sass to ensure that his delightful personality and penchant for improvisation come shining through.
Slice of SF life in fascinating Pornographer's Daughter
Liberty Bradford Mitchell's story of pornography, family and murder could so easily come across as a public form of therapy. Given what she and her family have been through, that would certainly be understandable and maybe even interesting in a sort of voyeuristic way. But Bradford Mitchell, working with director Michael T. Weiss as crafted something much richer and more interesting in The Pornographer's Daughter, a solo show for performer and rock band now at Z Below.
Bradford Mitchell is the daughter of Artie Mitchell and niece of Jim Mitchell, the infamous Mitchell Brothers, purveyors of porn and major players in ...
Starry, starry night: Gunderson lights up Sky at TheatreWorks
Mind-expanding science and heart-expanding characters are the stock in trade of San Francisco playwright Lauren Gunderson, whose not-so-stealthy takeover of the Bay Area theater scene couldn't be more welcome. Her staggering smarts are matched by her delectable sense of humor, so any new work with her name attached to it is reason for celebration.
Gunderson's latest Bay Area production comes from TheatreWorks: Silent Sky, a bright, poignant drama...
The might that is right and Shaw's Major Barbara
Might, they say, makes right, but whose might and whose right? Muddled human notions of charity, salvation, integrity and power receive a full-bore workout in George Bernard Shaw's 1905 comedy/drama/call for revolution, Major Barbara. In the American Conservatory Theater production that opened Wednesday (in association with Theatre Calgary), Shaw – especially his rather extraordinary brain – is the star attraction.
The grand and glorious space that is the Geary Theater sometimes gets the better of director Dennis Garnhum (the artistic director of Theatre Calgary), who can't always find ...