Barry Willis

MOTHER OF EXILES BAFFLES AT BERKELEY REP Jessica Huang’s world premiere Mother of Exiles has posted a closing date of December 21. The lengthy run may not be a blessing for a disjointed production said to have been in re-writes up to the night before the opener. Michele Selene Ang On a simple two-level set that takes advantage…

THE HILARIOUS NOISES OFF IS ON AT SF PLAYOUSE — OFF YOU GO The huge interior of an imposing English country estate by Heather Kenyon greets visitors to the San Francisco Playhouse, scene of an outlandish new production of Michael Frayn’s enduringly popular farce-within-a-farce Noises Off. The cast Seamlessly directed by Bill English, everything that…

A SONDHEIM SPECTACLE Sonoma County’s Spreckels Performing Arts Center has launched a tremendous production of Into the Woods, the perpetually popular and nearly forty-year-old musical spoof of classic fairy tales by composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim and author James Lapine. The show debuted on Broadway in 1987, won multiple Tony awards, and has been a recurring item…

A STUNNING INDECENT REMINDS US THAT FREE SPEECH IS ALWAYS ON TRIAL The triumphs and travails of an itinerant Yiddish theater troupe get a full examination in Paula Vogel’s acclaimed hit play Indecent. A stunning and nearly all-Equity production of the award-winner is now playing at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek….

A FEATHERBABY IN SPRECKELS’ CAP A talking, squawking parrot dispenses wit, wisdom, and wonder in Featherbaby at Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park. In a bright green suit and yellow bow tie, Gina Alvarado astounds as a wise-cracking high-energy Amazon parrot belonging to forensic photographer Angie (Mercedes Murphy), newly single after her lover walked…

TRANSCENDENCE DOES BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFULLY Sonoma County’s home-grown musical revue troupe Transcendence Theatre Company has launched a wonderful production of Douglas McGrath’s theatrical biography Beautiful – the Carole King Musical. Britta Rae, David R. Gordon, Anne Terze-Schwarz, Billy Cohen The amazingly popular show has enjoyed many productions nationwide. TTC’s production has an inexplicably short ten-day run,…

GET ME TO SF PLAYHOUSE ON TIME: MY FAIR LADY CHARMS UNION SQUARE Every summer, San Francisco Playhouse puts on a classic blockbuster musical that runs from early July into September. It’s an unbeatable gambit   taking advantage of the tourist traffic in the Union Square district. Jillian A. Smith This year’s offering is a stunning…

MUSICAL SATIRE SUPREME Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions closes out its 2024-25 season with a screamingly funny spoof of an inexplicably popular TV franchise, in which five rich boozy women can’t stop bickering when their reality show is threatened with cancellation. A reboot – and rewrite – of a show that debuted last year, The Real…

THE RUMOR THAT RUMORS IS A SCREAM IS NO RUMOR The late playwright/screenwriter Neil Simon remains one of America’s most beloved creators of comedy. His plays often hinge on ludicrous setups, as in his classic Rumors, directed by Larry Williams at Sonoma Arts Live. Covering up evidence of poor judgment is a foolproof gambit that…

ANOTHER WORTHY WAY TO WONDER AT THE WORLD On rare occasions even the most seasoned reviewers are confounded by the inadequacy of language to describe a production so beautiful and transcendent that words fail to do it justice. Such a production is multiple award-winning The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time which opened May…

The pleasure lies not in the cookies, but in the pattern the crumbs make when the cookies crumble. ~ Michael Korda Playwright Lynn Nottage is a national treasure—a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for drama, and among the very best storytellers in mining nuance from ordinary circumstances and historical facts. Her heart-rending Intimate Apparel and Sweat…

A TALE OF TWO CITIES Theater is all about storytelling, and stories don’t come any better crafted than Jon Robin Baitz’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated Other Desert Cities. The SF Bay Area is enjoying two simultaneous presentations of this compelling family drama—one directed by Dana Nelson-Isaacs at Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions through May 4, and the other…

LOVE AND CHANGE, SONOMA STYLE Dating and mating get fully examined and fully skewered in I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change at Sonoma Arts Live in downtown Sonoma, through May 4. Ably helmed by North Bay veteran Carl Jordan in Andrews Hall at the Sonoma Community Center, the production is a series of musical…

THE ART OF MAKING ART An extravagant art purchase causes a major upheaval among three old friends in Yasmina Reza’s Art, at Berkeley’s Ashby Stage through April 9. David Sinaiko and Benoît Monin The setup: former college buddies Serge, Marc, and Yvan meet regularly for dinner, drinks, and discussion. One day Serge (Benoît Monin) announces…

NAPA’S LUCK PENNY GOES TO POT– IN A GOOD WAY A hokey 1930s propaganda film runs headlong into Beach Blanket Babylon in Reefer Madness at Napa’s Lucky Penny Productions through March 23. A musical spoof by Dan Studney and Kevin Murphy, the show opens with a swarm of zombies lifted right out of Michael Jackson’s…

YOU GOTTA HAVE HEART Two young immigrant women find joy and hope in a budding friendship in Lloyd Suh’s The Heart Sellers, at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre through March 9. The show moves to TheatreWorks in Mountain View for a three-week run in April. Adroitly directed by Jennifer Chang, the two-actor 90-minute one-act, an uproarious comedy…

FANTASTIC FROGGY Jennifer Haley’s audacious graphic novel Froggy comes roaring to life on the Margaret Lesher Theatre’s big stage in Walnut Creek, and it’s one of the freshest theatrical offerings anywhere. Jamella Cross (Froggy) At its core a tale of a young woman who falls for a flaky third-tier actor, Froggy is a dark comedy spoofing…

WELL-SEASONED THEATER IS LOADED WITH FLAVOR Welcome to 1999, a time of hysteria over the impending Y2K crisis, widespread fear of monosodium glutamate (MSG), crude video games and crude popular culture. In the midst of all this wanders a Japanese-American high school girl named Ami (Ana Ming Bostwick-Singer), wrestling with her cultural identity, arguing with…

SIX DEGREES SPOOFS UPPER-CLASS PRETENTIONS Sonoma Arts Live (SAL) has launched an ambitious production of Six Degrees of Separation, John Guare’s now-classic tale of belief and deception among New York City socialites. Purportedly based on a real story, Six Degrees played on Broadway before becoming a 1993 film starring Donald Sutherland and, from the Lincoln…