Dan Zeff

KEIKO GREEN IS THE QUEEN IN KATE HAMILL’S TERRIFIC NEW PLAY The Little Fellow (or The Queen of Tarts Tells All) may seem like a frivolous title for a serious play, but dramatist Kate Hamill has plenty of weighty themes in her script, now getting its world premiere at Cygnet Theatre. And with Hamill at…

A JEKYLL AND HYDE SCRIPT In 1886, Robert Lewis Stevenson’s short novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published in London. The story has become one of the most popular in English language literature, dealing with an upper-class English scientist who manages to split his personality between good and evil, with…

FOR ALL IT’S GIRTH Sumo is a Japanese sport in which two bulky Japanese wrestlers clutch and grab at each other within a circular ring enclosed by bales of straw. The goal is to either eject the opponent from the ring or knock him on his back. The typical match runs a few seconds and…

DON’T DOUBT THIS PRODUCTION John Patrick Shanley‘s drama Doubt: A Parable opened in New York City in 2004 and won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2005. As evidenced by New Village Arts‘ production, which opened at the Conrad Prebys Theatre last weekend, twenty years after its premiere it still ranks among the most stirring…

SOMEONE MUST HAVE CLIPPED THE WINGS, BECAUSE THIS ANGEL DOESN’T FLY There are times when a reviewer is tempted to recuse himself (or herself) from publicly commenting on a comedy because he/she is unenthusiastic about a work that the audience apparently finds hilarious. Thus is my dilemma assessing North Coast Rep‘s The Angel Next Door,…

PERFECTLY MARVELOUS Cabaret is a masterpiece of American musical theater that has been presented in a vast variety of musical and physical shapes and sizes since its premiere on Broadway in 1966. The score has been cut, added to, and shifted around, and the mood and look have been countlessly revised. So audiences attending the…

EVITA IS SURPRISINGLY GOOD FOR YOU The Cygnet Theatre revival of the musical Evita has already been extended to October 1, 2023, due to positive ticket buyer interest. Cygnet visitors should find much to admire in the production, though it does have issues. But decent presentations of Evita don’t come around very often, so area…

THE WEARYING WIVES OF WINDSOR Scholars generally believe that William Shakespeare wrote about 38 plays. And those scholars likely would rank the comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor at or close to number 38 in the Shakespearean canon. The play centers on Sir John Falstaff, one of the great comic characters in world literature. According…

YOUR ONLY CRIME WOULD BE MISSING THIS PUNISHMENT The Old Globe Theater is presenting the world premiere of Crime and Punishment, A Comedy and it is a gem of a satire on one of the most famous novels in 19th-century Russian literature. In a bit under 90 uninterrupted minutes, co-authors Steve Rosen and Gordon Greenberg…

“You not only have a right to be an individual. You have a responsibility.” — Eleanor Roosevelt Eleanor at the North Coast Repertory Theatre is a one-woman drama that condenses the life of Eleanor Roosevelt into a glowing portrait of one of America’s great ladies. Running barely 85 minutes with no intermission, each minute is…

THIS SHOW IS MURDER The latest production at North Coast Rep is a stage adaption of Dame Agatha Christie’s 1923 detective novel Murder on the Links. Originally titled The Murder on the Links, it was the second novel to star the Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot. The eccentric Poirot became one of the most popular…

ANNA MIKAMI ALREADY WELL-SEASONED IN HER THEATRICAL DEBUT For theatergoers who have been waiting impatiently for a new play about monosodium glutamate, your wish has been answered. Check out the world premiere of Keiko Green’s new work at the Old Globe, called Exotic Deadly: Or The MSG Play. Anna Mikami as Ami and Eunice Bae…

THE BLOSSOMS DO EVENTUALLY BLOOM IN THIS ORCHARD Russian playwright Anton Chekhov believed his classic 1904 drama The Cherry Orchard was a comedy bordering on farce, but generations of audiences, scholars, and reviewers have leaned toward the play (as well Chekhov’s other major works for the stage) as melancholy pieces filled with frustrated characters enduring…

 ¡JUGAR A LA PELOTA! Under A Baseball Sky is a likable new play by José Cruz González now nearing the end of a five-week run at the Old Globe Theatre. It’s tight work, running about 90 minutes without an intermission. The comparative brevity still allows the playwright to touch a number of themes, several of them of the…