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Theater Review: A NIGHT WITH JANIS JOPLIN (Sonoma Arts Live Theatre Company at Andrews Hall)
JOPLIN ROARS A legendary rock singer comes roaring back to life in A Night with Janis Joplin at Sonoma Arts Live. Libby Oberlin With elegant direction by Carl Jordan (also responsible for the psychedelic set), Libby Oberlin embraces the essence of Janis in Randy Johnson’s expertly-researched script, a stage version of what the film industry…
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Theater Review: THE HEART (La Jolla Playhouse)
THEATRICAL ARRHYTHMIA La Jolla Playhouse has always been fairly adventurous in its programming, but its latest premiere chooses a subject that feels less like theatrical fodder than a medical case study. A human heart travels from the body of a dead teenager to a waiting recipient, and along the way the audience is asked to…
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Theater Review: JUST ANOTHER DAY (Dan Lauria and Patty McCormack at Odyssey Theatre Ensemble)
IT MAY BE JUST ANOTHER DAY, BUT THIS ISN’T JUST ANOTHER PLAY If I were to start by telling you what author Dan Lauria’s sly new play is about, a great number of you might stop reading in disgust, thinking, “I’ve lived through that; I don’t need to see a play about it.” However, Just…
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Theater Review: THINGS WITH FRIENDS (World Premiere at American Blues Theater)
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE… Early in the proceedings of Things with Friends, the new play by Kristoffer Diaz (Hell’s Kitchen, The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity) a character dismisses another’s trauma with a snide, “I’m sorry. We all wish we didn’t see things fall”, to which the other responds, “Some of us actually wish that things…
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Theater Review: EUREKA DAY (Marin Theatre Company)
EUREKA! Private school children often grow up in a carefully protected bubble. Their privilege shields them from many of life’s cruelties, creating a world of like-minded students, parents, and teachers. The adults strive to give their children better opportunities for the future, building a space meant to foster creativity in a safe and nurturing environment….
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Theater Review: PASSENGERS (The 7 Fingers at American Repertory Theater)
ON THE RIGHT TRACK The 7 Fingers (Les 7 Doigts), a Montréal-based circus arts company, brings 90 spellbinding minutes of exhibitions of strength, flexibility, coordination, balance, courage, timing, and trust to the A.R.T.’s Loeb Drama Center in Passengers. The 7 Fingers collaborated with A.R.T.’s 2012 production of Pippin and have performed on numerous occasions at…
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Theater Review: LETTICE & LOVAGE (Lamplighters Community Theatre in San Diego)
HOW TO SUCCEED IN HISTORY WITHOUT REALLY TELLING IT Meet Lettice Douffet (Bobbi Randall), an eccentric tour guide at Fustian House, a drab Tudor mansion. Burdened with delivering its painfully dull history to visitors, she finds the plain facts intolerable. Instead, Lettice gradually begins to embellish wildly, weaving dramatic tales of intrigue, passion, and bloodshed…
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Theater Review: FEATHERBABY (Spreckels Theatre Company in Rohnert Park)
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…
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Theater Review: A NEW BRAIN (PrideArts at Center on Halsted)
WHO NEEDS A HEALTHY CORTEX WHEN YOU’VE GOT THIRTY-TWO SHOWSTOPPERS? The urge to create has served as a muse for countless forms of art: literature, opera, film, and theatre are littered with examples of the form. Opening the new season of Pride Arts at Center on Halsted A New Brain, a musical by multiple Tony winners,…
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Theater Review: ACHILLES IN ARCADIA (Skylight Theatre)
ACHILLES’ HEEL IN ARCADIA There is a misunderstanding of critics among some circles, a sense that they are all cast in the mold of Ellsworth Toohey, the sniveling, Machiavellian art critic from Ayn Rand’s heavy-handed, objectivist treatise masquerading as a novel, The Fountainhead. Toohey is a vile creature who resents anyone who displays the talent…
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Theater Review: SCAT-TER BRAIN: THE MUSIC OF ADHD (Candace Johnson at The Marsh Berkeley)
CANDACE JOHNSON IS AN ADHDIVA! ATTENTION MUST BE PAID (EVEN IF IT WANDERS) Now playing at The Marsh Berkeley is Scat-ter Brain: The Music of ADHD, written and performed by Candace Johnson. This semi-autobiographical piece traces her journey of self-discovery before and after being diagnosed with inattentive-type ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) at age 40….
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Theater Review: TEATRO ZINZANNI (Cambria Hotel)
The circus is in town! The entrance to the Cambria Hotel on West Randolph Street in Chicago is so nondescript as to be almost invisible. Barely wider than its revolving door, you could walk right past it and not even know it was there. Once inside the tiny lobby, you’re directed to the back where…
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Theater Review: PARADE (Tour at Kennedy Center, D.C.)
A stark and haunting Parade marches into the Kennedy Center, the final stop of this Broadway tour, confronting history with stripped-down staging and searing urgency The national tour of Parade, now at the Kennedy Center, arrives with an intensity that refuses to let its audience settle. Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s 1998 musical has always…
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Theater Review: SHUCKED (National Tour in Hollywood)
A FIELD OF PUNS IN FULL BLOOM Corn puns are like tequila shots. A few will make you smile and loosen you up, but by the time you are ten or twelve deep you start to wonder how you got here and whether you should call a cab. The national tour of Shucked, now playing…
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Theater Review: THE MEANINGFUL ACTION THEATRE COMPANY PRESENTS A WORKSHOP READING OF “MUFFED: A RECOUNTING OF FARMINGTON, MAINE’S 43RD ANNUAL CHESTER GREENWOOD DAY DEVISED BY THE MEMBERS OF THE MEANINGFUL ACTION THEATRE COMPANY AND PRODUCED BY DAVID NEW”
MUFFLE THIS MUFFED; IT’S COMEDY LOST IN THE NOISE The films of Christopher Guest are sui generis. From hundreds of hours of improvisation, his talented troupe of actors create memorable characters whose consistent hallmark is their sincerity of purpose. There is nary a wink at the audience nor a trace of self-consciousness. These characters are…
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Theater Review: HOW TO TRANSCEND A HAPPY MARRIAGE (Redtwist Theatre)
Redtwist’s Smashing New Play Rattles the Status Quo with Laughter and Wisdom Are there limits to happiness? Can any one of us remotely comprehend the countless forms it can take? Those two questions rest at the heart of Sarah Ruhl’s rakish rebel of a play, How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, now stirring things up…
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Theater Review: DECEIVED (The Old Globe)
In the 1940s, Hollywood seemed awash in films that can be grouped as psychological thrillers. There were variations on the plot, but essentially the films all portrayed a sheltered and sensitive young woman married to an older man who tries to manipulate her into believing she is descending into madness. The man may be emotionally…
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Theater Review: & JULIET (National Tour in Los Angeles)
SHAKESPEARE, INTERRUPTED About five minutes into & Juliet, Juliet belts “…Baby One More Time” with such raw confusion you half-believe Britney’s lyrics might hold the secrets of the universe. It should collapse under its own absurdity, yet it lands. That is the show in miniature: ridiculous on purpose and, against the odds, brilliant. Rachel Simone…
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Theater Review: NO CHILD… (Gloucester Stage Company)
THE LEFT BEHIND Frankly, I was in theater hell this Saturday afternoon. Two women on one side of me were whispering to one another throughout the first 10 minutes of the show; a man on the other side was eating something out of a crinkly bag and repeatedly clearing his throat. People in front of…
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Theater Review: THE WIZ (North American Tour at Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre)
A BEWITCHING WIZ Director Schele Williams’s touring adaptation of The Wiz touches down in Boston like a technicolor cyclone and lifts its audience up with a storm of funk, gospel, and unapologetic Black joy. Amber Ruffin’s updated book recasts Dorothy (Dana Cimone) as a recently orphaned girl from an urban background who has come to…
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