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Theater Review: A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER (North Coast Rep)
MURDER MOST TUNEFUL In 2013 a new musical called A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder played San Diego’s Old Globe on its way to a prizewinning run on Broadway. The show is now back for a season-ending run at the North Coast Repertory Theatre, Though perhaps a bit less effective than the 2013 version,…
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Theater Review: THE UNDERSTUDY (Hub Theatre Co. of Boston)
THE SHOW BEHIND THE SHOW A well-done backstage farce is always a good time, especially for theatre lovers. But a well-done backstage farce with something to say, with layers and depth—that is harder to come by, and even more of a good time—thespian or no. Hats off to Hub Theatre Company of Boston‘s The Understudy…
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Theater Review: REEL TO REEL (Rogue Machine & HorseChart)
LIFE ON REWIND In a co-production with HorseChart Theatre, Rogue Machine Theatre continues its astounding season with John Kolvenbach‘s gem of a play, Reel to Reel, a heart-warming, but definitely not sappy, time-jumping story of a 55-year marriage between the determined Maggie Spoon (Alley Mills Bean), a sound and performance artist, and her more reticent…
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Theater Review: DOLORES (Stephanie Feury Studio Theatre)
A KNOCK AT THE HEART With her staging of Dolores, Edward Allan Baker’s two-woman drama about domestic violence, director Stephanie Feury—at the theatre that bears her name—has placed on display a small gem of immense worth. Deedee Woche is Sandra, the married sister struggling to hold her lower-middle-class Providence family together. Davonna Dehay is the…
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Theater Review: 5:45 (Little Theatre at Actors Company)
OFFTIME Abi Watkinson’s one-woman show 5:45 is a poor receptacle for a great deal of talent—one that feels underdeveloped and not fully thought through. The trouble starts with the title. A good title should grab attention, pique curiosity, and function as either clue or bait to lure in a potential patron: The Hundred Years’ War…
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Theater Review: DOG OF CARNAGE (Broadwater Studio)
A TAIL OF LOVE ON A LEASH Playwright Benjamin Schwartz and director Natalie Nicole Dressel, in league with actors Callie Ott and Spencer Weitzel, have served up in Dog of Carnage one of the sharpest comedies in the Hollywood Fringe. Set in a courtroom—presided over by a grating, tonal, squawking, authoritarian judge—Ott and Weitzel are…
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Theater Review: JUST TO BE CLOSE TO YOU (Broadwater Stage)
DÉJÀ LOUCHE Just to Be Close to You opens with an immaculately coiffed and mustachioed Cam Poter stepping before the packed audience at the Broadwater Studio as his alter ego, the renowned lounge singer, Carl Poteraychke, and immediately announcing, “For my last song – ” And we are off to the races. Poter is a…
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Theater Review: NO (Eastwood Performing Arts Center)
SOUNDCHECK FOR SURVIVAL “Aha…sure…uh-huh…yes…ummm…you say….†And so begins NO, dancer/actuation artist Annalisa Limardi’s intriguing, minimalistic dissertation on the social pressures exerted on women, and men as well, to be amenable, positive and passive to the point of evaporation. Limardi hurls about the sizable stage at the Eastwood Performing Arts Center, weaving in and out of…
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Theater Review: NURSING IS MY LIFE (Upstairs @ El Centro)
PAGING DR. DRAMA, STAT! VITALS NOT STABLE Nursing Is My Life was a heart-breaker for me. Charley Karlotta has spent decades as a registered nurse, raising her family, and dreaming of one day doing a show proclaiming how “nursing is her life.” Karlotta is a petite elfin of a person, and you cannot but be…
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Theater Review: OH, CONSTANTINE! (Zephyr Theatre)
NICAEA TRY Oh, Constantine! at the Zephyr Theatre is an odd nut to crack. Or I should say review. One of the best-produced shows at the Fringe, this is the brainchild of playwright / director / producer Jan-David Soutar, with producers Athena Rethis and Clent Bowers, production designer Courtney Stepleton, lighting designer Miles Berman, and finally…
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Theater Review: BEST DAD. NEVER. (Hudson Mainstage)
HOW TO RAISE A DAUGHTER (AND YOURSELF) Woven from his essays featured in Cosmopolitan and O The Oprah Magazine, gay Armenian-American Haig “Hike” Chahinian recounts his humbling and oft-time hilarious adventures as he fumbles through fathering a bouncing biracial baby girl. A compassionate contemplation of all the hardships and hazards the heart is willing to endure for the joy of…
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Theater Review: GUYS AND DOLLS (Ogunquit Playhouse, Maine)
A WINNING ROLL OF THE DICE The musical theater classic Guys and Dolls has been produced so many times and in so many ways you might think it couldn’t get much better, but don’t bet on it. The odds are in the Ogunquit Playhouse’s favor, thanks to tight direction and eye-popping choreography from Al Blackstone….
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Theater Review: JURASSIQ PARQ: A MUSIQAL PARODY (Oasis)
I HAVEN’T BEEN THIS GAGGED AND CLAWED SINCE STEAMWORKS ON A SATURDAY NIGHT Summer is the perfect time to flock to theaters for campy escapist joy, and Oasis SF and producer D’Arcy Drollinger are delivering exactly that with Jurassiq Parq—a hilariously silly and campy “musiqal parody” of the blockbuster 1993 film. Created by the multi-talented…
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Theater Review: THE DOG LOG (Broadwater Studio)
A DUPLEX THAT’S GOING TO THE DOGS Those who flocked to the “Sunshine State” during the population boom of the 1920s and ’30s, were mostly “easterners” who had only known tenement living, cut off from the world outside on the upper floors of some aging brownstone and reduced to the numbers of their apartment door….
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Theater Review: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM (MadKap Productions at Skokie Theatre)
A FITFULLY AMUSING THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM IN SKOKIE A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a glorious farce, a 20th-century construction based on the characters and situations from the works of the old Roman playwright Plautus. The book is by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart (who…
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Theater Review: THE GARBOLOGISTS (Gloucester Stage)
A TRASH-TALKING ODD COUPLE The Garbologists opens with a few seconds of complete darkness and the clang and grind of machinery before two bright headlights move straight toward the audience. Then the lights come up on what was previously an empty street to reveal two New York City Sanitation Department workers in the cab of…
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Theater Review: DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS (Sonoma Arts Live Theatre Company at Andrews Hall)
CON ME IF YOU CAN: SCOUNDRELS STEAL THE SHOW IN SONOMA I was a bit reluctant to review this musical based on that hilarious 1988 film with Steve Martin and Michael Caine as Lothario con men in the south coast of France. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has had success from Broadway to Brisbane. Can a small…
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Theater Review: STEEL MAGNOLIAS (Lamplighters Community Theatre in San Diego)
THE MAGNOLIAS MAY BE STEELY, BUT THEY STILL SMELL PRETTY SWEET For over 80 years, Lamplighters Community Theatre has been providing an important role in San Diego’s theatre scene: creating a space for non-professional actors to come together to do quality work at affordable ticket prices. Part of their sweet spot is their knack for…
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Theater Review: MY FAIR LADY (San Francisco Playhouse)
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…
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Theater Review: CIRCUS ABYSSINIA: ETHIOPIAN DREAMS (Chicago Shakespeare Theater)
BIG TOP, BIGGER DREAMS: ETHIOPIA FLIPS THE SCRIPT AT NAVY PIER (OR “GRAVITY? NEVER HEARD OF IT!”) Despite their being a part of nearly everyone’s lives, dreams hold a never-ending fascination in our psyches and imaginations. And all around the world, they routinely act as a fuel that focus and power our aspirations. One of…
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