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Theater
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Off-Broadway Review: CAN I BE FRANK? (Soho Playhouse)
FRANK MORGAN Not too long ago in Sag Harbor, Morgan Bassichis spent time at an artist residency. For those unfamiliar with such places, Morgan wryly explained that “an art residency is when you go somewhere else to have sex with people.” During open visiting hours, a man stopped by the studio and asked about Morgan’s…
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Theater Review: MAGNOLIA BALLET (Shotgun Players, Berkeley)
SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT UNDER A WEEPING MAGNOLIA: SHOTGUN’S HAUNTINGLY BEAUTIFUL STUNNER Now playing with an extended run in Berkeley, Shotgun Players’ Magnolia Ballet by Terry Best is the best thing I’ve seen all summer. A Southern gothic tale infused with poetry, music, and dance, this rich, genre-blending story speaks urgently to our divided political climate—offering a…
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Theater Review: OUT THERE (Broadwater)
Let there be no mistaking it, Mark Vigeant is so funny that if he was performing on an amphitheater set up in front of Mount Rushmore, after the first five minutes milk would be shooting out of Lincoln’s nose, Washington would be laughing so hard his cumbersome dentures would go flying out of his mouth,…
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Theater Review: SOME LIKE IT HOT (National Tour, Hollywood)
EVERYONE WILL LIKE IT HOT It wouldn’t be a valid review to simply write, “I loved it!” a hundred times and ship it off to my editor. However, if you’re looking for a bottom line or a simple recommendation, that’s exactly what this review will come down to. Leandra Ellis-Gaston and the company Evoking the…
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Theater Obituary: ROBERT WILSON (1941-2025)
VISIONARY OF STILLNESS AND LIGHT The line was always the thing. Before speech, before movement, there was line. Line as structure, line as breath, line as the actual measurement of time. In the theatre-world Wilson built and then rebuilt across five decades, a single raised eyebrow might require five full minutes to complete its journey….
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Theater Review: THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE (Hudson Backstage)
SEXLESS IN THE CITY Have you ever been with a guy who won’t shut up and just enjoy the blow job? That’s what it’s like to sit through Ashley Griffin’s new two-person play, The Opposite of Love, which premiered last year off-Broadway, and is now having its first West Coast performances at the Hudson Backstage…
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Off-Broadway Review: ROLLING THUNDER (New World Stages)
PATCHWORK PATRIOTISM, POWERED BY A KILLER SETLIST With a book credited to Bryce Hallett, one may expect Rolling Thunder to be a new Off-Broadway musical. Despite the presence of a librettist, however, the show—now playing at New World Stages—functions far more as a rock concert than a traditional book musical. Of its 2-hour runtime, only…
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Theater Review: BILLIE JEAN (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre)
GAME. SET. NOT QUITE MATCH. Tennis great and feminist icon Billie Jean King gets the biography treatment in Billie Jean by Lauren Gunderson. Opening the new season of Chicago Shakespeare, this crowd-pleasing world premiere follows Billie Jean from her childhood in the 1950s through to the US Open in 2006 when the USTA National Tennis…
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Theater Review: THE MEETING TREE (Company One Theatre)
REPAIR AND REPARATIONS Company One’s world premiere of The Meeting Tree powerfully evokes the debate and the struggle over reparations and restitution through the lives of six women, some Black, some white, all of them related through their connection to one white man who lived in Alabama before the abolition of slavery. Director Summer L….
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Theater Review: ICE CREAM BLONDE (Actors Company)
DEAD BLONDES TELL NO TALES — EXCEPT THIS ONE Conspiracy theories have surrounded the death of actress and restaurateur Thelma Todd since 1935, when her lifeless body was discovered in a garage slumped behind the wheel of her parked Lincoln Phaeton convertible. Alexandra Kopko, as the actress’s ghost, presents a bio of Todd’s life to…
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Theater Review: ARTEMIS BOOKS & THE WELL-MEANING MAN (The Village Theater at Rivendell Theatre Ensemble)
AN EXTREMELY FEMINIST PLAY. OR IS IT? Never meet a man, they say. What happens if we have to work with one? Artemis Books & The Well-Meaning Man poses the complex question of how, if at all, men should be allowed into women’s safe spaces—or if it’s unethical to exclude them. The Village Theater’s world…
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Theater Review: BETSY & PATTY FIND OUT (The Broadwater)
WAITING FOR COWDOT Normally, a surfeit of hyphens in any production assures trouble ahead, but Aaron Francis, the writer-director-designer-producer of this subversive, potent indictment of the lethal potential of passivity, has shown himself the exception that either tests or proves that rule. In Betsy & Patty Find Out at the Broadwater Second Stage, seven cows…
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BACKSTAGE PREPAREDNESS: WHY EVERY ACTOR SHOULD KNOW SAFETY BASICS
Whether you’re a seasoned stage performer or a rising star, the world of live theatre is as exhilarating as it is unpredictable. Between quick costume changes, towering sets, and hasty tech adjustments, minor accidents can happen. That’s why some local thespians and crew members are signing up for First Aid—not to prepare for disaster, but…
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Theater Review: NOISES OFF (The Old Globe)
NOISES OFF, LAUGHS ON English playwright Michael Frayn debuted his farce Noises Off in 1982, and decades of audiences and reviewers have since happily applauded Frayn’s work as perhaps the funniest as well as the most challenging comedy in the canon of English-language theater. The Old Globe has accepted the Noises Off challenge this summer,…
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Off-Broadway Review: GINGER TWINSIES (Orpheum Theatre)
TWO GINGER SNAPS UP FOR THIS PARENT TRAP PARODY The subtitle for Ginger Twinsies, the new Off-Broadway comedy which opened last night at the Orpheum Theatre, reads: “The Parent Trap parody (legally speaking).” Having never seen Nancy Myer’s 1998 Disney film starring Lindsay Lohan, it gave me pause; I wondered if I’d spend the evening…
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Theater Review: LOVE’S LABOURS LOST (Lanes Coven Theater Company at Windhover Performing Arts Center in Rockport, MA)
WIN OR LOSE, IT’S ABOUT LOVE Wow! Whoever wrote Love’s Labour’s Lost was a comic genius. The wordplay, the multi-lingual puns, and the send-ups of characters stumbling over their own foolishness are endlessly entertaining—except that many productions of this play by William Shakespeare fall flat. The sometimes obscure (to us) Elizabethan references and word usage…
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Off-Broadway Review: JOY: A NEW TRUE MUSICAL (Laura Pels Theatre
JOY TO THE WHIRL For every inventive soul who’s ever heard “no,” “pass,” or “next,” Joy is for you. Based on the life of Miracle Mop inventor Joy Mangano, this briskly staged musical delivers an energetic blend of domestic chaos, entrepreneurial grit, and interior musical theater gold to keep it well fueled for its two-hour…
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Theater Review: MÉNAGE À QUATRE (LA LGBT Center)
MÉNAGE À MEH, OR BOB & CAROL & DEAD & AIRLESS Last Saturday, I caught the world premiere of Ménage à Quatre, a play that seems to promise a farce but instead delivers a muddled mess. Written by Peter Lefcourt and directed by Ryan O’Connor, the show is a guest production at the Davidson/Valentini Theatre…
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Theater Review: THE FANTASTICKS (Ruskin Group Theatre)
THE KIND OF SEPTEMBER YOU’LL WANT TO REMEMBER With the original opening Off-Broadway in 1960 and running an astounding 42 years, The Fantasticks is a veritable classic amongst the repertoire of musical theater. This perennially popular piece by composer Harvey Schmidt and librettist & lyricist Tom Jones is a two-act chamber piece—an eight-character, minimalistic, melancholic, commedia…
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Theater Obituary: RICHARD GREENBERG (1958-2025)
A CHRONICLER OF PRIVILEGED ANXIETY In the peculiar ecosystem of American theatre—where earnestness often trumps elegance and message supersedes craft—Richard Greenberg, who passed on July 4, 2025 at 67, occupied a singular niche. His characters were the sort of people who attended the right universities, read the correct books, and still found themselves paralyzed by…
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