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Theater Review: WAITING FOR GODOT (Geffen Playhouse)
70 YEARS ON, AND WE’RE STILL WAITING You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. — Albert Camus, playwright and novelist Aasif Mandvi and Rainn Wilson Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot has generated volumes of…
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Theater Review: SUESSICAL (Berkeley Playhouse)
“HOW LUCKY YOU ARE” TO SEE SEUSSICAL No one does youth and family theater better in the Bay Area than The Berkeley Playhouse. Everything they offer features classic and family friendly shows performed by talented ensemble actors of all ages. Even the young child performers can sing and dance to choreographed numbers with heart and…
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Theater Review: DR. SEUSS’S HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS! (The Old Globe)
YOU’LL BE GRINCHING FROM EAR TO EAR For the 27th year The Old Globe is presenting its hit musical Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, continuing its position as one of the essential entertainment attractions of the holiday season. Youngsters and adults will love it for the same reasons. It tells a great story…
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Theater Review THE NANNY LIVE! (Oasis Nightclub in SF)
Club Oasis, San Francisco’s premiere drag and cabaret theater showcases the best of Bay Area’s queer community’s talent, from fresh performers to campy remakes of pop culture and TV shows (their recent Rocky Horror was a hoot). The latest sitcom to be spoofed by the talented Oasis team of performers is The Nanny. the CBS…
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Theater Review: THE ODD COUPLE (Roustabouts Theatre Company in San Diego)
EVERYTHING ODD IS NEW AGAIN Before ABC-TV made 114 episodes of the 1970-1975 sit-com The Odd Couple starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugma), there was the movie starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in 1968. But all of that followed the original Neil Simon play by the same name, which was a huge Broadway hit…
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Theater Review: INTO THE WOODS (Kokandy Productions)
INTO THE WOODS ACCOMPANIED BY TWO PIANOS? IN A STOREFRONT THEATRE? IT’S A DREAM COME TRUE Kokandy’s production of Into the Woods directed by Derek Van Barham with music direction by Nick Sula is a clever reimagining of this Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine classic for a storefront theatre space. Most notably, this production reimagines the orchestrations…
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Theater Review: PACIFIC OVERTURES (East West Players)
EAST WEST PLAYERS PULLS OUT ALL THE SHOGUNS FOR A RARELY SEEN SONDHEIM MUSICAL On Sunday, East West Players opened their new production of Pacific Overtures by Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and John Weidman (book). From 1976, this is one of Sondheim’s more overlooked shows. If you’ve never seen this unusual musical, this will…
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Theater Review: NEXT TO NORMAL (CV Rep in Cathedral City)
ABNORMALLY REAL CV Rep opened it’s 24/25 season this past week with a triumphant production of the rock musical Next to Normal, ably directed by CV Rep’s Artistic Director Adam Karsten. Groundbreaking in its exploration of mental illness, grief, and the impact these issues have on a family, the show won the Pulitzer Prize for…
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Theater Review: FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (starring Jason Alexander at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts)
JASON ALEXANDER ISN’T FIDDLING AROUND — HIS POIGNANT PERFORMANCE GROUNDS THIS REVIVAL In Lonny Price’s revival of Fiddler on the Roof, Jason Alexander’s performance as Tevye stands out as the production’s defining accomplishment. Alexander, well known for his comedic prowess on television, surprises here by sinking into the rich, layered pathos of Tevye — a…
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Theater Review: PRIVATE EYES (Theatre Palisades)
PRIVATE EYES IS SO PRIVATE THAT YOU’LL CROSS YOUR EYES TRYING TO FIGURE IT OUT Perhaps Shakespeare was right to say “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” At least that seems to be the case in Steven Dietz’s Private Eyes, a “Comedy of Suspicion” now onstage at Theatre…
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Theater Review: TARTUFFE (Hub Theatre Company of Boston)
SOMETIMES YOU CAN GET WHAT YOU WANT I have been in a foul mood for the past several days, looking for ways to smash the patriarchy, cursing the unseasonably warm and dry November in my soul and longing to methodically knock a few people’s hats off. Thus I accounted it high time to get to…
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Theater Review: DATA (Arena Stage in D.C.)
SURE, LET SILCON VALLEY DO ITS JOB WITH THE GOVERNMENT. WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Along with The Other Americans, Arena Stage is offering yet another world premiere. A highly relevant corporate thriller that makes the Enron financial scandal look tame, DATA plunges viewers into the ethically complex world of Silicon Valley at a time when our…
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Theater Review: SOJOURNERS (Huntington Theatre, Boston)
SETTING THE STAGE FOR AN EXTRAORDINARY CYCLE OF SHOWS How appropriate! I thought, as I stood in the August Wilson Lobby of the Huntington Theatre last night. I was about to see Sojourners, the first in the nine-play Ufot Family Cycle that celebrates multiple generations of a Nigerian and Nigerian-American family. Playwright Mfoniso Udofia was…
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Theater Review: THE OTHER AMERICANS (World Premiere by John Leguizamo at Arena Stage in D.C.)
SEEN THROUGH A LATINO CONTEXT, THE OTHER AMERICANS IS A UNIVERSAL GLIMPSE INTO FAMLY TRAUMA The world premiere of John Leguizamo’s newest endeavor, The Other Americans, directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, packs a hard punch in the gut while exploring familial dysfunction and immigrant survival. John Leguizamo (Nelson) and Luna Lauren Velez (Patti) Leguizamo stars as…
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Theater Review: GATZ (Elevator Repair Service at The Public)
GREAT F. SCOTT! Elevator Repair Service’s justifiably heralded Gatz returns to The Public, opening tonight for a final New York City encore, and it’s congenial, unforgettable theater. Directed by John Collins, this single 6 1/2-hour production (more than 8 hours with the breaks) terrorized me at first because I can’t sit still for such a long time,…
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Theater Review: BACK TO THE FUTURE: THE MUSICAL (National Tour)
TIME I’LL NEVER GET BACK Without hyperbole, I can say that Back to the Future is the worst musical I have ever seen. Any time I see a show that truly knocks it out of the park, it fills me with so much joy to be able to review it. Nothing quite compares to the…
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Theater Review: DRAGON LADY (Lesher Theatre, Walnut Creek)
DRAGON LADY ROARS AT CENTER REP Sara Porkalob’s solo tribute to her grandmother is both an astounding theatrical event and a master class in storytelling. Part biography, part autobiography, part cabaret musical, and part comedy, the show is a tour-de-force, on a sumptuous set by Randy Wong-Westbrooke. Dragon Lady runs at the beautiful Lesher Theatre in Walnut…
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Theater Review: PERICLES (Royal Shakespeare Company at Chicago Shakespeare on Navy Pier)
ROYAL SHAKESPEARE’S RADIANT PERICLES All the indicators promised that it’d be special: after a 30-year lull, England’s Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) entered a new and ongoing partnership. Part of this refreshed collaboration included bringing RSC’s production of Shakespeare’s seldom seen Pericles to Navy Pier. But it wasn’t until the first…
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Theater Review: DIVA THE PLAY (Zephyr Theatre)
MEMORIES OF CHERISHED TIMES As we age and our memories fade away, certain items from our lifetime can trigger both happy and unpleasant memories, making us feel in the moment without worrying about what we may have already forgotten. Thus, your life can become a joyous celebration of happy times filled with love and great…
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Theater Review: LEROY AND LUCY (World Premiere at Steppenwolf’s Ensemble Theater)
The devil’s voice is sweet to hear. — Stephen King, from the novel Needful Things Steppenwolf’s production of Leroy and Lucy by Ngozi Anyanwu is a seductive and life-affirming reimagining of the legend of Robert (Leroy) Johnson and his deal with the devil. Little is known about Robert Johnson’s life, largely because it was so…
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