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Theater Review: FOOL FOR LOVE (Steppenwolf Theatre)
A BRILLIANTLY BRACING LOOK AT LOVE’S OTHER SIDE Romantic love is rarely easy. Even when a relationship progresses from first attraction to full commitment to picture-perfect nuptials, there are no guarantees. Since its 1983 debut in San Francisco, Sam Shepard’s hour-long one-act Fool for Love, written after a difficult divorce, has become a template for…
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Theater Review: THE BROTHERS ABELSON SINCE 1946 (Electric Lodge in Venice)
A TIME CAPSULE OF GENERATIONAL LOVE, PAIN, AND RESILIENCE Every family has a unique mix of personalities, every member knowing their place and how to maneuver others to get what they need. But universal truths define Jewish families of Eastern European descent, shaping a shared culture forged through eviction from their homeland and the necessity…
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Theater Review: EXOTIC DEADLY: OR THE MSG PLAY (San Francisco Playhouse)
WELL-SEASONED THEATER IS LOADED WITH FLAVOR Welcome to 1999, a time of hysteria over the impending Y2K crisis, widespread fear of monosodium glutamate (MSG), crude video games and crude popular culture. In the midst of all this wanders a Japanese-American high school girl named Ami (Ana Ming Bostwick-Singer), wrestling with her cultural identity, arguing with…
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Theater Review: FRANCIS GREY AND THE CASE OF HIS DEAD BOYFRIEND (New Conservatory Theatre Center)
Currently playing at The New Conservatory Theater, Francis Grey and the Case of His Dead Boyfriend is a whirlwind one-man mystery that fuses elements of classic whodunits, camp, film noir, and drag—all packed into a breakneck, one-hour experience. This world premiere, written, directed, and performed by the multi-talented Nathan Tylutki, is a theatrical high-wire act…
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Theater Review: HELLO, DOLLY! (San Diego Musical Theatre)
GOOD GOLLY, MISS DOLLY! Under Randy Slovacek’s direction for San Diego Musical Theatre, Hello, Dolly! festoons the theater with a cumulatively enchanting restoration of this infectious delight. So much that life fails to encourage, theater redeems—seldom more winningly than in Hello, Dolly! Charismatic matchmaker Dolly Levi (Heidi Meyer) arrives in Yonkers in the late 1800s,…
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Theater Review: OTHER DESERT CITIES (Cygnet Theatre)
LEARNING HOW TO SURVIVE IN THE DESERT Jon Robin Baitz‘s Other Desert Cities—which opened at Cygnet Theatre last weekend—portrays about 24 hours in the upscale home of the Wyeth home in Palm Springs, California, and it’s an emotional stunner. Baitz sets his play over a 24-hour period in 2004. All the action takes place in the…
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Theater Review: MY FAIR LADY (Palm Canyon Theatre)
THIS CLASSIC MUSICAL STILL SPARKLES By and large, I don’t understand why people are so eager to return to familiar musicals. We know that Curly and Laurie are going to get hitched and that Annie is going to enjoy a plush life with Daddy Warbucks. For that reason, I have avoided My Fair Lady for…
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Theater Review: SPACE (Central Square Theater and Brit d’Arbeloff Women in Science in Cambridge, MA
TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO WOMAN HAS GONE BEFORE After seeing SPACE at Central Square Theater, the line that haunted me came from Mae Jemison, the first Black woman to travel into space: “Rockets leave behind the thing that got them up there—their fuel tanks.” Like those fuel tanks, the first group of courageous and…
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Theater Review: THE THING ABOUT JELLYFISH (Berkeley Rep)
THE THING ABOUT GREAT THEATER Directed by Tyne Rafaeli, Berkeley Rep’s world premiere production of The Thing About Jellyfish delivers an emotionally resonant adaptation of Ali Benjamin’s beloved coming-of-age novel, weaving together grief, wonder, and the mysteries of growing up with an ethereal, dreamlike quality, as a young girl on the cusp of adolescence searches…
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Theater Review: PERFECT ARRANGEMENT (The Bent at The Palm Springs Cultural Center)
PERFECT, INDEED: TERRIFIC—AND TIMELY The Bent Theatre, Palm Springs’ queer theatre company now in its third season, continues to prove its significance not only for the LGBTQ+ community but for the greater theatre scene as well. Their current production of Perfect Arrangement —which opened last night—exemplifies this beautifully. Topher Payne’s script is a work of genius….
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Theater Review: WICKED (National Tour)
STILL A WICKED GOOD TIME The stage musical Wicked is now Broadway’s fourth longest-running show—surpassing Cats; productions continue to sprout up globally in many languages; and last year’s film adaptation of just Act I continues to be a ginormous hit. And last night, the equally successful North American Tour—which has played over 6000 performances—settled in for a…
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Theater Review: DEBATE: BALDWIN VS. BUCKLEY (TimeLine Theatre at Cortelyou Commons at DePaul University)
NOW VS. THEN A historic confrontation between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., America’s most influential conservative intellectual, took place on February 18, 1965 in a packed Cambridge Union in England. Broadcast live on the BBC and later re-broadcast across America, the question up for…
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Theater Review: SCHMIGADOON! (Broadway Center Stage, Eisenhower Theatre at Kennedy Center)
IT’S A SCHMIGAHIT! Adapting from his Apple TV+ series that satirized and saluted the glories of old timey musicals like Oklahoma! and Carousel, co-creator and writer Cinco Paul brings his stage version of Schmigadoon! to Kennedy Center. The fun angle here is that NY doctors Josh (Alex Brightman) and Melissa (Sara Chase) are hoping to…
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Theater Review: JANE AUSTEN IN 89 MINUTES (Theatre 40 at Greystone Mansion)
WHAT FUN GETTING LOST IN AUSTEN Fresh from its smash hit engagement at Theatre 40, Jane Austen in 89 Minutes has moved into the artistically appropriate Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills for a limited 10-performance run. Performed by a cast of seven madcap ladies and gents who bring all six of Jane Austen’s beloved novels…
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Theater Review: THE WOLVES (Morgan-Wixson Theatre)
JOIN THE PACK In one of The Wolves’ final moments, one character’s mom explains that she has a swear jar at home that her daughter must put a quarter in every time she says “like.” If that jar was onstage for the duration of the play, with its characters bound to the same contract of…
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Theater Review: APPROPRIATE (Old Globe, San Diego)
Isn’t it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past? — John Leonard, American critic Appropriate won Branden Jacobs-Jenkins the 2024 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play on Broadway. The Tony committee chose well. The American dramatist has composed a scorcher, a ferocious dysfunctional family saga that will stagger…
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Theater Review: THE SPITFIRE GRILL (Ross Valley Players)
THERE’S A HOT HIT COOKING IN ROSS In ancient biblical texts, Gilead is not only a place of final peace, but also invokes healing and hope. How appropriate that playwrights James Valcq and Fred Alley chose this name as the location of The Spitfire Grill, a café in a down-on-its-luck small town, grown smaller by…
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Theater Review: LIFE & TIMES OF MICHAEL K (Handspring Puppet Company and Baxter Theatre at Emerson in Boston)
A SEARCH FOR MEANING BROUGHT TO GLORIOUS LIFE BY A PUPPET Based on the Booker-prize winning novel by Nobel-laureate South African J.M. Coetzee and adapted and directed by Lara Foot in collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company, Life and Times of Michael K tells a simple story: a man born with a cleft lip who was…
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Theater Review: SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION (Sonoma Arts)
SIX DEGREES SPOOFS UPPER-CLASS PRETENTIONS Sonoma Arts Live (SAL) has launched an ambitious production of Six Degrees of Separation, John Guare’s now-classic tale of belief and deception among New York City socialites. Purportedly based on a real story, Six Degrees played on Broadway before becoming a 1993 film starring Donald Sutherland and, from the Lincoln…
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Theater Review: GUAC (Woolly Mammoth, DC)
USING ART TO COMBAT GUN VIOLENCE GUAC at Woolly Mammoth is not traditional theater—it’s a powerful act of performance art that explores life and tragic loss in the wake of a mass school shooting. Manuel Oliver‘s deeply personal one-man piece concerns his son, Joaquin—nicknamed “Guac”—who was one of 17 students massacred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas…
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