|
|
|
Sort By:
 |
Theater
A Brilliant Meditation
Playwright Jane Anderson’s “The Quality of Life", currently at the American Conservatory Theater, is a brilliant meditation on a morass of issues: love, loss, grief, Red State v. Blue State, spiritual transcendence, and the possibility of shared understanding in times of crisis. Given all the issues that snake through the story with the mathematical complexity of a Moebius strip, Anderson, who also directs, displays tremendous skill in weaving her plot points together with seamless ease and opting for relatable, believable characters rather than a grand metanarrative about the human condition. More
|
 |
Theater
Solid Gothic
As I walk into the Exit Theatre, it is as though I am entering the bowels of Hell itself-- the hallway narrows and darkens, and I find an empty seat in the tiny black womb of the theatre. The stage is small, the setting spare: a stool in the middle, a hanging cloak, and four grinning skulls contemplating the action that is about to unfold. I am vividly reminded of Faustian tales of men selling their souls to the devil in return for magical knowledge. In fact, the play I am here to see is just such a story. More
|
 |
Theater
Ambitious But Uneven
Playwright Itamar Moses’ “Yellowjackets” is creating quite the stir on Berkeley Rep’s Thrust Stage, which has been impressively thrown into relief by Annie Smart’s vivid, graffiti-spackled set and a towering fence that’s more suggestive of a high-security prison than a high school. The play swirls with mid-90s slang (sending a shiver of recognition down the spines of those of us who braved adolescence during that epoch), urban politics, racially charged turbulence, schoolyard violence and bullying, the Kafkaesque K-12 bureaucracy, and the riotously epic, hormone-driven confusion that characterizes the American teenage experience. More
|
 |
Theater
Two acts are better than one
Theater aficionados, thespians and patrons of the alternative art community -- these are the people that will enjoy “Bad Habits", Terrance McNally’s billing of one-acts that highlight the absurdity of our self medicating society currently on stage at the black box Mission space Theater Rhinoceros. Everyone else should stay at home. More
|
 |
Theater
Tony winner leaves audience joyous
If you adoringly hum refrains from the American musicals of Cole Porter and George and Ira Gershwin, you will be charmed and delighted by the frolicking, play within a play “The Drowsy Chaperone” currently on stage at SHN’s ornate Orpheum Theater. If you prefer baseball to musical theater you may not understand some of the shows self-referential humor, but you will still have a damn good time. More
|
 |
Theater
Experimental Theatre That Doesn’t Suck
Since 1999, Cutting Ball Theater has been regaling Bay Area audiences with the sort of stage productions that tend to be so rare in modern theatre: intelligent, provocative, challenging, impossibly literary pieces that teem with playfulness and a throbbing vein of experimentalism. Artistic director Rob Melrose tends to deal in creating minor monuments to the exhilarating range of possibility that live theatre can offer (without the bombast or ginormous budget), from brief dramaturgical sketches by local playwrights to cheeky, audacious revisions of beloved Shakespeare plays. More
|
 |
Theater
From Parody to Powerhouse Performance
John Ford’s “’Tis Pity She’s a Whore", is one of the most gruesome morality plays in Jacobean literature. With its turgid sensationalism, brusquely candid treatment of incest, and unrelenting presentation of the bilious clash between church and state, there are obvious congruencies with Shakespeare, but this tragedy foregoes Bard-like suggestiveness for categorical bawdiness. More
|
 |
Theater
The Final Three Shows of 2007/2008
Looking for a little summer entertainment? You’re in luck -- the next few weeks at the San Francisco Opera portend some of the most bombastic, entertaining productions of the summer season, ranging from anachronistic renditions of Norse mythology to insanity-addled tales of romance and longing. Simply pop out the binoculars and settle in for some classic divertissement, with a twist. More
|
 |
Theater
A Multicultural, Multilingual Feat
The South Asian production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that is currently enjoying a run at the Curran Theatre seethes with the mischief and irrepressible sensuality that the Bard perhaps originally intended. This gorgeously hybridized, ingeniously rendered production is Shakespeare as you’ve never seen him before -- unloosed of the priggish, perfectly enunciated Queen’s English that tends to preclude any iota of visceral beauty and theatrical velocity. More
|
 |
Theater
A Mammoth Achievement
The Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s masterful revision of the Mozart opera “The Marriage of Figaro” is less classical redux and more the sort of performance that brings a much-needed draught of fresh air to fustian art forms that have little or nothing to do with our lives. Theatre de la Jeune Lune’s “Figaro” throbs with the vigor and beauty of its operatic antecedent, but the company, who brought down the house two years ago with their traveling masterpiece “The Miser,” adds so many subtle embellishments (all without mangling the epic gorgeousness of Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte’s beloved libretto) that the show transcends its formula quite effo More
|
|
