The women of The Color Purple have unimaginably hard lives. They’re subject to an unrelenting series of rape, abuse, and racism. The musical (currently on tour to the SHN Orpheum) is touching and uplifting in spite of that, because it’s the story of how they overcome all those forces...

Midway through Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3, at A.C.T.'s Geary Theater in San Francisco), a Confederate colonel sets his Union prisoner Smith guessing his slave Hero’s price. The callous discussion of a human being’s dollar value horrifies Smith (and the audience), but to...

Shakespeare completionists surely took note when Cutting Ball Theater announced Timon of Athens as part of their 2017–18 season. It’s a difficult one to check off your see-them-all list: a few dozen Hamlets and Macbeths get produced for every time someone is brave enough to mount this “problem play.”...

Iconic theater celebrates 50th anniversary with 6 shows under Tonny Taccone's last year of artistic directorship.

How can we trust in love if it’s reducible to brain chemistry?

Ilana Walder-Biesanz reviews Vietgone, American Conservatory Theater's (A.C.T.) latest production, now playing at The Strand in San Francisco. Humor is not what you’d expect from a play about the Vietnam War, but Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone consistently had the whole audience in stitches. Inspired by his own family history (“Any resemblance...

Widowers’ Houses is, by Shaw’s own categorization, a “play unpleasant.” No one on the stage is remotely likeable. Certainly not Blanche (Megan Trout), the spoiled young lady with a temper so violent that she beats her maid. Her on-and-off fiancé Trench (Dan Hoyle) is perpetually slack-jawed, a Bertie Wooster without...

Chances are many of your favorite childhood memories are triggered by a certain smell or sound. In my case, like Mom's homemade chocolate chip cookies, perfect for a stormy winter night in Ottawa. Or, my grandfather filling the night sky in the backyard with a whimsical solo on his...

In Review: Man of La Mancha at Custom Made Theatre Co., San Francisco. Don Quixote has no shortage of adaptations – cinematic, balletic, theatrical, and operatic – and all draw on different aspects of Cervantes’ famous novel. The 1964 musical Man of La Mancha shows Cervantes awaiting trial by the...

Fans of magic, get ready for some of San Francisco's best. EXIT Theatre has announced its annual Fog City Magic Fest will run January 24-27, 2018. Festival co-founder Jay Alexander (The Marrakech Magic Theater) kicks things off with a performance at the opening night gala on Wednesday, January 24. Magicians and stars...