Opening this week: Tiny Kushner at Berkeley Rep and November at ACT in San Francisco
(CORRECTION: I apologize for the error, November actually opens next Wed, 28th. We mixed preview dates with opening night. No worries, though, it won't happen again. I've fired our communications department and replaced it with an iPhone)
We're looking forward to another barn burner of a week in Bay Area...
Theater review: ‘Groundswell’ a frothing thriller set to full boil
We all have dreams. But at what cost to score a "jackpot"?
The bell tolls—forewarning atonement, compensation for past injustices, intentional or otherwise.
And, after the fogs lifts in 'Groundswell', the terrifically tense new production that opened last night at the San Jose Repertory Theatre, we are left with a heightened...
Theater review: ‘Goldfish’ West Coast premiere at Magic Theatre
The Bay Area Premiere of "Goldfish" is a gritty and heart wrenching study by playwright John Kolvenbach into the bonds that unite us as fathers, mothers, sons and daughters and what happens when change threatens them.
Leo (Rod Gnapp) is the father to a loving teenage son, Albert (Andrew Pastides)....
Theater review: ‘The Chosen’ an ideological evening
With 'The Chosen,' TheatreWorks' latest production tackles large issues, including the Holocaust, faith, and Zionism. Not bad for a Saturday night. As stage entertainment, however, it delivers mixed results.
On the one hand, intensity and poignancy abound as two teenage boys and their fathers search for their place in a...
Theater review: ‘The Glass Menagerie’ at Coastal Repertory Theatre
How would you remember your past?
In 'The Glass Menagerie', Tennessee Williams' first successful play as a playwright, we are drawn into the very personal memories of Tom Wingfield (Peter K. Owen) as he recalls his earlier life living with his loving, but often overbearing, mother and his shy, crippled...
Theater review: ‘First Day of School’ brings laughs
"Would you like to have sex with me?"
David (Bill English) walks the school grounds asking other parents and watches as they react to his direct approach. Meanwhile his wife Susan (Zehra Berkman) is doing the exact thing across the lot, ending up eventually in a bagel shop, before their...
Theater review: ‘The Pillowman’ a horrifically good time
Stephen King, your play is ready. Martin McDonagh, winner of an Olivier Award for best new play, brilliantly mixes black comedy, horror and crime drama into an innovative, and often disturbing, script.
Throughout the opening night I kept thinking to myself that it would make a good little horror flick...
Theater review: ‘American Idiot’ an energetic journey
The lead actor John Gallagher, Jr., although looking more Jay Kay than Billie Joe, puts 110% into his role as the despondent teen looking to escape suburbia.
‘The Last Days of Judas Iscariot’: Wickedly hilarious and provocatively profound
Even before I stepped into the theater, the premise of this piece intrigued me.
The entire play is set in purgatory, the place between heaven and hell where, according to the production's playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, a Judge Littlefield (Bill Davidovich) has presided for over 140 years providing the last...
Theater review: ‘Brief Encounter’ a masterful composition of classic cinema and theater
Lights, camera, action! The romance of classic cinema—think Humphrey Bogart—married with the immersion of live theatre whisked me off for a brief rendezvous.
It started innocently as any other theatre visit to the ACT on opening night; some murmur of excitement is always expected with the rolling out of the...