Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

I’ve been reading Amy Sedaris’ I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, her hilarious guide to home entertaining, and that started me thinking.
I adore Amy Sedaris (and I hear her recent appearance at San Francisco’s City Arts & Lectures was a hoot) and crave her kooky sense of humor. I’ve memorized the entire “Strangers with [...]

One of the most famous stage directions in theater history _ other than Shakespeare’s “Exit, pursued by a bear” _ is from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. At the end of the absurdist comedy’s first act, two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, are frustrated. They’ve been waiting and waiting for Mr. Godot who never seems to [...]

You know it’s a new world of technology when they start doing plays in podcast form.
Trevor Allen’s Black Box Theatre Company is celebrating Halloween in a big way. On Monday night, which you might call Halloween Eve, Allen gathers a top-notch cast of Bay Area actors for The Creature, his own version of the Frankenstein [...]

Usually, the sleepy little berg of Santa Rosa belongs to Charlie Brown, the melon-headed lad created by Santa Rosa’s favorite son, Charles M. Schulz.
Last Saturday night, Santa Rosa was indeed Brown’s town — Jason Robert Brown’s town.
The Broadway composer (a Tony Award-winner for Parade) was in concert for one night only to support a [...]

Here’s a sneak peek at my interview with Adam Pascal, who’s performing Oct. 27 and 28 at the Post Street Theatre in San Francisco (more info below).
Like any good blog item, there are bonus features that won’t make it into the newspaper.
Adam Pascal and Idina Menzel were friends in high school on Long Island. Well, [...]

From the “now we’ve heard everything” file.
Apparently there’s a Gilligan’s Island musical, and it’s being done by the Actors Theatre Center in Santa Clara (through Nov. 4).
The book is by series creators Sherwood and Lloyd Schwartz, and the score (which includes “The Ballad of Gilligan”) is by Sherwood’s daughter Hope Juper and her husband Laurence [...]

Halloween seems the appropriate time to talk about Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a dark, grisly 1979 musical about murder victims being ground into meat pies.
The show had an acclaimed but ultimately too-brief revival on Broadway recently with Patti Lupone and Michael Cerveris.
Then came news that Tim [...]

There’s always plenty of juicy theater to keep us occupied here in the Bay Area. But we can’t help casting an eye toward Broadway.
It’s sort of like our favorite sports team is having an away game, and we just want to keep an eye on the score.
That said, some Theater Dogs have recently been to [...]

Things I’m excited about at the moment:
- The new Chorus Line cast recording (stay tuned for more on that one), which came out last week.
- Two off-Broadway musicals making their way to Broadway: Spring Awakening and Grey Gardens. The good folks at Broadway.com have posted a world-premiere video from Spring Awakening, a musical by Steven [...]

Thanks to our correspondent Elizabeth for alerting us to the following kerfuffle.

Ted Diadiun, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that the theater critic from his paper, Tony Brown, was accosted by the artistic director of the Drury Theatre, who was apparently having a bad reaction to Brown’s dismissive review of the company’s Rabbit [...]