Baseball drama aims for more than just naked truth three stars Play ball! It’s a shame that Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out is known as “the naked baseball play.” Sure, there’s more male nudity than in all the previous Tony Award-winning best plays combined. Sure, the front rows have more than their share of gawkers. [...]
Home > May, 2007
Review: `Take Me Out’
Archived in the category: New Conservatory Theatre Center, Richard Greenberg, backstage, local theater, nudity, plays, theater review
Posted by Chad Jones on 31 May 07 - 0 Comments
RIP Rosie
Posted by Chad Jones on 30 May 07 - 0 Comments
I have to admit that last week’s “contretemps,” as Barbara Walters put it, between Rosie O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck left me a little sad. I have TiVo’d “The View” pretty much every day since O’Donnell joined the cast last September, and I grew quite addicted. The conversations were lively (and a shout out to Joy [...]
Tony party planning
Archived in the category: A Chorus Line, Audra McDonald, Broadway, Christine Ebersole, Duncan Sheik, Jersey Boys, Raul Esparza, Spring Awakening, TV, Tony Awards, awards, backstage, musicals, plays
Posted by Chad Jones on 29 May 07 - 0 Comments
OK, people, time to start planning those Tony Award viewing parties for Sunday, June 10 on CBS. We’ve got to get those dismal ratings up, so if you’re having people over, make sure they’re still setting their TiVos (and VCRs if you’re archaic) to record the telecast. If you’re a Nielsen family, do some creative [...]
Lovely Rita
Posted by Chad Jones on 27 May 07 - 1 Comment
Happy Memorial Day weekend, Dogs. A family member in Reno tipped me off to the following column by Reno-Gazette Journal columnist Siobhan McAndrew that ran in today’s paper. The gist of it is that after a speaking engagement, Moreno — the Bay Area’s own diva — reportedly dropped a casual invitation to the writer and [...]
Kiki & Herb can’t die
Archived in the category: American Conservatory Theater, Justin Bond, Kenny Mellman, Kiki & Herb, Tony Awards, backstage, local theater
Posted by Chad Jones on 24 May 07 - 0 Comments
The crowd in the funeral parlor was practically giddy. One man, in a mourning veil, no less, let loose with the fake tears and proclaimed between phony sobs: “Kiki! You were a flaming megastar!” Rather than mourners, San Francisco’s Halsted Funeral Home was filled last week with press gathered to hear comedian and writer Bruce [...]
Bock in black
Archived in the category: Adam Bock, Encore Theatre, Obie Awards, Shotgun Players, Theatre Rhino, backstage, playwrights
Posted by Chad Jones on 23 May 07 - 1 Comment
We can claim Adam Bock as a San Francisco playwright, but that’s really not quite accurate. The talented writer basically used the Bay Area as a way station between his native Canada and the greener pastures of New York. But it must be said, the pastures were pretty green in San Francisco, where Bock made [...]
Let the sun shine
Archived in the category: Adam Pascal, Broadway, Hair, Jennifer Hudson, Mountain Play, backstage, local theater, musicals, theater news
Posted by Chad Jones on 22 May 07 - 2 Comments
With all this talk about the Summer of Love – it was 40 years ago, in case you hadn’t noticed – I’ve been thinking about the musical Hair, which, not so coincidentally, is also celebrating its 40th birthday this year (as am I, but why dwell on such a depressing statistic). “The American Tribal Love-Rock [...]
Basking in Bening’s glory
Archived in the category: American Conservatory Theater, backstage, local theater, plays, theater news
Posted by Chad Jones on 18 May 07 - 0 Comments
It sure was good to have Annette Bening back onstage at what used to be called the Geary Theater. Back in the early ’80s, when Bening was a grad student at the American Conservatory Theater, the Geary was where she honed her craft and took giant strides in a career that would turn out to [...]
Kornbluth gets political
Archived in the category: David Dower, Josh Kornbluth, Magic Theatre, Z Space Studio, backstage, local theater, playwrights, theater news
Posted by Chad Jones on 17 May 07 - 0 Comments
About four years ago, I was having a chat with Berkeley monologist Josh Kornbluth. He was touting his latest show, Love & Taxes, but something he said then occurred to me before I talked to him last week. Kornbluth was discussing how he didn’t want to invade the privacy of his wife and son by [...]
Review: Charles Dickens’ `Oliver Twist’
Archived in the category: Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Charles Dickens, Ned Eisenberg, backstage, local theater, plays, theater review
Posted by Chad Jones on 17 May 07 - 0 Comments
Opened May 16 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Roda Theatre Berkeley Rep gives Dickens a dark Twist Three stars Grim ‘n’ grand We’re told early on in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, a bracing stage adaptation of the classic novel, that what we’re about to see is complete fiction. The story concerns “hope flourishing when all hope [...]
