With the new year come changes. On New Year’s Eve, Bay Area cabaret veteran Wesla Whitfield wil ring in 2008 with fans and revelers at San Francisco’s Empire Plush Room. She’s in the midst of her record-breaking 27th gig at the venerable cabaret — a wonderfully intimate boite with a gorgeous mariner’s compass stained-glass ceiling [...]
Home > December, 2007
Review: Wesla Whitfield
Posted by Chad Jones on 28 Dec 07 - 2 Comments
2007 theater Top 10
Archived in the category: Aaron Loeb, Avenue Q, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Cal Shakes, Charles Shaw Robinson, Elijah Alexander, Emma, George Bernard Shaw, Jeff Marx, Jonathan Moscone, Lorri Holt, Magic Theatre, Mary Zimmerman, Paul Gordon, Rebecca Gilman, SF Playhouse, SHN/Best of Broadway, Susannah Schulman, TheatreWorks, Word for Word, backstage, local theater, musicals, plays, playwrights, theater news
Posted by Chad Jones on 27 Dec 07 - 5 Comments
I can always tell whether a theater year has been good or not so good when I sit down to hammer out my Top 10 list. If I can summon five or more shows simply from memory, it’s a good year. This year’s entire list came almost entirely from memory (which is a feat in [...]
Michael Feinsten: Standard bearer
Posted by Chad Jones on 26 Dec 07 - 0 Comments
Michael Feinstein is one of the most in-demand crooners in the land. If people want sophistication, elegance and abundant love and knowledge of the Great American Songbook, they immediately turn to Feinstein. For more than 20 years, Feinstein has reigned as the King of Cabaret, the Sultan of Standards and the Torch Bearer for Torch [...]
Review: ‘The Shaker Chair’
Posted by Chad Jones on 21 Dec 07 - 2 Comments
Dramatic Shaker Chair unseats expectations three stars Stirring Marion loves her new chair. It’s a beautiful wood straight back with woven seats. It’s a copy of a Shaker chair, and though she finds it beautiful, Marion admits that the chair isn’t very comfortable. “The Shakers didn’t believe in sitting around,” she tells us. “There was [...]
Wesla Whitfield’s New Year’s gig
Posted by Chad Jones on 21 Dec 07 - 1 Comment
Ask most singers and they’ll tell you: New Year’s Eve is not their favorite night for a gig. Audience members are overexcited, demanding and, most often, drunk off their gourds. “If your goal is to try and re-create the New Year’s Eve scene from When Harry Met Sally, that’s not going to happen,” says jazz [...]
Curse like Mamet
Posted by Chad Jones on 20 Dec 07 - 1 Comment
For a third time, American Conservatory Theater is asking us to think and write like David Mamet. Hot @#*$in’ dog. In conjunction with its upcoming production of Mamet’s Hollywood-lambasting play Speed-the-Plow, ACT is now accepting short play submissions in the unique style of Mamet, which is to say, lots of short, spiky sentences, and lots [...]
‘Sweeney Todd’ on screen: Nice slice
Archived in the category: Helena Bonham Carter, Stephen Sondheim, Sweeney Todd, Tim Burton, movie musicals, movies
Posted by Chad Jones on 19 Dec 07 - 0 Comments
The movies have not been all that kind to Stephen Sondheim. His early Broadway hits, for which he supplied lyrics only, West Side Story and Gypsy, became classic studio musicals (with West Side Story being a movie for the ages and Gypsy being an interesting movie with some good work by Rosalind Russell and Natalie [...]
Rufus does Judy
Posted by Chad Jones on 14 Dec 07 - 0 Comments
Who but Rufus Wainwright could be this audacious? The 34-year-old singer/songwriter, who has always done pretty much exactly what he pleased. He makes the kind of intelligent, beautiful (some might say baroque), quirky pop music that delights his hardcore fans but tends to baffle the Kanye West and Kelly Clarkson-devouring public. Still, the unapologetic Wainwright [...]
Bock builds a ‘Shaker Chair’
Archived in the category: Adam Bock, Encore Theatre, Shotgun Players, local theater, plays, theater news
Posted by Chad Jones on 13 Dec 07 - 0 Comments
Sure Adam Bock misses his friends in the Bay Area. But the Canadian playwright, who moved from San Francisco to New York about five years ago, really misses the food. “Food in San Francisco is so yummy,” he says. “It’s just not the same in New York. I don’t know what it is about the [...]
Reilly’s ‘Cox’ comes alive
Posted by Chad Jones on 11 Dec 07 - 1 Comment
When does a movie become theater? The easy answer is when it’s adapted a la Hairspray, The Lion King, The Producers and the like. But there have been rare instances when movies become theater, usually when music is involved. I’m thinking of the rock band Spinal Tap, which, after their mockumentary became a hit, toured [...]
