Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

Dame Edna warbles her way through songs and insults audience member like nobody’s business in her new show, Dame Edna: Live and Intimate in Her First Last Tour, at San Francisco’s Post Street Theatre. Photo by kevinberne.com Familiar shtick hobbles grand Dame’s latest outing«« ½ Nobody works an audience like Dame Edna. Ten years ago, [...]

Forget about High School Musical. The real teen movie musical to see is Were the World Mine, a favorite of the gay film festival circuit that is now seeing wider release. While Disney’s HSM franchise exploits the shiny pop pleasures of high school, Were the World Mine offers a darker fantasy guided by the magic [...]

Carlo D’Amore plays himself, his mother, members of his family and assorted other characters in his one-man show No Parole at The Marsh in San Francisco. Photo by Rudy Meyers It’s a laugh sentence in D’Amore’s arresting `No Parole’«««   Decked out in his glittery, color-splattered Ed Hardy shirt, Carlo D’Amore is a little like [...]

Creative schizophrenia is a common occurrence in show biz. You’ve got actors, writers and sometimes even directors donning different personalities in the name of storytelling and entertainment. Nowhere was this fascinating split personality more evident than when interviewing comic genius Barry Humphries and his most famous creation, Dame Edna Everage. The goal was to talk [...]

EXTENDED AGAIN! NOW THROUGH JAN. 18! The rambunctious cast of Mary Zimmerman’s The Arabian Nights tells the tale of the virtuous merchant, his hideous bride and the beauty who tricked him. Photos by kevinberne.com   Berkeley Rep unveils some enchanted `Nights’««« ½ Thanks to Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Bay Area audiences are sort of expert in [...]

EXTEDNED THROUGH DEC. 14 The cast of Marin Theatre Company’s The Seafarer by Conor McPherson includes (from left) Julian Lopez-Morillas as Richard, Andrew Hurteau as Ivan, Andy Murray as Sharky, John Flanagan as Nicky and Robert Sicular as Mr. Lockhart. Photos by Ed Smith   Bedeviled on Christmas Eve in McPherson’s `Seafarer’««« ½ The first [...]

Lee Meriwether has had a long, distinguished career that stretches from her beauty queen days as Miss San Francisco, Miss California and eventually Miss America in the mid-’50s to her stint alongside Buddy Ebsen on TV’s “Barnaby Jones” in the ’70s. But Meriwether will probably always be best known for playing Catwoman in the 1966 [...]

EXTENDED THROUGH DEC. 21! The cast of the Magic Theatre’s Evie’s Waltz includes, from left, Marielle Heller, Darren Bridgett and Julia Brothers. The Carter W. Lewis play continues through Dec. 7. Photos by www.davidallenstudio.com.   Tension mounts in Lewis’ modern `Waltz’««« ½   Carter W. Lewis’ Evie’s Waltz, now at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre, is [...]

Pete Townshend and The Who did it. Phil Collins did it badly. Duncan Sheik did it brilliantly. Billy Joel sort of did it. And Elton John does it every other day. Now it’s time for Ben Folds to make the leap and write a Broadway musical. The 42-year-old Folds should be a massive pop star, [...]

A familiar face is back among us. Carlo D’Amore got his start in the acting world more than a decade ago in productions with some prominent Bay Area theaters: Theatre Rhinoceros’ Twelfth Night, the Magic Theatre’s A Park in Our House and Dog Opera and several San Francisco Shakespeare Festival touring park productions. Then, with [...]