Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

Margo Hall is Wiletta Mayer in Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind at the Aurora Theatre Company. Photos by David Allen   If only playwright Alice Childress could see Margo Hall’s performance in her 1955 play Trouble in Mind now at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company. Hall has long been one of those Bay Area actors you [...]

One of the most exciting things about the world premiere of American Conservatory Theater’s The Tosca Project is that it shines a big old spotlight on the riches of the Bay Area. Here is a revered local theater company venturing into risky territory – a play mostly without words told through dance and recorded music [...]

  The ensemble of Cal Shakes and Word for Word’s The Pastures of Heaven, an adaptation of the John Steinbeck book by Octavio Solis. Photos by Kevin Berne   Spectacular things are happening at the Bruns Amphitheater – on stage and off. At long last, California Shakespeare Theater is getting a performance venue worthy of [...]

The cast of Marin Theatre Company’s Equivocation includes, from left, Andrew Hurteau, Craig Marker and Lance Gardner. Photos by Kevin Berne. Now heading into the final weekend of a well-deserved extended run, Marin Theatre Company’s Equivocation is enormously enjoyable theater. I liked Bill Cain’s play last summer when I saw it at the Oregon Shakespeare [...]

The cast of Steve Silver’s Beach Blanket Babylon celebrates the Summer of Love. Photo by Rick Markovich. There’s no big anniversary, but there’s still something to celebrate. Steve Silver’s Beach Blanket Babylon is going on 36 years old and is brighter, fresher and funnier than ever. Members of the press were invited to come check [...]

EXTENDED THROUGH APRIL 25! Above: Nicole C. Julien is Miss Ssippi in The Cutting Ball Theater/Playwrights Foundation production of Marcus Gardley’s …and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi. Below: David Westley Skillman is The Great Tree/Jesus and Aldo Billingslea is Damascus. Photos by Rob Melrose.   Quilts and buttons are stars and stories in Marcus Gardley’s deeply [...]

EXTENDED THROUGH APRIL 10! Marilee Talkington, the writer and performer of Truce at the Noh Space. Photo by Andrew Lu. You could describe Marilee Talkington in a number of ways, starting with the fact that she is going blind. She is partially sighted, visually impaired, visually handicapped, sensorily challenged; she has low vision or no [...]

Above photo: Ashkon Davaran (left) and Casey Jackson in Den of Thieves at SF Playhouse. Photo by Jessica Palopoli. Photo below: Tommy A. Gomez and Lucinda Serrano in Sunsets and Margaritas, a TheatreWorks production at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto. Photo by Mark Kitaoka How strange it is to see two wildly different [...]

EXTENDED THROUGH MARCH 27! The last major magic show to hit the Bay Area theater scene involved Siegfried and Roy giving their stamp of magical approval to a kid who sang show tunes while doing fairly lame tricks. It’s no wonder that magic gets such a bad rap for being such a cheeseball staple of [...]

Curtains, the final collaboration of legendary John Kander and Fred Ebb (Rupert Holmes came in to finish the show after Ebb’s death), is finally taking a Bay Area bow. Diablo Theatre Company (formerly Diablo Light Opera Company) opens the show tonight (Feb. 12) at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, where it [...]