Depth, beauty surge through glorious Once
If every movie-to-musical transformation were as soulful and creative as Once the state of the Broadway musical would be in a much better place.
There would seem to be no less likely candidate for the Broadway treatment than the sweet and modest 2007 Irish indie film Once about a frustrated singer/songwriter in Dublin and the Czech immigrant who changes his life. It's a love story and not a love story, a musical and not a musical. Above all else, it's intimate and delicate, like a slice of life infused with passionate music transferred with great love to the big screen.
Fans of the movie (which nabbed a best song Oscar for songwriters/stars Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová's "Falling Slowly") let out a collective groan when it was announced that Once would be turned into a Broadway musical.
ACT's epic Orphan dusts off ancient tale
American Conservatory Theater concludes its season with The Orphan of Zhao an epic tale of revenge that some scholars think stretches back to the fourth century BCE. It's a tale as old as time, and the first act of this 2 1/2-hour show feels like a millennia itself. But once the revenge gears really start grinding, there's an interesting story here. I reviewed the production for the San Francisco Chronicle.
MTC's Failure blends death, music and whimsy
Philip Dawkins writes about the inevitable ending of all our stories in Failure: A Love Story, but his version of death is pretty darn upbeat. His beguiling play, now having its West Coast premiere at Marin Theatre Company
, is technically a "play with music," but there's a LOT of music, and it's charmingly played and sung by the five-person cast. I reviewed the play for the San Francisco Chronicle:
Hansberry's Sun blazes brightly in Cal Shakes opener
If you can't make it to Broadway to see the latest star-studded version of Lorraine Hansberry's classic American drama A Raisin in the Sun, you'll probably do just as well to head out to Orinda and catch California Shakespeare Theater's season-opening production.
Director Patricia McGregor's production offers a superb cast and makes a case for Hansberry's play to be in the pantheon of American dream plays alongside Miller, Williams and O'Neill.
Can't resist the charms of Mr. Irresistible
There's a lot of old-fashioned musical theater charm in Mr. Irresistible, a new musical by D'Arcy Drollinger and Christopher Winslow now having a short run at the Alcazar Theatre. It's a new-fashioned musical in the sense that there's camp, drag, sass, murder and a ménage à trois, but there's also a sort of sweet familiarity to it all that keeps everything grounded in the realm of appealing musical comedy.
Winslow's appealing music and Drollinger's smart book and lyrics are what might happen if you cross Little Shop of Horrors with 9 to 5.
Kushner unleashes a familial flood of words at Berkeley Rep
There are probably more English words in Tony Kushner's new play than not in the new play. So many things about The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures are staggering (including the title), but chief among them is the amount of dialogue – the number of choice words, the overlapping layers of lively conversation, the sheer volume of communication, attempted and otherwise.
If Angels in America was Kushner at his most Kushnerian – fantastical, political, emotional, hysterical, profound – then iHo (as the play is known) is Kushner at his most ktichen sink-ian.
Far from mangy, this Mutt is a gut buster
Between the Shakespearean twists of House of Cards and the utter inanity of Veep, you'd think that we'd have Washington politics pretty well covered by pop culture. Well clearly not because we need to make room for Mutt: Let's All Talk About Race!, the absolutely hilarious and crazy smart new comedy from San Francisco playwright Christopher Chen.
Writers' souls crushed, hilarity ensues in Rebeck's Seminar
The ego, the insecurity and the courage of fiction writers are all on hilarious and intriguing display in Theresa Rebeck's Seminar, a one-act comedy that derives laughter from pain and theatrical pleasure from whiplash-smart word play.
The premise is simple: four New York writers have paid $5,000 each for 10 weekly classes with a famous writer. They meet in the beautiful (and rent controlled) apartment of one classmate and wait anxiously for the globe-trotting famous guy, who can't really be bothered to remember their names, to pass judgement on their work.
Simplicity, beauty woven into ACT's Suit
Simplicity translates into great beauty in The Suit, a skillfully wrought tale that originated as a story by South African writer Can Themba and has been directed for the stage by the legendary Peter Brook who adapted the story with Marie-Hélène Estienne and Franck Krawczyk.
The Suit, adapted from a previous stage version by Mothobi Mutloatse and Barney Simon, is offered as a contemporary fairy tale in the Grimm style. A charming narrator (Jordan Barbour) tells us that this is the kind of story that could only come out of oppression (such as apartheid), but while that feels heavy and ominous (and for good reason), Brook and his team demonstrate such a light touch that we're charmed as the trio of musicians emerges.
Dear Comrade: No love posted in Aurora's tense Letters
After hosting three cabaret performances, the Aurora Theatre Company's rehearsal/black box/office space (the Dashow Wing, to be specific) known as Harry's UpStage at last beings life as a playhouse. The first play in the space, John W. Lowell's The Letters, a tense, 75-minute two-hander about abuse of power and the triumph of smart people.
Director Mark Jackson is known for his kinetic, dynamic productions, but this time out he's confined to one small office...
Exploring extraordinary Tribes at Berkeley Rep
There is not another drama about family, about communication, about the very essence of language like Nina Raine's Tribes. The 2010 British play now on Berkeley Repertory Theatre's Thrust Stage is among the funniest, most moving and deeply engaging shows we're likely to see this year
Wilson's Fences hits hard at Marin Theatre Co.
I've always been moved by August Wilson's Fences, the 1950s installment of his extraordinary Century Cycle of plays depicting African-American life in the 20th century. But the current production of the play at Marin Theatre Company under the direction of Derrick Sanders made me feel the play in a whole new way.
This has largely to do with Carly Lumbly's wrenching central performance as Troy Maxson.
Bright and bouncy, Moon's Sunshine radiates charm
The song titles say a lot about what this musical is like: "Livin' in the Sunlight," "You Hit the Spot," "Sweeping the Clouds Away." If it seems there's a rosy glow emanating from these titles, that's exactly right. You'll find no more glowing show in town than 42nd Street Moon's first original musical in its two-decade history, Painting the Clouds with Sunshine.
This is a stage musical in love with movies. Creators Greg MacKellan and Mark D. Kaufmann have learned a whole lot from the passing parade of lost, forgotten and banal-to-brilliant musicals...
To laugh or not to laugh: that's the question in Wittenberg
You don't have to have a college degree to enjoy David Davalos' Wittenberg a the Aurora Theatre Company, but it sure will help.
If 16th-century academia is your thing, then you probably already know all about Wittenberg, the German university made famous as the seat of higher learning from which young Prince Hamlet of Denmark returned home after his father's murder.
Wittenberg also happens to be where Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk, theologian and lecturer, nailed his 95 provocative thoughts on a church door and sparked the Protestant Reformation. And, to keep things interesting, the hallowed university happens to be where Christopher Marlowe's fictional Dr. Faustus practiced his dark arts.
Va-va-va Venus! ACT's Fur flies
Is it just me, or is it hot in this theater?
Live theater is not usually a hotbed of eroticism – so often attempts at sexiness inspire laughs more than they do accelerated heart rates – but the Bay Area of late has been home to some theatrical sexy time. First we got hot and heavy with polyamory in Carson Kreitzer's Lasso of Truth at Marin Theatre Company (read my review here), which featured Wonder Woman's creator happily submitting to the many strengths of his wife and his girlfriend (who also generated their own heat independent of the man).
And now we have David Ives' scintillating (for lots of reasons) Venus in Fur, in which dog collars, leather bustiers, thigh-high black leather boots and degradation play significant parts.
Crowded Fire saddles up comic Horses
There's something very sly at work in She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange, the world-premiere from Amelia Roper with Crowded Fire Theater at the Thick House. From looking at the vivid, sharply designed set by Maya Linke, with its paper sculpture trees and angled artificial grass, it's clear this is not going to be just any walk in the park.
But that's exactly how the play starts: a Sunday in a suburban Connecticut park...
Realistic portrait of the abstract artist in SF Playhouse's Bauer
A mysterious chapter in modern art history receives some theatrical exploration in the world premiere of Lauren Gunderson's Bauer at San Francisco Playhouse. If you've never heard of the abstract painter Rudolf Bauer, whom some considered a genius beyond contemporaries like Kandinsky and Klee, that may have something to do with the fact that the Guggenheim Museum in New York, which was built to display his work, kept them instead in the basement out of public view.
That's one of the issues addressed in Bauer, a three-person drama by Gunderson, San Francisco's most prolific and produced playwright.
Fo-pas: Laughing (or not) through Accidental Death
Maybe you have to be in the right mood for a satirically slapstick political farce. I can tell you I was definitely in no mood for satirically slapstick political farce – not that I knew that when I sat down to watch the Berkeley Repertory Theatre/Yale Repertory Theatre production of Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo.
The last time director Christopher Bayes and his merry band of clowns came to Berkeley Rep – two years ago with Molière's A Doctor in Spite of Himself (read my review here), I was thoroughly delighted by the expertly calibrated zaniness. Now...
Bouncy Island breezes blow at TheatreWorks
Last Saturday I reviewed the TheatreWorks production of Once on This Island, the charming musical fairy tale by the Ragtime/Rocky team of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. My review ran in the San Francisco Chronicle, and you can read it here.
Director Robert Kelley's production captures much of the show's charm and energy, and the cast is delightful. But I've been thinking about...
Life, love, kick-ass music in Bengsons' Hundred Days
In those moments, when the music and voices are soaring, the drums are pounding, the feet are stomping and the hands are clapping, there's no better place to be than sitting in Z Space fully immersed in the glorious new rock musical Hundred Days.
A creation by The Bengsons, the musical duo comprising spouses Abigail Bengson and Shaun Bengson, Hundred Days is an unconventional musical that is so much more than it seems.