“The most important hour of my week is my piano lesson … I always dress up for my piano lesson … I have to look divine.” And with that, a fourteen-year-old girl who dreams someday of her concert debut at Vienna’s famed Musikverein Concert Hall sits down at the Steinway to play her favorite piece, Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16, fingers flying effortlessly across … [Read more...] about The Pianist of Willesden Lane
Taking Steps
A three-story, crumbling mansion that was once a notorious, London brothel and is said still to be haunted by its former mistress, “Scarlet Lucy,” is the setting of Alan Ayckbourn’s 1979 farce, Taking Steps. The house that is described as “drafty, leaky, and it smells” by its current mistress, Elizabeth Crabbe, is up for sale, becoming a major character and source of much … [Read more...] about Taking Steps
How to Transcend a Happy Marriage
Somewhere in the suburbs of New Jersey, the lives are about to be upended of two married couples who are also long-term best friends in ways none of them could have ever predicted – all because of a woman named Pip who hunts to kill all the meat she eats and who happens also to live with and love two men. Somehow as they sip their Malbec, the topic comes up in the conversation … [Read more...] about How to Transcend a Happy Marriage
Noura
“I don’t want to forget. I’m trying desperately to remember who the hell I am.” Forced by a life-threatening siege to leave her home in Mosul as a member of the Iraqi Christian community, immigrant and now American citizen Noura wants this Christmas Eve to be perfect in every respect, recalling the foods and family times of those Christmases spent in her homeland – a … [Read more...] about Noura
Theatre Eddys Recalls Ten Bay Area Theatre Highlights, 2010-2019
Looking back over ten years of seeing nearly 1500 theatrical performances (plays, musicals, and solo shows) in the San Francisco Bay Area (and another near 500 globally), I am both pleased and surprised what productions/events are now remembered most vividly – ones that I find myself returning in order to relish the productions’ creative accomplishments. The following are what … [Read more...] about Theatre Eddys Recalls Ten Bay Area Theatre Highlights, 2010-2019
Theatre Eddys’ Top Bay Area Productions for 2019
This year, Theatre Eddys attended and reviewed 129 shows locally along with nine shows in Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and forty-two shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Of the 129 local productions that were plays, musicals, and solo performances, a top “5 E” rating was awarded to productions of 25 different companies. The most “5 E” ratings for … [Read more...] about Theatre Eddys’ Top Bay Area Productions for 2019
Head Over Heels
What happens when a Renaissance tale of royal romance written in iambic pentameter collides head-on with the jukebox music of the 1980s all-female group, the Go-Go’s? And what if twists and turns of the story inspired by Sir Philip Sidney’s The Arcadia (1580s) now include same-sex love, gender-bending left and right, and a “non-binary, plural” Oracle of Delphi? New … [Read more...] about Head Over Heels
Becky Nurse of Salem
“Before there was this Dunkin’ Donuts, they killed women here they called witches. Before that, they killed Indians. Before that, they had Thanksgiving.” Standing in front of her shopping cart with a mannequin of her great, great, great, great grandmother that she has stolen from the Salem Witches Museum, Becky Nurse gives her first tour at $20 an hour, telling her version … [Read more...] about Becky Nurse of Salem
Vinegar Tom
A day cannot go by without hearing the accusation of “it’s a witch hunt” by the likes of Trump (i.e., his impeachment) and Netanyahu (i.e., his indictment). How ironic that two male, ultra-conservatives should be crying victim using a term that beckons to a period in seventeenth-century, European and American history when tens of thousands of truly innocents – mostly women – … [Read more...] about Vinegar Tom
Love in the Time of Piñatas
Body covered in skin-tight fishnet (black, of course), shoulders bedecked in a cape of shaking circles of metallic colors, beard sparkling with glitter to match his highlighted eyes, and high tops that light up as he prances about, Baruch Porras Hernandez enters the intimate setting of Z Below announcing to his cheering fans: “Hellooooo, everyone! I’m just your friendly, … [Read more...] about Love in the Time of Piñatas
Groundhog Day The Musical
Phil is pissed, big time. That Pittsburg’s best-known, TV weatherman has to drag himself on February 2 to the podunk town of Punxsutawney, PA to provide live coverage for the stupid tradition of having someone declare if a so-called groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow or not is totally insulting. To make it worse, on his way to the annual ceremony on Gobbler’s … [Read more...] about Groundhog Day The Musical
Pride and Prejudice
The month of December, Broadway composer Paul Gordon, and Director Robert Kelley have a special, intertwined relationship that time and again has resulted in heartwarming, big-smile-producing gifts for TheatreWorks Silicon Valley audiences. Multiple musicals of the Tony-honored Paul Gordon have appeared and often premiered on that stage, with two of them reprising in Decembers … [Read more...] about Pride and Prejudice
Scrooge in Love
Each year in December, the Bay Area is awash with annual holiday productions that have often been running for decades: The Christmas Carol (American Conservatory Theatre), The Nutcracker (San Francisco Ballet); Home for the Holidays (The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus); Kung Pao Kosher Comedy; The Golden Girls Live: The Christmas Episodes, to name a few. After its … [Read more...] about Scrooge in Love
Cloud Nine
1880, South Africa: The Queen’s flag flies high and proudly; Victorian roles of men and women are clearly defined; classes are correctly divided; whites rule and those of color serve; social norms are clear, and proper manners are strictly followed. Well, that is at least true until Caryl Churchill paints a bit different picture of what that supposedly blissful life is … [Read more...] about Cloud Nine
Mother of the Maid
A girl in her late teens announces to her Ma, “Saint Catherine bin’ appearin’ to me,” to which her mother glances up from cleaning burrs from sheep wool and says sweetly, “Oh, she’s a lovely saint; that’s lovely, Joanie.” When the girl describes how the Saint “fills me up … slays me … takes me apart” and that she can feel Saint Catherine “here and here” (her hands cupping her … [Read more...] about Mother of the Maid
