Manahatta Mary Kathryn Nagle Aurora Theatre Company Two American stories, four centuries apart, interlock in their telling, with characters, events, motives, triumphs, and tragedies strikingly similar in Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Manahatta, which premiered in 2018 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Now in an intimately engrossing and enlightening production at Aurora … [Read more...] about Manahatta
For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday
For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday Sarah Ruhl The Pear Theatre In a tribute to her own mother’s 70th birthday, prolific and award-winning playwright Sarah Ruhl has penned a play featuring a woman much like her mom along with her mom’s four, adult siblings. Both in the play and in real life, her mom is an actress whose lifelong career began as a child in Davenport, … [Read more...] about For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday
Rent
Rent Jonathan Larson (Book, Music & Lyrics) Hillbarn Theatre & Conservatory In January 1996, onto a Broadway stage burst a sexy, soaring musical daring to bestow unforgettable faces and personalities to seven artists struggling to survive not only their 1989, East Village poverty, but also the plague of AIDS/HIV that appeared ready to wipe out an entire … [Read more...] about Rent
A Little Night Music
A Little Night Music Stephen Sondheim (Music & Lyrics); Hugh Wheeler (Book) South Bay Musical Theatre In a rich, reverberating blend of harmonies, an elaborately attired quintet sings snippets of fuller songs soon to come of the on-again, off-again love affairs and marriages we are about to witness: “Unpack the luggage, la-la-la; pack the luggage, la-la-la.” ... … [Read more...] about A Little Night Music
People Where They Are
People Where They Are Anthony Clarvoe San Jose Stage Company A Black man dressed in coat and tie walks into a room lined with bookshelves where six chairs are arranged in a circle. Looking at the other five people, he asks the one other Black – Mrs. Clark, a woman with a welcoming smile – “Why are all these white people here? In Alabama, Black and white in the same … [Read more...] about People Where They Are
My Home on the Moon
My Home on the Moon Minna Lee San Francisco Playhouse Outside, the crushing sounds of a next-door bakery’s demise reverberate, facing the same deadly fate as the deli and tea shop that were part of the once-vibrant neighborhood. Inside Pho Lan Restaurant, owner Lan prays before the altar to her ancestors while her young chef, Mai, holds up a stack of unpaid bills, … [Read more...] about My Home on the Moon
Misery – The Play
Misery William Goldman Based on the Novel by Stephen King Palo Alto Players I feel compelled to make an upfront confession: I have never read a Stephen King novel; and while I do enjoy the suspense and thriller aspects of Alfred Hitchcock or Rod Sterling, I have never been a fan of the ever-popular genre of horror. It was thus with slight trepidation that I stepped … [Read more...] about Misery – The Play
Kimberly Akimbo
Kimberly Akimbo David Lindsay-Abaire Altarena Playhouse Teenage Kimberly is once again on the curb of the ice-skating rink waiting for her dad to pick her up. That it is 10:30 p.m. and the rink closed at 8 and that it is the middle of winter in Bogota, New Jersey is bad enough; but soon-to-be-sixteen Kimberly has the body of someone four-and-a-half times her age … [Read more...] about Kimberly Akimbo
Swimming with Lesbians
Swimming with Lesbians Marga Gomez The Marsh Grab your life preserver; stop by the bar on the Lezzo Deck for a ‘sapphotini;’ and welcome aboard The Celesbian, “the world’s oldest lesbian cruise line because we have the world’s oldest lesbians on board.” We may think we are at The Marsh Berkeley; but under the command of the comic antics of veteran author and performer … [Read more...] about Swimming with Lesbians
Heroes of the Fourth Turning
Heroes of the Fourth Turning Will Arbery Los Altos Stage Company Four recent graduates of Transfiguration College of Wyoming – a Catholic school so conservative that students turn in their cell phones during their four years – have returned to witness their favorite professor’s ascension to be the institute’s first woman president. Two days before a full eclipse of … [Read more...] about Heroes of the Fourth Turning
Nora: A Doll’s House
Nora: A Doll’s House Stef Smith, after Henrik Ibsen City Lights Theater Company When Henrik Ibsen premiered A Doll’s House in 1879, controversy immediately erupted when Nora, banker’s wife and mother of three, challenges the society’s definition of marriage and walks defiantly away from hers, seeking to discover who she really is beyond those two, domestic titles. … [Read more...] about Nora: A Doll’s House
How I Learned What I Learned
How I Learned What I Learned August Wilson (Co-Conceived with Todd Kreidler) TheatreWorks Silicon Valley As an elderly, Black man emerges from the theatre’s exit door with aged limp but also with a dignified and sure stature, he intently and silently watches projected, vintage black-and-white film clips of the neighborhoods and their peoples of Black America’s … [Read more...] about How I Learned What I Learned
Babes in Ho-lland
Babes in Ho-lland Deneen Reynolds-Knott Shotgun Players In a college dorm room whose walls are laden with ‘90s girl-band posters and whose floor is bedecked with plastic baskets flowing with laundry still to be done, a rockin,’ dancin,’ jumpin’ late teen gyrates irradicably to Courtney Love’s “Violet.” Just as she hits a climax in her spins, her roommate walks in, … [Read more...] about Babes in Ho-lland
Miriam and Esther Go to the Diamond District
Miriam and Esther Go to the Diamond District Andrea Gordon Rainbow Zebra Productions LLC at the Magic Theatre Memories of parents long dead, of childhoods interrupted, and of a sibling relationship almost non-existent swirl amongst a stored-box clutter of letters, pictures, knickknacks, and clothing from lifetimes past as two sisters sort through their own and their … [Read more...] about Miriam and Esther Go to the Diamond District
Kinky Boots
Kinky Boots Cyndi Lauper (Music & Lyrics); Harvey Fierstein (Book) City Lights Theater Company Sometimes it just feels right to start with dessert. When a musical ends with a stage full of people of every shape, size, race, sex, and sexual orientation all dancing in stiletto-heeled boots that rise to hug their hips, it is difficult not to start there with the … [Read more...] about Kinky Boots
