Noises Off Michael Frayn Palo Alto Players “Doors and sardines. Getting on, getting off. Getting the sardines on, getting the sardines off. That's farce. That's the theatre. That's life.” Perhaps no line better summarizes the challenge and the fun potential of both the fictional director and the actual stage director of Palo Alto Players’ latest opening, Michael … [Read more...] about Noises Off
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The Best of The Second City
The Best of The Second City The Second City Berkeley Repertory Theatre For sixty-four years emanating from its Chicago birthplace has come generation after generation of some of the world’s greatest comedian superstars, all getting their start doing improv and ensemble acts at The Second City. The likes of Joan Rivers, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Tina Fay, Chris … [Read more...] about The Best of The Second City
Who’s-Dead McCarthy: Stories by Kevin Barry
Who’s-Dead McCarthy: Stories by Kevin Barry Kevin Barry Word for Word In its 31st year of transforming “the page to the stage,” Word for Word once again celebrates the literary genre of the short story by bringing to the intimate stage of Z Below three delightful gems by a much awarded, contemporary, Irish writer in Who’s-Dead McCarthy: Stories by Kevin Barry. The stories … [Read more...] about Who’s-Dead McCarthy: Stories by Kevin Barry
Murder on the Orient Express
Murder on the Orient Express Adapted by Ken Ludwig from the Novel by Agatha Christie Palo Alto Players For many of us, there is nothing better than curling up in a comfy chair and opening the first page of an Agatha Christie novel to see what devilish deed Hercule Poirot will solve this time. Perhaps the only thing better is to see all the suspense, speculation, and … [Read more...] about Murder on the Orient Express
Garuda’s Wing
Garuda’s Wing Naomi Iizuka Magic Theatre in a Co-Production with Campo Santo “I’m going to tell you a story, and then maybe you’ll remember.” The last line of Naomi Iizuka’s latest play, Garuda’s Wing, is clearly aimed at us, the audience. The story we have witnessed over the past ninety minutes in Magic Theatre and Campo Santo’s world premiere production has been … [Read more...] about Garuda’s Wing
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Jeffrey Lane (Book); David Yazbek (Music & Lyrics) San Jose Stage Company Filled with more corn than an Iowa field in mid-summer, San Jose Stage Company’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is overflowing with groaner puns, slapstick silliness, sexual innuendos, and sophomoric vulgarity the likes of high-school boys making fart jokes. Based on the … [Read more...] about Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
tick, tick … Boom!
tick, tick… BOOM! Jonathan Larson (Book, Music & Lyrics); David Auburn, Script Consultant New Conservatory Theatre Center “Maybe I really have written the show that will reinvent musicals for our generation, the Hair of the ‘90s.” With that hope, a struggling playwright and composer heads to a workshop production of the musical he has been writing for five years. … [Read more...] about tick, tick … Boom!
The Music Man
The Music Man Meredith Wilson (Book, Music & Lyrics) Palo Alto Players Musicals often burst onto the stage with numbers that arouse an audience to peak attention and leave fond impressions (and earworms) that can last a lifetime. Among the dozens of opening numbers that are my big-sound, big-number favorites are the likes of Belle entering the village in Beauty and the … [Read more...] about The Music Man
The Skin of Our Teeth
The Skin of Our Teeth Thornton Wilder Los Altos Stage Company Alert! Alert! It’s the coldest day of the year, and it’s only August. An ice wall has moved the Cathedral of Montreal into Vermont; and in Excelsior, New Jersey, dinosaurs and mammoths alike are getting as worried about their survival as are the mounting number of refugees who are heading southward … [Read more...] about The Skin of Our Teeth
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A Midsummer Night’s Dream William Shakespeare Shotgun Players With costumes wonderfully strange, weird, and entirely fanciful and a setting that is dark, mystical, and mysterious as a vast forest in a dream might be, Shotgun Players opens A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a cast that bends genders, mixes races, and celebrates diversity in almost every dimension possible. … [Read more...] about A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Far Country
The Far Country Lloyd Suh Berkeley Repertory Theatre “I do not want to take from America … I want to give to America.” So does the amiable, big-smiling Gee patiently make his case to the persistently doubtful U.S. Inspector to prove in 1909 that he is a naturalized American citizen who – like everyone living in Chinatown in 1906 – lost all his proof-of-birth papers in the … [Read more...] about The Far Country
Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad
Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad Ashley Smiley Magic Theatre (with Campo Santo) In a week when San Franciscans hear the news of yet another landmark institution about to close its doors for good – Macy’s on Union Square – and when the Chronicle columnist Carl Nolte’s Sunday column is titled “We’re Losing San Francisco Bit by Bit, Aren’t We,” Magic Theatre in union with … [Read more...] about Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad
Ruddygorre Or, The Bruja’s Curse
Ruddygore Or, The Bruja’s Curse W.S. Gilbert (Libretto) & Arthur Sullivan (Score) Adapted by David Euresti Lamplighters Musical Theatre The Company that for seventy-one years has entertained Bay Area audiences with its Gilbert and Sullivan fare has taken one of the pair’s Victorian parodies of the English, nineteenth-century melodrama, Ruddygore, and married it … [Read more...] about Ruddygorre Or, The Bruja’s Curse
Corpus Evita
Corpus Evita Carlos Franzetti Libretto by José Luis Moscovich; Concept by Lorenz Russo How much responsibility must a person in power assume for acts against humanity that occur because the untested, unprepared leader is either unaware, naïve, or completely incompetent? Is it possible for such a leader ever to seek and receive atonement – especially if the crimes … [Read more...] about Corpus Evita
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
