Octet Dave Malloy (Book, Lyrics, Music, Vocal Arrangements) Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Co-Production with Signature Theatre Barely acknowledging the others and each appearing a bit hesitant and even lost, eight individuals – four women, four men – arrive one by one to sit in a circle in what appears to be a church basement. With a nod by one, they begin a sliding … [Read more...] about Octet
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Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses Mary Zimmerman (based David Slavitt’s translation of the myths of Ovid) Pear Theatre and Dragon Productions The element that flows and freezes, falls from the sky and evaporates into the air, sustains all life and can drown all existence – This is the medium in which multiple, life-altering transformations occur in each of a dozen-plus vignettes of … [Read more...] about Metamorphoses
Water by the Spoonful
Water by the Spoonful Quiara Alegría Hudes San Francisco Playhouse Remaining estranged from a son for ten years. Maneuvering through a messy divorce. Refusing any sort of relationship with a birth mother while caring for the dying aunt (her sister) who raised him. Being the mother now detested by your son. Wanting to find the Japanese birth parents … [Read more...] about Water by the Spoonful
Talk to Your People
Talk to Your People Dan Hoyle The Marsh Celebrated creator and performer of solo shows about such topics as Nigerian oil scandals (Tings Dey Happen), Red States folks telling their side of the story (The Real Americans), and heart-wrenching yet funny portrayals of men and women from minority races and cultures (The Border People), Oakland … [Read more...] about Talk to Your People
Heroes of the Fourth Turning
As birds chirp from every direction, a backwoods cabin sits against a backdrop of giant pines, lined up like sentry soldiers guarding under a Wyoming sky whose stars begin to peak through their needles. Intermittent chords resembling a distant foghorn are heard as we settle into our seats; but there is something ominous in their low, haunting sounds. As the play progresses, … [Read more...] about Heroes of the Fourth Turning
Toni Stone
To a Bay Area that has two baseball teams long esteemed by tens of thousands comes the largely unknown story of a baseball pioneer and hero with local connections, a story of the first woman to play professional baseball on an all-male team. Lydia R. Diamond’s Toni Stone is a baseball lover’s dream while also unmasking the nightmarish sexism and racism the title character had … [Read more...] about Toni Stone
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder
The 2014, multi-Tony-Award-winning musical with its music-hall-sounding score and oft-rhyming-and-rapid-firing lyrics receives a fast-moving, laugh-out-loud rendering under the jocular direction of Daren A. C. Carollo. His directorial tongue never leaves his cheeks as he has conceived innumerable, over-the-top ways to tickle our innards while watching the demises of the … [Read more...] about A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder
Macbeth
Woodwinds creep together in soft, low measures before intertwining in higher registers and giving way to announcing brass that awaken spirits from the underworld. Those dark figures manipulate wood puppets to tell the agonized history of a royal, childless marriage. From foggy mists, faceless sisters of the night emerge in every sort of torn and draped rag, roving about while … [Read more...] about Macbeth
The SpongeBob Musical
Goofy but cute? Check. Nutty-and-fruity but timely in theme? Check. Sappy but good-hearted? Check. For kids and adults alike? Check. Ignore the title and just go see it? Check. For anyone like myself that somehow – in my case, even with six kids – never tuned in even once to Stephen Hillenburg’s award-winning, Nickelodeon hit, SpongeBob … [Read more...] about The SpongeBob Musical
Wakey, Wakey
A half-dressed man lying flat on the stage seems surprised when the stage lights suddenly come up and he turns to see hundreds of audience eyes looking at him. “Is it now? I thought I had more time,” he says with some regret, anxiety, but also excitement of what is to come next. An immediate black-out and a few moments later, he appears now in pajama bottoms, slippers, and … [Read more...] about Wakey, Wakey
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
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
Gypsy: A Musical Fable
The show that New York Times revered and feared theatre critic Ben Brantley has referred to as “what may be the greatest of all American musicals” and Times essayist/columnist Frank Hart Rich Jr. once called “Broadway’s own brassy, unlikely answer to King Lear, Gypsy: A Musical Fable in the end is nothing without a Rose who can join a long line of divas of a certain age to try … [Read more...] about Gypsy: A Musical Fable
Amaluna
With seventy per cent of the forty-eight-member cast and all of the musicians and singers being women, Cirque du Soleil’s nineteenth and latest show touring the world – Amaluna – is a tour de force of female power and prowess. In an evening where the reverberating voices, the gasp-producing athleticism, and the eye-popping pageantry of women reigns supreme, no better segment … [Read more...] about Amaluna
