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Theatre Eddys

Theatre Eddys

San Francisco Bay Area Theater Reviews

Musical

Passing Strange

March 14, 2022 by Eddie Reynolds

Passing Strange Stew (Book & Lyrics); Stew & Heidi Rodewald (Music) Created in Collaboration with Annie Dorsey Shotgun Players A young, wide-eyed teenager – identified only as “Youth” – is searching for his real self, something beyond his life as a middle-class, black kid in Los Angeles living with his big-hearted, Jesus-loving mom.  His multi-year … [Read more...] about Passing Strange

Sense and Sensibility

March 13, 2022 by Eddie Reynolds

Sense and Sensibility Paul Gordon (Book, Music & Lyrics) Based on the Novel by Jane Austin TheatreWorks Silicon Valley   For those who have experienced even a few of the 175 plays and musicals that Robert Kelley directed during the first fifty years of the Tony Award winning company he founded – Theatreworks Silicon Valley – there are much … [Read more...] about Sense and Sensibility

Celebrating 150 Years of Gilbert and Sullivan! A Sesquicentennial Soiree of Scenes

February 20, 2022 by Eddie Reynolds Leave a Comment

Celebrating 150 Years of Gilbert and Sullivan!  A Sesquicentennial Soiree of Scenes Lamplighters Music Theatre W.S. Gilbert (Lyrics); Arthur Sullivan (Music)   With a triumphant heralding of opening notes emerging from an orchestra pit that has been empty during two years of COVID, Lamplighters Music Theatre returns with glorious flair just in time to celebrate … [Read more...] about Celebrating 150 Years of Gilbert and Sullivan! A Sesquicentennial Soiree of Scenes

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder

March 5, 2020 by Eddie Reynolds

 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

The SpongeBob Musical

February 13, 2020 by Eddie Reynolds Leave a Comment

 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

Chicago

February 11, 2020 by Eddie Reynolds

Hips snap and swirl.  Hands spread their fingers, Fosse-style.  Shoulders roll as twelve bodies slowly swing around in unison, grouped together in a triangle that moves in soft but precisely placed steps.  Through the center in her black lingerie snakes a slinking gal singing in a smoky, sensuous voice, “C’mon babe, why don’t we paint the town, and all that jazz?” And onto … [Read more...] about Chicago

The Fantasticks

February 3, 2020 by Eddie Reynolds

In 1960, it was a little musical that broke many molds, especially from the beloved musicals by big Broadway composers/writers like Rogers and Hammerstein, George Abbott, and Lerner and Loewe.  It had little plot and became one of several of the earliest so-called ‘concept’ musicals that would later lead to dozens of others such as A Chorus Line, Assassins, and Avenue Q.  There … [Read more...] about The Fantasticks

Princess Ida

February 3, 2020 by Eddie Reynolds

An operetta from the conservative Victorian Age that satirizes feminism and women’s education and sets up a battle between the sexes that the men are destined to win is not exactly a winning formula for most 2020 audiences.  But the operetta is by the perennially loved W.S. Gilbert (libretto) and Albert Sullivan (music); and there are many, modern aficionados of the famed pair … [Read more...] about Princess Ida

She Loves Me

January 27, 2020 by Eddie Reynolds

A single violin roams playfully through its scales, soon followed by a twittering trumpet with a speech all its own.  Winds trip over each other before more instruments start a game of leapfrog as their well-played notes and phrases seem to jump and skip all around us. One of my favorite overtures has just been played beautifully with spunk and spirit by the fourteen-person … [Read more...] about She Loves Me

Head Over Heels

December 22, 2019 by Eddie Reynolds

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

Groundhog Day The Musical

December 12, 2019 by Eddie Reynolds

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

December 12, 2019 by Eddie Reynolds

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

December 8, 2019 by Eddie Reynolds

  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

Miss Saigon

November 14, 2019 by Eddie Reynolds Leave a Comment

The story originating from Puccini’s much-beloved opera Madame Butterfly is well enough known that most audience members arrive – as they might for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet – anticipating the tragic ending to its ill-fated love story.  Decade-long runs both in London and New York in the 1990s as well as continual, packed-house tours worldwide these past twenty years also … [Read more...] about Miss Saigon

Gypsy: A Musical Fable

November 11, 2019 by Eddie Reynolds Leave a Comment

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

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Eddie is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.

Theatre Eddys Ratings Legend

5 E's - Loved It
A classic, would see it a second time.
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Excellent, strong production.
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Good production but something is lacking or not clicking.
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Below average but had at least one interesting component.
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Waste of time.

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About Eddie

Theatre Critic for the Greater San Francisco Bay Area, writing 150+ reviews annually for Theatre Eddys and Talkin' Broadway (San Jose/Silicon Valley). Read More

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