Best Available Jonathan Spector Shotgun Players What happens when we get to peek behind the curtain of a well-respected, nonprofit theater that is currently looking for a new artistic director after the former one suddenly resigned under mysterious circumstances? To answer that question for a hypothetical theater company – the City Repertory Company – acclaimed, … [Read more...] about Best Available
Shotgun Players
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
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
Yerma
Yerma Melinda Lopez (Adaptation & Translation) Based on the Play by Federico García Lorca Shotgun Players An opening scene of passionate lovemaking; a happy realization of a late period; and a pregnant, young woman singing sweetly a mesmerizing lullaby are still not enough to belie the feeling that all is not going as well as it at first seems. The fact that the … [Read more...] about Yerma
The Triumph of Love
The Triumph of Love Pierre De Marivaux, Translated by Stephen Wadsworth Shotgun Players Gender confusions left and right that lead to infatuations built on false pretenses. A cunning princess plotting to capture the love of a naïve prince who has been taught his whole life to hate and eventually usurp her. Loves built on mounting lies leading to three planned … [Read more...] about The Triumph of Love
Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 Dave Malloy Shotgun Players Having opened November 15, 2022, Shotgun Players’ audience-immersive, modern-sounding opera set in a Russian cabaret setting of 1812 – Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 by Dave Malloy – has already received the highest of accolades from both my fellow critics and especially from … [Read more...] about Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812
A Small Fire
A Small Fire Adam Block Shotgun Players If tomorrow I find myself completely without the majority of my sensory powers that only yesterday seemed perfunctory, what would be left for me in life? No smell, no taste, no sight, no hearing? What effects would this catastrophic shift have on my relationships – my family, my friends? How would their lives shift? Could … [Read more...] about A Small Fire
Passing Strange
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
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
Elevada
He is a self-proclaimed “online agitator” with four-to-five million followers who rarely leaves his apartment or takes a shower and has never been on a blind date. She is on her eighth, online-generated, first-date in the past three weeks (alas, no second dates yet). He has signed a contract with a megacorporation to sell his identity and cease to exist as a person for the … [Read more...] about Elevada
“The Flick”
The FlickAnnie BakerShotgun PlayersJustin Howard & Chris GinesiEntering the Ashby Stage setting, it is at first confusing where to find the ticketed seat. Mirroring the regular seating area is another set of seat rows, which after a second look, are clearly those of a small movie theatre. Looking further, there are the curtained walls with movie-house sconces, … [Read more...] about “The Flick”
“Kings”
KingsSarah BurgessShotgun PlayersSam JacksonIn the recent midterm elections, over one hundred women were elected to Congress, many being first-timers who defeated long-time, often white-male incumbents. Most ran with a promise to shake up the ol’ boys’ systems and to do some major housecleaning. Common among their pledges were ones like Sydney Millsap’s, “I can do … [Read more...] about “Kings”
“KILL THE DEBBIE DOWNERS! KILL THEM! KILL THEM! KILL THEM OFF!”
KILL THE DEBBIE DOWNERS! KILL THEM! KILL THEM! KILL THEM OFF!Mark Jackson & Beth WilmurtShotgun PlayersNathaniel Andalis, Erin Mei-Ling Stuart, Gabby Battista, Sam Jackson & Billy RaphealFirst, I must make an upfront confession. Either I missed all the particular “Saturday Night Live” shows between 2004 and 2010 when various versions of Rachel Datch’s character, … [Read more...] about “KILL THE DEBBIE DOWNERS! KILL THEM! KILL THEM! KILL THEM OFF!”
“Kiss”
KissGuillermo CalderónShotgun PlayersRasha Mohamed, Roneet Aliza Rahamin, Elissa Beth Stebbins, Wiley Naman Strasser & Phil Wong How many of us gloss over the almost daily headlines that have been on the inner pages of our newspapers or deep in the online news feeds for the past five years about the civil war in Syria? How many of us hardly notice any more a … [Read more...] about “Kiss”
“Dry Land”
Dry LandRuby Rae SpiegelShotgun PlayersGrace Ng & Martha BrighamIf there were ever a play that should come with a few upfront “Warning” signs like those we now see on so many consumer goods, perhaps it is Ruby Rae Spiegel’s Dry Land now in a spellbinding, but often difficult-to-watch production at Shotgun Players. --> Warning:- Anyone who may faint at the sight of … [Read more...] about “Dry Land”
