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Theatre Eddys

Theatre Eddys

San Francisco Bay Area Theater Reviews

Shotgun Players

Yellow Face

May 19, 2025 by Eddie Reynolds Leave a Comment

Yellow Face David Henry Hwang Shotgun Players Following a decade in the 1990s when Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson railed against the growing influence of Chinese Americans and questioned where their loyalties really lay (going famously after nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee as a traitor), David Henry Hwang opened in 2007 his play, Yellow Face, a brilliantly scripted … [Read more...] about Yellow Face

Art

March 17, 2025 by Eddie Reynolds

Art Yasmina Reza Shotgun Players The choice that Shotgun Players surely made months ago to open the 2025 season with Art -- the 1998 Tony Award for Best Play by French playwright Yasmina Reza and translated to English by Christopher Hampton -- proves to be brilliant as we are in the midst of Trump's first hundred days.  As we watch three best friends with a … [Read more...] about Art

Best Available

May 24, 2024 by Eddie Reynolds

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

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

March 25, 2024 by Eddie Reynolds

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

January 21, 2024 by Eddie Reynolds

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

May 28, 2023 by Eddie Reynolds Leave a Comment

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

April 2, 2023 by Eddie Reynolds

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

January 30, 2023 by Eddie Reynolds

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

May 23, 2022 by Eddie Reynolds

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

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

Vinegar Tom

December 19, 2019 by Eddie Reynolds

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

November 4, 2019 by Eddie Reynolds Leave a Comment

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”

September 2, 2019 by Eddie Reynolds Leave a Comment

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”

May 27, 2019 by Eddie Reynolds Leave a Comment

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!”

April 2, 2019 by Eddie Reynolds Leave a Comment

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!”

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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.
3 E's - Liked It
Good production but something is lacking or not clicking.
2 E's - Just OK
Below average but had at least one interesting component.
1 E - Did Not Like It
Waste of time.

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Theatre Eddys reviews performances throughout the greater San Francisco Bay Area.

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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