Emily S. Mendel, a writer and photographer, has been a regular contributor to culturevulture.net since 2006, where she reviews theater, art, film, television and destinations. Ending her 30-year law practice has given Ms. Mendel the time to indulge in her love of travel and the arts, and to serve as the theater reviewer for berkeleyside.com.
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Writes in: Art & Architecture, Dance, Destinations, Etc, Features, Film, Television, and Theater.
TheaterSan Francisco,
After rave reviews and awards in London and New York, a new production of “Charles III” opened at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater (ACT). Co-produced by ACT, the Seattle Repertory Theatre and Washington D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, “Charles III” will ...
TheaterBerkeley,
Shotgun Player’s production of playwright Christopher Chen’s stimulating, creative and complex work, “Caught,” confounded and ultimately conquered the audience in its opening night performance in Berkeley, California. The mesmerizing “Caught” concerns truth and lies in their infinite varieties, and the ...
TheaterSan Francisco,
What is it about the human psyche that makes us willing to believe the most insidious and hateful lies about someone else, even one closest to us? Is it because accepting the worst in another makes us feel better about ...
Television
This appealing drama about Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) centers on a little known chapter in his fascinating and well-documented life. In June 1953, the great man, then Prime Minister at age 78, suffered a stroke. In a feat impossible today, ...
TheaterSan Francisco,
“You Never Can Tell” is an early work of Shaw’s, written in 1896, while he was still honing his craft. He wanted to both entertain and educate his audience, and mainly he accomplished this, for the play as written is ...
Art & ArchitectureSan Francisco,
The fresh and creative Ed Ruscha retrospective at San Francisco’s de Young Museum celebrates the artist’s spare and inventive artwork, which simultaneously memorializes and satirizes the American West. The artist’s attraction to popular culture, Pop-commercial graphics and use ...
Television
The very final three-episode season of “Inspector Lewis,” premiering Sunday, August 7, 2016 on PBS’ Masterpiece Mystery, is a sad hail and farewell to the appealing characters and ingenious plot puzzles that began with Oxfordshire’s Detective Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse ...
TheaterSan Francisco,
Cal Shakes’ revival of the great 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Fences” by the illustrious August Wilson (1945-2005) is still vigorous and vital. With the passage of time, and under the direction of Raelle Myrick-Hodges, the two-act play becomes ...
Art & ArchitectureSan Francisco,
A splendid exhibition of almost 150 of the finest art from Taiwan’s National Palace Museum in Taipei, half of which have never before been seen in the U.S., now graces San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum and will travel to the ...
TheaterSan Francisco,
In Cal Shake’s creative new gender-bending version of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” much text was deleted and some was added, to various levels of success.
In a newly added prologue, we see a group of caterers cleaning ...
