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.
Theater
It’s no wonder that William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” is the most-produced of his tragedies. “The Scottish play” has all the elements that have appealed to broad audiences for over four hundred years: weird witches, exciting battles, blind ambition, and violent ...
TheaterSan Francisco,
Caryl Churchill’s superbly written and acted 1982 drama, “Top Girls” is a view of women in London in the early days of Margaret Thatcher’s reign as Prime Minister (1979-1990), when her Conservative Party emphasized achieving individual success, rather than ...
TheaterBerkeley,
“The Great Wave” should have been a great play. It seemingly has all the right ingredients: a spine-tingling story based on real geopolitical events involving a captured young Japanese woman imprisoned by the totalitarian dictatorship of North Korea, while ...
TheaterBerkeley,
The good news and not-so-good news is that Shotgun Players’ production of “The Flick” is three hours long (including a ten-minute intermission). Good news, because this brilliant 2014 Pulitzer Prize winner takes the time it needs to reveal naturally ...
TheaterSan Francisco,
After two years on Broadway, the evocative and entertaining musical “Anastasia” is now touring the United States, to be followed by stops in major European cities and Japan. Indicative of its lasting, universal appeal is the public’s love of ...
TheaterSan Francisco,
Cal Shakes’ world premiere of “House of Joy” by emerging playwright Madhuri Shekar is a dramatically staged and spectacularly costumed action-adventure romance set in a harem during the impending collapse of the storied 17th century Mughal Indian Empire. For ...
TheaterSan Francisco,
It’s not often that theater reviewers heap praise on the set designer in the same way that they do on the writers, actors, and directors. Perhaps they should . . . and after seeing “The Play That Goes Wrong,” ...
Art & ArchitectureBerkeley,
On display in one large gallery at UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) is “No Horizon,” comprising the recent works of two contemporary Bay Area artists, Helen Mirra, and Sean Thackrey. Their ethos has been influenced ...
TheaterCA,
The little lifeboat is swiftly sent down./ Too many men too greedily/ Hold on to it as they drown. — Bertolt Brecht When Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956, “Three Penny Opera”) wrote the light and lively fable of ...
EtcBerkeley,
Tony Taccone, Berkeley Rep’s acclaimed Artistic Director for the last 21 years, is about to launch the last production of his last season, before turning over the reins to incoming artistic director Johanna Pfaelzer. During ...
