Lynne FriedmannSan Diego,
The Old Globe has a certified hit on its hands with the world premiere of the musical “Almost Famous,” based on the Oscar-winning film of the same name. On stage, the production masterfully stays faithful to the original storyline ...
Emily S. MendelBerkeley,
Happily, Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks (“Topdog/Underdog,” “Father Comes Home from the Wars”) has a sense of humor that ameliorates a bit of the stark, sobering cultural and racial themes of “White Noise.” For example, the four old friends from college, two white and two black, who ...
Lewis WhittingtonPhiladelphia,
Currently running at the Lantern Theater Company Bertolt Brecht’s rarely staged “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” directed by Charles McMahon who doesn’t dilute Brecht flaming anvil of a political play about the rise of mobster businessman who becomes ...
Josh BaxtSan Diego,
The immigrant experience is a storied piece of American lore: huddled masses, etc. Wave after wave have come to the U.S., many recently from the Middle East. Writ large, they arrive and gradually adjust to American life. But what ...
Emily S. Mendel
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 ...
Emily S. MendelSan 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 ...
Emily S. MendelBerkeley,
“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 ...
Lynne Friedmann
In the 16th century, a bungled kidnap attempt triggers a domino cascade that nearly foils the future of the teenager princess destined to become Queen Elizabeth I. How young Bess keeps her wits, not to mention her head, will ...
Karen WeinsteinLos Angeles,
Here is the question: What would you think if you saw “A Play is a Poem” and did not know it was written by Ethan Coen? If you had been living under a rock and had never heard of ...
Nancy S. BishopChicago,
"Howards End," the stunning new production by Remy Bumppo Theatre, weaves together strands of three families. The wealthy and elite Wilcoxes—father, sons and daughter—the Schlegel sisters, who belong to the intellectual gentry, and poverty-stricken Leonard Bast and his ...
