Emily S. MendelSan Francisco,
ACT’s new production of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is a long evening, with moments of poetry and power interlaced with periods of static and sluggishness. John Douglas Thompson is often mesmerizing as the Danish Prince Hamlet, and he is supported ...
David E. MorenoPalo Alto,
Taylor Mac just hit the San Francisco Bay Area like a category five hurricane; surprising seasoned thespians, consummate drag queens, strung out performance artists, elite Stanford students, and, baby boomer culture vultures. Who could resist the shear force of Mac’s ...
A nice guy joins the sexual revolution, Neil Simon-style.
Lynne FriedmannSan Diego,
A middle-age man, who runs a seafood restaurant and drives a Buick in the Age of Aquarius, clumsily tries to join the sexual revolution in “Last of the Red Hot Lovers.”
Barney Cashman (Phil Johnson, in a boffo performance) ...
Karen WeinsteinLos Angeles,
What on earth does “Head of Passes” mean? Let us clear that up quickly. It is the mouth of the Mississippi River, a desolate wetland where the river breaks into three branches as it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. ...
Lynne FriedmannSan Diego,
Numbers loom large in the life of an immigrant woman whose life comes up in the minus column in “Ironbound” at the Moxie Theatre.
We first meet 42-year-old Darja (played by Jacque Wilke) at a bus stop in ...
Thirty of the Temptations' Greatest Hits in a dazzling musical.
Emily S. MendelBerkeley,
The story of The Temptations, the greatest rhythm and blues group of all time, bursts forth at Berkeley Rep in an explosion of energy and élan. Multi-talented artistic actors with soulful voices and limber legs capture the stage, backed by ...
Karen WeinsteinLos Angeles,
I have never felt that ballet was a very successful medium for telling a story. To convey emotion? It works. For the set up of a situation? Sure. But details that push the story forward become exaggerated pantomime. Therefore, I ...
Josh BaxtSan Diego,
Mental illness is tough to depict in any medium, let alone a jaunty musical. Yet, the Globe’s world premiere of Benny & Joon makes it work. They don’t really get the illness part right, but in the end, it doesn’t ...
Karen WeinsteinLos Angeles,
Say: Paul Rudnick. What do you think of? Most likely The New Yorker column, “Shouts and Murmurs,” to which he is a frequent contributor. So your expectation is lots of toss-off, funny one liners, right? Well, “Big Night” has many ...
Emily S. MendelBerkeley,
“Luna Gale,” the sun around whom all the characters in Rebecca Gilman’s impressive Bay Area premiere play rotates, is the only one we never see. That’s because “Luna Gale” is an infant, the focus of a custody battle between her ...
