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 politically a ruthless dictator mowing down everyone in his demented ...
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 does that look like on the micro level? How do ...
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 murders, with the doubt, brooding, and madness that follows, and ...
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 fostering community in general through, among other things, unions and ...
Too many seasons have slipped by without my having caught up with Smuin Contemporary Ballet. It was heartening to see how seasoned the small but surefooted company, treasured in the San Francisco Bay Area for its showmanship, has become under the hand of Celia Fushille. The three pieces on ...
Call it a chestnut or a war horse, if you must, in order to polish your sophistication credentials. “La Bohème,” done well, is some of the most moving music on an opera stage. It is hard to imagine anything more beautiful to listen to than ...
“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 her valiant mother and sister back home battle their government ...
If you have a nose for power, drawing a deep inspirational breath from the approachable majesty of nature, the long view of history, and intriguing vagaries of human expression, can be a tricky business. Nonetheless, poet David Salner, thus nasally endowed, sallies forth undaunted. On ...
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 keep you on the edge of your seat in the ...
Q&A/Review by Paula Farmer They say inspiration can come from the most unlikeliest of places. For Lara Prescott, debut novelist of the recently released book, “The Secrets We Kept,” it was a room full of post-World War II typists working at the ...
