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 his tenure, the Tony Award-winning nonprofit Berkeley Rep has presented ...
There’s nothing better than a bright and boisterous musical show to enhance one's mood — and boy, do we need a mood-changer these days. “Kiss My Aztec!,” with its book co-written by John Leguizamo (“Latin History for Morons”) and Tony Taccone, the Rep’s departing artistic director, certainly improved the ...
“Movement itself is the weaving, gathering threads into fabric, they dive into each other, a pool of pools, swimming through to remember, like roots through soil that is really the decomposition of other roots.” Sebastian Grubb “Fabric Animal” is an organic osmosis of relational movement between ...
The road to getting a new musical up and running is often a bumpy one, and composer Robert Kaplowitz and Kittson O’Neil’s new musical MINORS struggles to find a good balance between book and music. It also takes on the very complex issues surrounding the ...
"If you're going to San Francisco/be sure to wear flowers in your hair" the song goes. The reality is, if you're going to San Francisco make sure you can pay the rent. But not everybody can pay the rent. Especially in San Francisco, a city where ...
When Toy Story 4 was first announced, a vocal group on Twitter seemed to all say the same thing…”why?” The third installment wrapped things up so nicely and seemed like a perfect note, was Toy Story 4 really necessary? Well, the answer is yes. Toy ...
There's a lot of late nights in "Late Night," a comedy about talk show hosts. Late nights be damned, this film is undeniably woke. A humorously hyper-verbal and deeply genuine look at women finding their voice in a man's world. Its voice is its strong ...
A great film helps us escape reality. But some films go further. Some films are lucky enough to see their artificial worlds come to fruition. That jump from artifice to prophetic art is rarer than you might think (and all the better for it). The day ...
There’s a point, around halfway through What You Are, when one character turns to another and asks: “You gonna make me beg?” It’s a stunning moment, both for the emotional content and the way it sums up the play. Begging is what these characters do. ...
Rudyard Kipling’s name is eponymous. His “White Man’s Burden” lament has served as a sanctimonious apologia for centuries of imperial rape and pillage on foreign soil. Kipling is also the author of “The Jungle Book,” a children’s cautionary tale that superimposes nineteenth century mores on anthropomorphized animal characters. This ...
