Thursday, May 28, 2020
Foothill College’s Theatre Arts Department found itself in the same unenviable muddle as most local theater companies these days: What to do now that it can’t stage its spring production…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 09:53AMMonday, May 18, 2020
Mountain View’s Pear Theatre came up with a creative way of presenting its annual short-play program despite the current pandemic—“Pear Slices 2020: Digital Edition.” The Pear is pre…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 08:04PMThursday, May 14, 2020
The annual PlayGround Festival of New Works, which features two Peninsula residents and one San Jose world premiere, has gone digital this year and is streaming most of its events free of ch…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 01:17PMFriday, May 8, 2020
A “reimagined” 2020-21 season is in store for TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, with the next production now not scheduled to open until next October. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced substan…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 09:53AMThursday, April 30, 2020
South Bay theaters have found some innovative ways to “keep the lights on” virtually even as their physical spaces remain shuttered while the “shelter in place” order is in effect. L…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 09:59AMFriday, April 17, 2020
Necessity is the mother of virtual classes, which is what many Peninsula theater companies are ramping up right now. Los Alto Stage Company introduced several unusual virtual classes earlier…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 10:00AMFriday, April 3, 2020
That old expression “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” has never been more apt for theater companies throughout the Bay Area, which are dark until the “shelter in place” ord…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 10:24AMTuesday, March 24, 2020
With Bay Area theaters on a hard stop during the coronavirus “shelter-in-place” era, some theaters have devised innovative ways to stay relevant. TheatreWorks Silicon Valley followed the…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 10:17AMFriday, March 13, 2020
To close or not to close. That is the question facing local theater companies in the face of COVID-19. It’s not an easy decision to make because shuttering a theater production—either fo…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 04:36PMTuesday, March 10, 2020
A tiny wisp of a girl—never more than 100 pounds even as a grown-up—is wrapping TheatreWorks Silicon Valley audiences around her finger at performances of “They Promised Her the Moon�…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 10:24AMTwo plays, “Confession” by Barry Slater and “The Baltimore Waltz” by Paula Vogel, are in rotating repertory through April 5 at Dragon Theatre in Redwood City. Each is relatively shor…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 09:33AMFriday, March 6, 2020
What do you get when you combine an unfinished Charles Dickens novel, a music hall of the 1890s, a play within a play, broad (very broad) humor, a number of rather bland songs and a “myste…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 10:27AMTuesday, February 4, 2020
There’s a whole lot of testosterone on stage in Los Altos Stage Company’s production of “Oslo,” which runs through Feb. 16 at Bus Barn Theater in Los Altos. Despite the fact that thi…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 01:38AMMonday, January 27, 2020
After such a standout production of “Newsies” in December, it’s unfortunate that Hillbarn Theatre in Foster City has come up with what is, essentially, a somewhat lackluster version of…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 06:26PMSaturday, January 25, 2020
British playwright Alan Ayckbourn has written more than 70 plays, most of them comedies and quite a number of which could rightly be called farces. “Taking Steps” is one of those, though…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 01:15AMTuesday, January 21, 2020
In the rather other-worldly place of “The Nether,” a somewhat disturbing play by Jennifer Haley now at Dragon Productions Theatre in Redwood City, the world – at least the world in the…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 02:37AMPalo Alto Players is currently offering “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” a bit of a hard sell in this day and age when it’s likely not everyone is familiar with Henrik Ibsen’s original cl…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 02:29AMTuesday, December 10, 2019
“You/Emma” running through Sunday, Dec. 15 at Pear Theatre in Mountain View appears, at first glance, to be a trifling play. It’s a one-woman show that’s written by a woman and is ab…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 12:44AMTuesday, November 26, 2019
The first “Miracle on 34th Street” told the story of a little girl who didn’t believe in Santa Claus and the man who came into her life and helped her believe. That’s the plot of the…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 12:38AMTuesday, November 12, 2019
There’s so much squeaky-clean goodness, corny juvenile fun and quite a few excellent performances in the Palo Alto Players’ production of “A Christmas Story, the Musical” that it’s…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 09:23PMMonday, November 11, 2019
Strong vocal and acting performances make the current Broadway by the Bay production of the Stephen Sondheim- James Levine musical of reconstructed fairy tales, “Into the Woods,” pleasur…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 05:44PMWednesday, November 6, 2019
King Henry VIII of England, who had six wives and way more than that many mistresses, apparently only spent 1,000 days with one of them, Anne Boleyn. Then he had her beheaded. British histor…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 10:39AMThursday, October 24, 2019
A scrappy little play called “Sweat” – which just happened to win the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for drama for its playwright, Lynn Nottage, is getting a pretty decent, rough-and-tumble produ…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 09:23AMWednesday, October 16, 2019
The big question is why Hillbarn Theatre would want to squander its hard-earned dollars on such an outdated (despite its updates), unfunny, mostly uninteresting play as “It’s Only a Play…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 02:01AMMonday, September 16, 2019
Lyrical, enigmatic, lively, maudlin, affecting and, ultimately heart-tugging. That’s a capsule description of Palo Alto Players’ beautifully conceived production of “Bright Star,” th…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 04:13PMIt’s all about time – or the lack of it – in Marisa Wegrzyn’s quirky surrealist comedy “Hickorydickory” that runs through September 29 at Dragon Productions Theatre in Redwood Ci…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 03:28PMThursday, September 12, 2019
Hillbarn Theatre’s current production of “Anything Goes” is rather like a bowl of Rice Krispies: Sometimes it snaps, sometimes it crackles, sometimes it pops. And sometimes it fizzles.…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 04:55PMMonday, September 9, 2019
It’s rare to feel you’ve been present at the illustrious beginning of an actor’s theatrical career, but that is indeed what audiences will feel watching young Quincy Shaindlin in the L…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 04:35PMFriday, August 16, 2019
Broadway by the Bay’s production, which has only six more performances, is a perfect way to spend a summer evening.
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 02:18PMThursday, July 25, 2019
Douglas Carter Beane’s modernized version of the beloved children’s story “Cinderella” is an eye-opening experience as visualized by director Milissa Carey, now dashing along through…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 06:01AMThursday, July 18, 2019
The etymology of language in all its forms and meanings is the crux of “The Language Archive,” running through Aug. 4 at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto. This TheatreWorks Silicon V…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 06:01AM 
