1,373 stories by "Chad Jones"
Charming " that's the word that kept running through my brain while watching the 42nd Street Moon production of Carmelina, the largely forgotten 1979 musical by Alan Jay Lerner (of My Fair L…
Of the four short Thornton Wilder plays that comprise Aurora Theatre Company's Wilder Times, one is grating, one is darkly funny, one is poignant and one is so brilliant, so moving it almost…
Suddenly, we're awash in Greeks. Must have something to do with the upcoming election. Everyone's feeling deeply and internationally tragic. We have An Iliad over at Berkeley Repertory Theat…
If Apple or some other high-tech giant was really smart, really forward thinking, they'd head down to the Thick House and check out the West Coast premiere of Christopher Chen's The Hundred …
In 1985, Betty Buckley was sensational as a boy in the Rupert Holmes musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood (which happens to be back on Broadway at the moment in an all-new production). She was…
Watching August Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata at Cutting Ball Theater, it becomes clear that without Strindberg, we probably would not have the wonderfully weird worlds of Samuel Beckett or …
One minute the stage is bare, then there's a blackout, some noise, and suddenly the stage is full of...a poet. Not just a poet, but The Poet, the guy who is going to tell us the story of ...…
Opening nights don't come much more momentous than Saturday's gala celebrating three things:
1. San Francisco Playhouse's new theater space in the former Post Street Theatre (formerly …
When Moisés Kaufman gets to the point in his play 33 Variations, there's resonance, beauty and purpose in it. For nearly 2 ½hours we've been tracking parallel stories: one in the present…
"Know what is and what ain't," one brother advises another in Suzan-Lori Parks' mesmerizing play Topdog/Underdog. Telling what is from what ain't is a tricky business in this deceptively str…
On exactly the kind of temperate night for which they invented outdoor theater, California Shakespeare Theater opened the final show of the summer season. Hamlet, directed by Liesl Tommy (be…
There's a slippery quality to Sharr White's The Other Place, the drama opening the Magic Theatre season. The first half of this 80-minute one-act is especially slick as we try to gain our be…
In some ways, Larry Kramer's landmark play The Normal Heart is just a lot of yelling. Characters don't simply raise their voices, they scream, sometimes from the depths of their souls. And t…
Ah, the excitement of a new season. We may not have the dramatic foliage color changes here in San Francisco. We may not have the crisp fall air slowly pushing out the hot, dry summer air (i…
The thing to know about Crowded Fire's Invasion! is that it's best not to know too much. There's comedy, mystery, surprises and sinister darkness all lurking about director Evren Odcikin's s…
In professional wrestling, we're told, you can't kick a guy's ass without the help of the guy whose ass you're kicking. Talk about a democracy! Perhaps there's more to learn from the gaudy w…
Berkeley Repertory Theatre's season-opening production of Chinglish by David Henry Hwang presents the best possible circumstances to witness communication happening under the worst possible …
You don't really expect Japanese erotic tentacle art to be the inspiration for a feel-good treatise on saving a broken marriage. But that's just what Steve Yockey delivers in the world premi…
Cabaret dazzler Mark Nadler is on the road both literally and figuratively. In the figurative sense, Nadler is on the road to the past in his new show. That shouldn't be a surprise for a pia…
Noël Coward was a man of his time in many ways and maybe even ahead of his time in others. For instance, in the delightful 1941 play Blithe Spirit, now gracing the Orinda Hills in a hands…
At once the antithesis of drama (nothing's happening!) and a complete exposure of the theater's guts and bones, Annie Baker's has a particular genius for creating simplicity of the most comp…
As a showcase for mind-blowing stagecraft, you will not find a better example than War Horse, the National Theatre of Great Britain hit that is trampling audience's tear ducts around the wor…
Zora Neale Hurston writes with zest and zeal. She can move from joy to anguish in a second and still find her way back to hope. All of this is readily apparent in California Shakespeare Comp…
The 25th anniversary production of Les Misérables now at the Orpheum Theatre as part of the SHN season is annoying and gratifying, pretty much in equal measure.
You have to give credit to s…
Palo Alto native Terri White grew up and became a Broadway star, thanks largely to her big break in 1972's musical hit Two Gentlemen of Verona, which she also performed on tour at the Geary …
