1,373 stories by "Chad Jones"
When I called playwright Douglas Carter Beane to interview him for a San Francisco Chronicle story on Xanadu: The Musical at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, he happened to be taking a b…
Such joy. Such wicked, delicious, heart-pounding joy.
That's what it feels like at the end of The Wild Bride, the dark fairy tale come to life on Berkeley Repertory Theatre's Roda stage.…
As a fading Southern belle in a Tennessee Williams play might say, "Well I do declare! What's a theatergoer to do with so many scrumptious Williams play from which to choose?"
The answer …
Tennessee Williams' first brilliant move was to let everyone off the hook " himself included. By alerting the audience that The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, he removes it from reality (…
Theater folk know Amy Glazer as one of the busiest directors in Bay Area theater. But she also has a burgeoning career as a film director, which is no surprise given that she grew up on movi…
As the weary soldier trudges down the road home, you see the weight of his exhaustion as well as his excitement to see his mother and fiancée in his every step. The remarkable thing is that…
You don't walk into Fela! expecting Oklahoma!. With the visionary Bill T. Jones serving as director, choreographer and co-writer, you know this is going to be different. And it's going to be…
Talk about your unconventional love stories! Lauren Yee's charming world-premiere play A Man, his Wife, and his Hat is a romance between an elderly hat maker and his favorite hat.
So wher…
I was enthralled by the form and baffled by the content. That, in a nutshell, is my reaction to the world premiere of Sticky Time, an experimental new work from writer/director Marilee Talki…
Last summer at Berkeley's Impact Theatre, Trevor Allen dusted off Working for the Mouse, his finely tuned one-man show about his years as Pluto, Mr. Smee, the Mad Hatter and others on the pa…
In 1993, an ebullient comedienne with a head full of red curls, danced and sang her way across the stage of the Gershwin Theatre (aka the Presentation Theatre) as the bubbly title character …
It's never good to speak ill of those no longer with us, but the last touring Cirque du Soleil show that stopped in San Francisco, Ovo, was all about the insect world. And truth be told, it …
David Mamet never fails to fog me up.
He's never been one of my favorite playwrights because, although he's a wizard of compelling dialogue and unquestionable intelligence, his view of the…
In which I discuss my Broadway debut in Hair and link to my San Francisco Chronicle review of the touring production.
Let the sun shine. Let the sun shine. The sunshine in. Continue readin…
You don't go to a Cirque du Soleil show just to see the costumes. Audiences are usually slathering for the death-defying acrobatics and goofy clowns. But what separates a Cirque show from th…
Not many people can claim success in the fields of musical theater, bread baking and crooning. Todd Murray can.
Growing up in a small Pennsylvania farming community, Murray had two loves.…
The Bridge Project, that transatlantic experiment in blending American and English actors and designers is slowly wending its way to a close after three seasons. The final lap of the project…
In this week's edition of the Palo Alto Weekly I reviewed the world premiere of Clementine in the Lower 9 at TheatreWorks.
You can read the review here.
Continue reading →
Sometimes you experience a work of art " for me that art is usually theater " and it connects you with something bigger and more powerful than your individual experience. You connect with th…
Audacious, entertaining and chilling, Steve Yockey's world-premiere Bellwether at Marin Theatre Company goes where few plays dare to tread.
What starts out as a satiric look at suburban l…
The sensational zing of the Phaedra myth has always come from the incestuous relationship at the story's heart: Phaedra is secretly in love with her stepson, Hippolytus. When that love becom…
Bill Cain's last two Bay Area outings, Equivocation and 9 Circles, both at Marin Theatre Company, were absolutely fantastic. So there's reason to be excited about the world premiere of his l…
Docuemntary film director/producer Austin Forbord (below right) has created a fascinating documentary about the history of San Francisco theater from the post-World War II days up to the pre…
American Conservatory Theater opens the season with a play that only American Conservatory Theater could do. And I mean really do " the way it should be done.
The play is George S. Kaufma…
The horrific stories about kids and bullying just keep on coming. Even in the face of something extraordinary like the "It Gets Better" campaign, bullying persists. It may take generations t…
