1,373 stories by "Chad Jones"
If you think you've seen The Taming of the Shrew, you might want to think again. Director Shana Cooper's production " the season-closer for the California Shakespeare Theater " is fresh, fei…
Though hardly a senior citizen, Marga Gomez needs to talk about her age. That doesn't mean she'll tell you her age, but it does mean she'll regale you with her thoughts on the aging process …
"Once you start to ask," Eleanor says, "there are more questions than answers." Not a surprising statement in a play whose title, Why We Have a Body promises an answer to an implied question…
The original production of Spring Awakening, the musical based on the 1891 play by Frank Wedekind, was so vivid, so powerful and so widely seen throughout the Bay Area, it's rather astonishi…
Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance only looks like a suburban comedy. It's really an existential nightmare slightly more gussied up than your average slasher movie. Oh, blood flows in this ev…
She's charming and gorgeous. Vivacious and soulful. In short, Rita Moreno is the perfect candidate for an autobiographical show.
Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup is not yet the perfect sh…
It's the day after the Richmond-Ermet AIDS Foundation, and Lea Salonga, visiting family in the Bay Area, is still glowing because, at the curtain call, she got to hold hands with Shirley Jon…
Nerd-on-nerd love is something to behold.
It's sweet, it's smart, it's funny " at least it is in Cameron McNary's sharply etched play Of Dice and Men, receiving its Bay Area premiere court…
In today's San Francisco Chronicle, I talk with TheatreWorks Artistic Director Robert Kelley, set designer Joe Ragey and costume designer Fumiko Bielefeldt about their work on bringing Jane …
Falling in love with a playwright whose work you're experiencing for the first time feels like Christmas morning at age 6 " giddy excitement, new toys, wonder and sugar high all wrapped up i…
Marin Theatre Company's beautiful production of August Wilson's Seven Guitars is the third I've seen, and it amazes me how similar and how different those productions have been. The first wa…
If you've ever wondered what happens when the Muppets go blue, check out Stuffed and Unstrung, the blush-inducing, laugh-happy puppet improv show from Henson Alternative, the adult arm of th…
A beautiful night at the Bruns Amphitheater is made even more so by something marvelous on stage.
That would be George Bernard Shaw's Candida, a sharp early play (1894) that is concise, f…
If only the actual apocalypse were going to be so enjoyable.
Hand it to playwright JC Lee for making the end of the world " and after " so lyrical, so funny and so, well, human. That's on…
In a recent email chat with playwright Kim Rosenstock (see full interview below), I asked her what Bay Area theatergoers might learn about her if they see both of her shows now on local stag…
Let it be known that the world premiere of California Shakespeare Theater's The Verona Project is a hell of a lot more fun than The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Shakespeare play on which it'…
Hair piled on her head, cigarette dangling out of her mouth and a slight stoop to her posture, Faith Prince can get a laugh just walking across the stage as Mrs. Wilkinson, the dissatisfied …
When Billy Elliot the Musical caused a sensation in London in 2005 and then swept the 2009 Tonys with 10 awards, you could be excused for wondering what all the fuss was about. Wasn't this y…
About nine years ago, Trevor Allen lifted the veil on an operation so shrouded in secrecy and intrigue that the merest glimpse inside set people salivating. He revealed what it was actually …
You've heard that old trope about intense pressure turning a lump of coal into a diamond. Well what if that kind of pressure is applied to a human being? In Franz Kafka's opinion, the pressu…
After performing on the Tony Awards last Sunday with her fellow Company cast members, Anika Noni Rose, all glammed out in a gorgeous white gown, devoured a giant plate of nachos.
The Tony …
Director Joel Sass has such a strong, infectious sense of storytelling that he even makes Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, proclaimed to be the Bard's bloodiest play, enjoyable.
It's not t…
The legend of Tiny Alice looms large. Edward Albee's notorious 1964 follow-up to his monster Broadway smash Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf baffled critics and continued to cause kerfuffles f…
I can tell you that [title of show] is not for everyone, but I can also tell you that it's for more people than you might actually think. This meta-musical about two guys writing a musical a…
In the last year or so, Berkeley Repertory Theatre has offered an instructive survey of the solo show. Last summer, as part of the Fireworks festival, local favorite Dan Hoyle offered two of…
