1,373 stories by "Chad Jones"
There's a beautiful line of dialogue that perfectly encapsulates the denouement of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, a tricky new musical having its world premiere at American Conservato…
In many ways, Blue Man Group is the modern equivalent of The Ziegfeld Follies " a lot of razzle-dazzle flash and sound, entertainment for its own sake. Instead of gorgeous gals with gams up …
In the spirit of PlayGround's annual 10-minute play festival, I'm going to attempt to write a 10-minute review.
The time is 10:40am. Start the clock.
The joy of a short play festival is …
What an interesting Sarah Ruhl moment we're having.
Ruhl's new version of Chekhov's Three Sisters is getting a moving and lovely production at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. And her 2005 tri…
How in the world do you follow Strike Up the Band? 42nd Street Moon's last outing was a spectacularly charming and tuneful production of a Gershwin show that has been unjustly sidelined by m…
It was hot and steamy in San Francisco Wednesday. And the weather was nice, too. Hugh Jackman, that final Australian frontier of old-school razzle-dazzle entertainment, put on a show at the …
Australian dreamboat and all-around wonderful entertainer Hugh Jackman is about to take the Bay Area by storm. And if he doesn't, he'll be back to settle our hash in his full Wolverine drag.…
When they said Cats was "now and forever," they weren't kidding. Not even a little bit.
On May 11, the much beloved (and derided) Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about singing pussycats and ti…
Hugh Jackman remembers his earliest encounter with musical theater. He was 5 years old, playing King Arthur in "Camelot," and the crown kept slipping down his head and over his nose.
Sitting at the computer, hands on the keyboard, I've been staring at the screen wondering where to begin describing and opining about The Lily's Revenge at the Magic Theatre.
Adjectives d…
Onstage and online, Broadway legend Betty Buckley is electrifying.
If you've ever seen her perform on Broadway " perhaps in the original cast of Cats or as Norma Desmond in Sunset Bouleva…
I talked to singer/actress Linda Eder a while back for a San Francisco Chronicle story pegging to her concerts this weekend (April 22 and 23) as part of the Rrazz Room Concert Series at the …
Oh, Alma Winemiller. If you had been able to shuck off the burden of having an insane mother and a stern Episcopalian priest for a father, you might have become the woman you were meant to b…
There's a lot of excitement burbling through the Bay Area theater community this spring. One of the reasons is the Magic Theatre's The Lily's Revenge, a ballsy five-hour play by Stockton nat…
I think I'd like Canada's The Virtual Stage and Electric Company Theatre to mount every play I never want to see again. I'm convinced they could make it interesting and vital.
My interest …
Time aches in Berkeley Repertory Theatre's elegiac Three Sisters. The past is where true happiness lived (in Moscow), and the future holds the promise of reviving that happiness (in Moscow).…
I've seen a lot of 42nd Street Moon shows over the years, but I've rarely seen one as exuberant, funny, beautifully sung and as hugely enjoyable as Strike Up the Band. Everything about Zack …
There are cannibals in Hackensack. A tsunami swallowed South America live on TV. And there are dogs the size of Chevys ransacking libraries.
Welcome to, as the producers put it, "your fri…
The world of David Lindsay-Abaire is askew. From his earliest wacky comedies to his later, more serious award-winning work, Lindsay-Abaire's "askewniverse" (to borrow a word from Kevin Smith…
Mark Lewis never really intended to become the crown prince of Beatles tribute bands. As a young keyboardist/singer/songwriter in Los Angeles, Lewis wanted to perform his own songs, and to t…
Recently I had the pleasure of conducting an email interview with playwright Will Eno, whose Lady Grey (in ever lower light) and other plays closes this weekend at Cutting Ball Theater.
R…
Collective memory will soon forget that there used to be entertainers in the grandest sense " performers who could be hilarious, could interact with audience members in wonderful (non-cheesy…
Race shmace. Let's do plays about explosions " exploding race, exploding narrative, exploding audience brains.
That's sort of what Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven is…
Maintaining a sense of balance can be hard enough in an off-kilter world. But just try doing the way Anna Ostapenko does it " on one hand clutching to a skinny narrow pole.
Somehow, the 2…
By focusing in on some of the oldest practitioners of the world's oldest profession, playwright Paula Vogel finds a lot to say about the way the world views senior citizens. Even more than s…
