1,373 stories by "Chad Jones"
Watching Anika Noni Rose (seen above, photo by Andrew Macpherson )on the cabaret stage, you sense a superstar in the making.
The gorgeous Rose, all of 38, has already made a name for herse…
Playwright Theresa Rebeck, a master of barbed contemporary dialogue, conducts an interesting experiment in the Magic Theatre's world premiere of What We're Up Against.
Her Petri dish is …
Sometimes things collapse. Sometimes buildings and bridges, things that are built to physically support us. And sometimes marriages and families, things that are meant to sustain and bolster…
Erich Bergen became a man in San Francisco. OK, that's an exaggeration, but when the performer was cast as Bob Gaudio in the touring production of Jersey Boys, he was all of 20 years old. Th…
As long as we live in a world where celebrity and art continually clash, Anton Chekhov's The Seagull will feel extraordinarily timely. And as long as people are restless, stingy and full of …
When I saw Next to Normal on Broadway, I was of two minds. For much of the first act, I glowered in my seat, overwhelmed by the Tom Kitt/Brian Yorkey score " too many lyrics, loud music of t…
Because I interviewed playwright Bruce Norris for the San Francisco Chronicle (read the interview here), I will not be reviewing his Clybourne Park at American Conservatory Theater.
Mr. N…
A hit on London's West End in 2006, The 39 Steps became Broadway's longest-running comedy two years later. The touring production played San Francisco's Curran Theatre in December of 2009, a…
It's interesting that Mike Daisey chooses not to talk about current events in The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, the second of two monologues running in repertory on Berkeley Repertory…
You could throw a lot of adjectives at The Companion Piece, a world-premiere creation by director Mark Jackson, actor Beth Wilmurt and their crew: wily, zany, exciting, perplexing, silly and…
>When people talk about the musical Next to Normal, it's inevitably about one of two things: how they related on a deep personal level to the story of a bi-polar mom and the affect her di…
In the summer of 2008, Cutting Ball Theater threw audiences an incredible Bone. The play, part of the evening known as Avant GardARAMA!, was Eugenie Chan's Bone to Pick, a one-act that re-im…
I've seen Mike Daisey before on the Berkeley Repertory Theatre's Thrust Stage. The country's foremost monologist has entertained and captivated me on several occasions.
But at Wednesday's…
I did two things I'm proud of this year. I worked for a great theater company and I stopped working for a great theater company. From June 2009 to September 2010, I was the communications ma…
The force is strong with this one. Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking, her one-woman stage autobiography, continues its wild ride.
The Bay Area saw the show twice at Berkeley Repertory Thea…
Let it be said that Babes in Arms is one of the weirdest musicals with the greatest scores ever written. There have been weirder musicals and greater scores, but never in such striking comb…
You can keep your Shreks and your Lemony Snickets. Give me the human warmth of a corny holiday musical any day.
I use the word "corny" with love " if it's not a little corny, a little sent…
There's a moment of absolute magic in the world premiere of Lemony Snicket's The Composer Is Dead now at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
We've just been subjected to a rather dispiriting film…
I wanted to love Shrek The Musical because it's an unlikely underdog. I didn't love it.
Here you have a big Hollywood studio, DreamWorks, with a hit movie franchise (that, by the way, the…
This is one of the best stories to come out of a theater in many a moon.
Last week, after a performance of Liz Duffy Adams' Or, actress Maggie Mason was proposed to by her longtime boyfri…
Kermit the Frog said it best: it's not easy being green. It wasn't easy for Elphaba the witch of Wicked. It wasn't easy for the Grinch (of stealing Christmas fame). And it certainly isn't ea…
A door presents itself. You enter. Suddenly you're immersed in a warped version of reality.
That's what happens to 9-year-old Coraline ,the heroine of Neil Gaiman's novel of the same name …
The smiling cartoon woman on the poster " the one juggling the trappings of modern life such as a cell phone, a brief case, a lap top, a glass of wine and a baby " is a comic figure. She's a…
A few years ago, if you'd asked me what I thought about horses as theater, I'd have probably said something like, "Call me when Mr. Ed performs as Hamlet."
But then I saw Cavalia, an insp…
High-concept Shakespeare gives me a rash. I should modify that. Most of the time, when directors impose some great new twist, time period, setting, the result merely obscures rather than hei…
