DELIGHTFUL IN SPITE OF ITSELF Ordinarily, a musical with a book as superficial, obvious and corny as Daniel S. Wise's Soul Doctor would make me cringe. Add to this David Schechter's on-the-n…
FOREST ENTRY After her car breaks down during a storm, Josie (a sympathetic Rachael Hip-Flores), a young woman searching for her father years after he mysteriously vanished, happens upon a c…
BEHALF AND HALF Personal works of art, in which the artist must invent a new language all her own to communicate her unique dreams, are, for me, the most valuable kinds. But one consistent c…
A TWIN/LOSE SITUATION Henry Krieger's succulent score and the co-leads' powerful, penetrating voices are among the few reasons to see Side Show, a dull bio-musical set in the first half of t…
MAJORÂ TO MINOR The Pearl Theatre Company and Gingold Theatrical Group's revival of George Bernard Shaw's 1905 comedy Major Barbara feels like theater for people who go to shows for the sa…
SINKING SHIP SAILS IN UNCHARTERED WATERS My favorite element in Powerhouse, a delightful new devised play created by director Jon Levin, writer Josh Luxenberg and the Sinking Ship Ensemble, …
BRAWL IN THE FAMILY Ozzie (Bill Pullman) and Harriet (Holly Hunter) are living out the American dream. They have a house, a car, a TV, and two sons: happy-go-lucky high-schooler Rick (Raviv …
RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE AS SURREAL BURLESQUE Delightful wouldn't be a word I'd expect to use when describing a Robert Wilson show. But The Old Woman, adapted by Darryl Pinckney from an absurdist…
BETTER CROSS THIS OFF YOUR LIFT Nothing quite fits together in Walter Mosley's flat, agenda-heavy and undisciplined Lift, about a young black man and woman who find themselves trapped in a s…
SEE THE MOVIE Imagine John Boorman's film Deliverance staged, "panties" scene and all, as a piece of dinner theater, with all the performers looking very serious and projecting their voices,…
WARM TUB The lights come up on a couple, Helene (Hannah Bos) and Derek (Paul Thureen), reading in a Jacuzzi, inside a cozy Colorado skiing cabin one cold winter evening sometimes in the 1980…
HOW TO FAKE HONESTY "I exaggerate," states Lauren (Jessica Ranville) at the beginning of Lying, which gets a delightful staging by Jessica Burr and her company Blessed Unrest at the Interart…
AN UNCANNY PERFORMANCE FROM PODULKE; LESS SO THE PLAY'S ENDING In Thomas Gibbons' Uncanny Valley, directed by Tom Dugdale, Alex Podulke plays Julien, a sophisticated artificial human, who wa…
SHOW ME THE MONEY Two couples are having aperitifs at a luxurious home in the Hollywood Hills (sexy stylish set by Derek McLane). They are Steve (Fred Weller), an aging action superstar; Mis…
WHEN BEING A STARVING WRITER IS NO LONGER ROMANTIC Austin Pendleton's breathtaking performance and Ira Lewis's penetrating script make Chinese Coffee, with all its flaws, a most worthwhile o…
THE UNKNOWABLE WORLD THAT WE LIVE IN Is it possible for true love to be unrequited? Or, to put it another way, is it possible for unrequited love to be true? These questions, on the surfa…
THE GOOD, THE LOST, AND THE VAIN Owen Gould Davis, Sr.'s thoughtful and masterfully crafted 1923 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Icebound, which explores Puritan vanity and its many ironies, ge…
ASPHYXIATING Neither the excellent quartet playing quality pieces that are at times rousing, nor Karl Ruckdeschel's lovely period costumes, are enough to make Solitary Light, with music and …
A BIO-DRAMA THAT WORKS "Of course I care (what she thinks), I hate her," says a character in Lauren Gunderson's Bauer, a San Francisco Playhouse production about the German artist Rudolf Bau…
SMOKIN' The premise of Kim Davies' new play Smoke, that two strangers, a young man and woman, who independently come to the kitchen to have a cigarette while a friendly S&M sex party is …
BASTARDS OUT OF SWEDEN In 2012 the Scandinavian American Theater Company commissioned four playwrights to each write a sort of riff on Strindberg's Miss Julie. The result is the four short p…
A SWORD THAT'S HARD TO SWALLOW The best thing I can say about Kari Floren's new play Voices of Swords is that it seems to be well-intentioned. Unfortunately, sitting through it feels like Ms…
A TASTY PUNCH NEEDS TO BE SPIKED Flowing dialogue, skillful performances, and Audrey Alford's solid direction make Micheline Auger's banal and predictable Donkey Punch, a play which attempts…
A DROP-DEAD DELIGHT Delightful in an over-the-top yet grounded and sympathetic portrayal of Idris Seabright, a well-off spinster obsessed with memories of her long-gone Latin lover, Everett …
RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE AS SURREAL BURLESQUE Delightful wouldn't be a word I'd expect to use when describing a Robert Wilson show. But The Old Woman, adapted by Darryl Pinckney from an absurdist…