AN AMAZING INCIDENT Meet Christopher, a wannabe bloodhound who has significant social, behavioral and communication challenges; we assume the unnamed disorder is on the autism spectrum, but …
NOT A SEVEN-COURSE DINNER, BUT FILLING JUST THE SAME While on a Midwest lecture tour, arrogant and overbearing critic and radio commentator Sheridan Whiteside slips on an icy doorstep, injur…
LOST IN AUSTEN All of Jane Austen's novels are built on the same premise. A woman meets and marries an eligible man after a series of usually comic difficulties. But Austen extracts a remark…
CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SATIRE Has it really been 40 years since Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9 was first presented? The biting satire is so topical " containing cross-dressing, gay relationships…
DOESÂ GROUNDHOG DAYÂ BEAR REPEATING? At the center of San Francisco Playhouse's first regional premiere of Broadway's Groundhog Day the Musical is the brilliant, perfectly cast Ryan Drum…
NOT AS KEYED UP AS IT SHOULD BE The Geffen Playhouse has really been on a roll under the newest Artistic Director Matt Shakman. There are many more interesting scripts, and many more chances…
CYNICS UNITE These days when directors revive a classic, they have to decide whether their approach will be either to modernize the play or mount it as a period piece, true to the spirit of …
MIND YOUR MANOR Now camping through November 24 is Ravenswood Manor, a much-needed send-up of all things soap, perhaps even the one you dropped in the shower. You never know with funnyman Ju…
THE MIGHTY MISSISSIPPI JUST GOT MIGHTIER Do whatever you can. Take a raft, pretend you're a duke, toss pig blood around your lean-to so everyone thinks you're dead, but get to Rubicon Theatr…
A PENNY DREADFUL SAVED ISN'T ALWAYS EARNED Back in the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing in merry ole England. The working class was becoming more educated and printing was …
IN TROUSERS William Finn's musical masterpiece Falsettos is a melding of two one-acts: March of the Falsettos " debatably one of the best scores of the 1980s " which opened Off-Broadwa…
50 YEARS SINCE ITS BIRTH AND JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR FINALLY RISES AGAIN Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar is given the rock concert treatment for its 50th Anniversary…
ONCE AGAIN, PLEASE Ironically, the real-life love affair between collaborators Glen Hasard, an Irish singer-songwriter, and Markéta Irglová, a Czech songwriter, fizzled after John Carney…
IT JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER In 1994, 5-Star Theatricals (formerly Cabrillo Music Theatre) produced its first show: Meredith Willson's The Music Man, which opened on Broadway in 1957 and bec…
ON ANASTASIA, AMNESIA, AND ANESTHESIA First came the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, who was murdered in 1918 just after the Bolshevi…
CINDERFELLA The best play on any L.A. stage right now, Daniel Pearle's 2013 A Kid Like Jake couldn't be more relevant. The parents of a four-year-old boy are applying for a private primary s…
SHEPARDING OUT THE TRUTH Sam Shepard's domestic disruption True West hasn't left the theatrical landscape since it first premiered with Peter Coyote at San Francisco's Magic Theater in 1980.…
ON THE BORDERLINE What do a Latino cop, a black vet in the Bronx, a Saudi Arabian without a country, a gay pagan goat rancher, and a homeless HIV-positive man have in common? Dan Hoyle. SF's…
WHAT LIES BURIED Actor Hamish Linklater's funny, sharp and tender play The Vandal begins on a cold winter night as a down-on-her-luck middle-aged woman waits for a bus on a deserted street. …
THE CORE IS THERE, BUT THE POSE IS OFF Not only is yoga a gentle exercise and a Hindu spiritual discipline, it's also an $83 billion international industry. Meet Joan (Susi Damilano), a new …
YOU'RE THE TOP, GIRLS For the most part, Joyce, a working class Englishwoman in Ipswich is not a sympathetic or likeable person: She is annoyed by her teenage daughter Angie (who admittedly …
A PRODUCTION WITH SOLID LIFE Phil and Alice are in love, the kind of messy, well-known, commonplace love that many couples are familiar with. They meet cute in a post office when a package f…
CHANGE IS NOW We hear that that the only thing constant is change, yet we struggle against change, we fight against change, and some are even willing to succumb to the unyielding stress of d…
MORON THAT NOW One-man stage phenom John Leguizamo, who has popularized the stories of his Columbian/Puerto Rican/Bronx Ghetto peeps and their culture in semi-autobiographical shows Mambo Mo…
A PITCH FOR THIS RICH WITCH Written by Jen Silverman and directed by Marti Lyons, Witch is inspired by William Rowley's Jacobian 1621 play Witch of Edmonton. The classic story follows Eli…