1,374 stories from Chad Jones' Theater Dogs
Some are Shakespeare purists. Or Chekhov purists. Or Star Wars purists. Their simple message is: don't mess with the original. I happen to be a Mary Poppins purist. Not the original P.L. Tra…
My faith in the good ol' American star-making machine is kaput. Any yahoo with a access to a "reality" show camera crew gets 15 minutes and all the nonsensical covers of ridiculous magazines…
There's a rough beauty to director Mark Wing-Davey's Pericles, Prince of Tyre now on Berkeley Repertory Theatre's Thrust Stage. The industrial look of the bi-level set by Douglas Stein and P…
It's hard to imagine a better production of Stuck Elevator than the one now on view at American Conservatory Theater's Geary Theater. Production values and performance levels are superlative…
Some rivers run with water. This one is a torrent of words " some really extraordinary words.
Campo Santo and Intersection for the Arts' world premiere of The River, a dazzling fusion of po…
My first encounter with Swiss playwright Max Frisch was in college when my Drama as Literature class read his Biedermann and the Firebugs, a 1953 radio play that was expanded into a stage pl…
How does Chay Yew manage to be the artistic director of Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater and hopscotch the country as an in-demand director?
"Consummate scheduling," Yew says.
He's i…
You know you've got your audience right where you want them when they're laughing at the rape fantasy being played out " rather graphically and violently " on stage. It's easy to imagine an …
In addition to some terrific songs and a perennial reason to scream at Dover to "move yer bloomin' ass," My Fair Lady has left an interesting legacy in the form a highly raised bar to which …
Watching the 1961 musical Carnival!, a hit on Broadway, it's fairly easy to see why the show was never a candidate for major Broadway revival or a staple of community theaters. The score, by…
At first the music is loud and fun. Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" seems like the perfect audio accompaniment to a grown-up birthday party scene set in a Garden Grove, Califorina, su…
If Matthew Lopez were a miner, he could brag that he uncovered a rich mineral vein of enormous wealth, both cultural and commercial. But Lopez isn't a miner. He's a playwright, and though th…
I've come to learn that when a Neil LaBute play or movie crosses my path, I detour around it, ignore it or make an immediate donation to a women's support or LBGT organization. LaBute is a r…
Need your Patti LuPone fix? You've come to the right place.
We have for you an interview with Ms. LuPone in connection with the San Francisco debut of her latest cabaret show, Far Away Plac…
Two reviews in print this week for two wildly different shows: the return of Jersey Boys to the Curran Theatre as part of the SHN season and the local premiere of Katori Hall's The Mountaint…
Oriana Fallaci was a fascinating, riveting person in real life, a crusading, eviscerating journalist whose intensity often made her part of the story. In journalist and playwright Lawrence W…
It seems there are two plays battling it out in American Conservatory Theater's world premiere of Dead Metaphor by Canadian plawyright George F. Walker. Three of the characters are broadly c…
We have a Theater Dogs guest writer! Welcome Scott Lucas of San Francisco magazine, who chatted with playwright Jordan Puckett, whose Inevitable runs through March 23rd as part of San Franci…
p>Shakespeare didn't drop any F-bombs in his comedy As You Like It, but that doesn't stop Impact Theatre. There are lots of non-Shakespeare asides in this highly edited, streamlined versi…
It sounds like a set up for a joke. Mike Tyson, battered and bruised by his career as a champion boxer, by his addictions, by his ego, by life itself, walks onto the stage of the Orpheum The…
Beautiful, ambitious and with the kind of depth we've come not to expect from musicals, The Fourth Messenger is a triumph. This world-premiere work is not perfect...yet. But if any new homeg…
[warning: this review does not hide or disguise the word "motherfucker" in the title of the play at hand]
The comedy, the intensity and all that rough language keeps things skittering rig…
Sometimes it's too easy to forget we're a nation at war, and that's not at all a good thing to be able to say. But it's true, especially here in the Bay Area bubble, where the war seems espe…
There's a lot to like in the world premiere of Anthony Clarvoe's family drama Our Practical Heaven at Aurora Theatre Company. Laughs come frequently, the production itself " full of light an…
There are moments when Octavio Solis' darkly poetic writing leaves me breathless. Take this passage from his world-premiere play Se Llama Cristina as two lovers are driving down a lonely hig…
