A POWERFUL WATER BY THE SPOONFUL CONTAINS CONFUSION BY THE CUPFUL Quiara Alegria Hudes’ 2012 Pulitzer-Prize winning Water by the Spoonful is a bold and provocative drama that uses cybe…
CRACK YOUR CHEEKS By placing himself in the charge of his fickle children, old King Lear abandons the security of his own reason to wander an inhospitable wilderness. It’s a fittin…
YOU ONLY DIE ONCE One of the great pick-up lines that soldiers and sailors on leave during World War II (and probably the Trojan War too) used to seduce a one-night standee was, "Let's do it…
Sometimes in life, it's the last Christmas present we open that makes up for all the lousy ones we unwrapped before. In what is truly the most dismal season of holiday-themed shows, I…
HAVEL UNVEILED AT TRAP DOOR THEATRE While most probably know Václav Havel as the Czech Republic's first president, he has gained notoriety in the avant garde world for his absurdist plays…
LOCAL BOY MAKES GOOD It's easy to see what drew Cameron Mackintosh to revive Lionel Bart's hit musical 18 years ago: Dickens is a lot like Victor Hugo. Like Mackintosh' smash Les Miserables,…
CHEKHOV REINVENTED, SORT OF The whimsical premise behind Kristen Kosmas' brilliantly conceived and deftly executed creation There There is this: Christopher Walken, while touring Russia in a…
THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION MAY LACK RHYTHM, BUT THIS IS ONE HILARIOUS AND UPLIFTING BARBER If you’re looking to usher in the Holiday season with some good entertainment, then look no furt…
A DICKENS OF A PERFORMER It's been two centuries since Charles Dickens' birth. Miriam Margolyes, famed for her portrayals in Harry Potter, The Age of Innocence, and William Shakespeare's Rom…
AN IMPRESSIVE PUPPET, A SOMEWHAT FOGGY STORY War Horse is all about Joey, a 120 lb. puppet made of bent and stained cane and animated by three puppeteers. Their movements become the breathin…
DIVERSE CHARACTERS CAST A THEATRICAL SPELL It’s not Halloween but Christmastime, and the San Francisco Playhouse is ringing in the season in a novel way with their production of Bell, …
A GILBERT AND SULLIVAN FOR 2012 The best show of the year has finally arrived. The Book of Mormon is a perfectly packaged fusion of the satire we need in a sassy musical comedy and the en…
LET’S BE FRANK The dictionary has two main definitions for the word "bash": One is "a thoroughly enjoyable, lively party," which is undoubtedly what the producers of Christmas My Way "…
WORKING TOO HARD The actors mingle around onstage dressing room tables as the audience takes their seats. The stage manager (Rebecca McBee) calls cues from a corner upstage. Even the band, l…
AN IMPERSONALÂ CHRISTMAS CAROL What has become of Christmas since Dickens' A Christmas Carol was published in 1843? In spite of the fact that technology has afforded us numerous opportunit…
THE OLD COLLEGE TRY Brown University/Trinity Rep's MFA program has a solid reputation as theatre arts training for bright, enthusiastic, well-rounded theatre artists. The challenge for e…
ALEXANDER THE GREAT…CHARMER, THAT IS When I first heard Cortés Alexander sing in 1992, he wasn't alone. He was part of a group named The Tonics, and they performed a jazzy rendition o…
STUCK IN THE DESERT Don't the powers that be at Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum understand that casting is roughly 80% of a play's success? Don't they understand that any play, includi…
JONESING FOR MORE PIG SHIT Early in terraNOVA Collective's comic book adventure P.S. Jones and the Frozen City, the villainous Great Glass Spider spins out of the wall. The regal Sofia Jean …
VOLUBLE Once in my earnest youth I dogged a homeless man around lower Manhattan for a whole night, from his steady gig panhandling the car line into the Holland Tunnel through four hoursR…
A PENNY'S WORTH In the mood for some light-hearted, endearing entertainment that will make your face and heart smile? Then get yourself a ticket to Barry Kleinbort’s (direction, bo…
MOLIÈRE FOR DUMMIES Attend David Ives' The School for Lies"a manic contemporary travesty"if you want to fully appreciate Molière's 1666 masterpiece The Misanthrope, as serious a comedy a…
UNFULFILLED WANTS David Mamet’s latest dramatic work, The Anarchist, begins as abruptly as it ends, but despite the jarring effects, there is a good reason for the sharpness of these m…
BOB'S HOLIDAY OFFICE FIASCO Bob's Holiday Office Party, now in its 17th season, is basically a fifteen-minute Carol Burnett Show-type sketch stretched out to about 100 minutes. And unless a …
SOME THINGS GO, SOME THINGS DON'T While it is refreshing that Cole Porter is experiencing a revival, it is unfortunate that the timeless brilliance of his music is attached to musicals whose…