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Theater antireviews

The Last Five Years: fragmented like Homer’s The Odyssey

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Ring Around the Moon: another My Fair Lady transformation?

- min read

Bad Hombres, Good Wives: think Jim Carrey or Chevy Chase physical humor

- min read

Intimate Apparel: sewing your life savings into a quilt

- min read

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Theater Antireviews

The Last Five Years: fragmented like Homer’s The Odyssey

A crucial component of the storyteller’s craft is placing actions and details in a specific order. For most stories, this is pretty straightforward: start at the beginning, then tell the …

Theater Antireviews

Ring Around the Moon: another My Fair Lady transformation?

Ring Around the Moon is a comedy of manners full of the stock characters that populate the genre. The action happens when everyone is invited up to the grand home …

Theater Antireviews

Bad Hombres, Good Wives: think Jim Carrey or Chevy Chase physical humor

This is a funny show. It needs to be funny. If it weren’t funny it would be offensive, especially in our delicate and easily offended culture. The characters are so …

Theater Antireviews

Intimate Apparel: sewing your life savings into a quilt

There are inherent tensions between how we are documented and how we view ourselves. We can hear this any time we listen to our own voices in an audio recording. …

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Theater antireviews

Theater Antireviews

Noura need not be compared to Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

The Old Globe website describes Noura as, “A riveting West Coast premiere loosely inspired by Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.” I agree, it is loosely related to A Doll’s House. Very loosely.So loosely, in fact, that …

October 2, 2019

Theater Antireviews

The way Lester Bangs loved it

“It’s just a shame you missed out on rock ’n’ roll,” a 1973 Lester Bangs tells an emerging music writer he’s taken under his wing, “It’s over. You got here just in time for the …

September 25, 2019

Theater Antireviews

September 19, 2019

Amadeus: The victor is Mozart’s music

If a show is only as good as its villain, then Amadeus is a great show. The title might refer to Mozart, but the show opens and closes with Salieri, the villain. The play, by …

Theater Antireviews

September 11, 2019

And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little: never-marrieds unite! Or don’t

What does society feel about unmarried people over the age 45? For most of our nation’s history, the majority of the population has been married, so the democratic question has typically been: how do married …

Theater Antireviews

September 4, 2019

Romeo and Juliet re-imagined with choreography

The Romeo and Juliet I saw at The Old Globe recently tried to “re-imagine” the classic tale. Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story actually does it. The success of West Side Story lies in the fact …

Theater Antireviews

August 28, 2019

The Coast Starlight: journey over destination

Few modes of travel better exemplify the aphorism, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey,” than a train ride. America’s interstate rail system is neither faster nor cheaper than air travel, and if you take …

Theater Antireviews

August 21, 2019

Romeo and Juliet: Who were the Capulets and Montagues during Shakespeare’s day?

“Wherefore art thou Romeo?” I’m assuming that’s a line you’ve heard before. For the purposes of this article, I’d like to change it to “Who-fore art thou Romeo?” Who were the Capulets and the Montagues? …

Theater Antireviews

August 14, 2019

Is Dogfight harmless after Tailhook scandal?

The musical Dogfight at Coronado Playhouse is set in the early 1960s at the start of the Vietnam War. In this show, we follow a cast of characters who participate in a competition to find …

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The scandalization of Steve Martin’s The Underpants

The German satire Die Hose, by Carl Sternheim, depicts the aftermath of a Dusseldorf hullabaloo surrounding a lady’s undergarments having fallen down, in public. Predictably, some men are scandalized by the perceived immorality of it. …

August 7, 2019

Theater Antireviews

Whitesnake’s lonely street of dreams

“Hanging on the promises in songs of yesterday,” the verse goes, “I know what it means / To walk along the lonely street of dreams.” "Lonely street of dreams" is hardly great poetry, and it’s …

July 31, 2019

Theater Antireviews

July 24, 2019

Dorothy’s alluring journey in the Wizard of Oz

Over the past century plus, a number of bright minds have interpreted Wizard of Oz through the lens of late 19th-century politics, suggesting Frank L. Baum’s 1900 book (along with its subsequent stage and film …

Theater Antireviews

July 17, 2019

The villain’s journey in The Tale of Despereaux

PigPen Theatre Co., which previously produced The Old Man and the Old Moon at the Old Globe, has now adapted the award-winning children’s novel The Tale of Despereaux into a musical stage production extraordinaire. (The …

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Theater antireviews

The Last Five Years: fragmented like Homer’s The Odyssey

Ring Around the Moon: another My Fair Lady transformation?

Bad Hombres, Good Wives: think Jim Carrey or Chevy Chase physical humor

Intimate Apparel: sewing your life savings into a quilt

Theater antireviews

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