Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Last Call
Three local productions must close this Sunday and should not go gently to that final curtain.
POETiCAL, Not to be Played on the Radio
In the Heights
- San Diego Repertory Theatre, 79 Horton Plaza, Downtown San Diego
- $18 - $62
In the Heights at San Diego Rep
Sam Woodhouse (director), Javier Velasco (choreographer) and at least half of San Diego – or so it would seem – have turned the San Diego Rep’s Lyceum Stage into a non-stop fireworks display.
One thing always bothered me about the musical Rent. Its heroes are artists, truly gifted people facing an economic wall. And I root for them with all my heart. But they have their art to keep them warm.
What about non-artists, culturally diverse people, facing the same threat of eviction? In this sense, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegria Hudes’ musical’s a way uptown response to Rent.
The “heights” are Washington Heights in Manhattan. The musical takes place in a three day period, before and after the fourth of July. It follows the fates of non-Anglos soon to be exiled by gentrification.
Each character has an individual voice, and a story often told in song. Some can irk, all have flaws, but somehow all come to matter in the larger canvas.
In the Heights isn’t a feel-good musical. Instead it’s about pinpointing that possibility amid random indifference and overwhelming chaos.
Company
- Cygnet Theatre, 4040 Twiggs Street, Old Town
- $24 - $59
Company at Cygnet Theatre
In hindsight Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical doesn’t look at all experimental. And if one applies a cookie cutter approach based on the musicals that preceded it, it doesn’t work at all. The male lead is a follower.
That’s 35-year-old Robert. He’s, at best, a half-made bed. Just a few clicks above a cipher, he’s decided to try marriage – or, at least open the door to that possibility – and, as a consequence, to try adulthood as well. Robert interviews five couples, all close friends, all apparently doing well. From afar, at least.
Put the play and Cygnet’s fine production back in 1970 and voila! Few, if any, musicals had dealt with the questions it raises about relationships and commitment (and in this sense it spawned the myriad musicals and plays that have considered nothing else!).
Sondheim wrote: “Broadway theatre has been for many years supported by upper-middle-class people with upper-middle-class problems.” They “want to escape that world when they go to the theater, and then here we are with Company talking about how we’re going to bring it right back in their faces.”
POETiCAL: Not to be Played on the Radio
- Educational Cultural Complex, 4343 Ocean View Boulevard, Mountain View
- $10 - $15
POETiCAL, Not to be Played on the Radio
The opening night performance of Calvin Manson’s piece was shaky. But the words merit a hearing – and a heeding.
Artistic director of Ira Aldridge Repertory and author of several musicals and tributes to African-American greats, Manson went to the streets, sometimes in disguise. He interviewed the homeless, the bullied, the fearful, and the frank, like the man who kept an automatic weapon beneath his driver’s seat to avoid car-jacking, and the woman who dedicated her poem ‘to every woman who refuses to be defined,’ and old Sam, who speaks “for us who no longer can.”
Manson talked to the racially profiled and to the daughter whose mother died of crack (“murder by a slim needle…a stranger rifling through her blood, the virus pushing her skeleton through”). He converted the interviews into “Spoken Word” poetry.
The five-person cast performs with the voice and the body. As a result, a reading makes key points in different ways, from harangue, to dancing, to pain buried so deep it’s almost inaudible.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Last Call
Three local productions must close this Sunday and should not go gently to that final curtain.
Last Call
Three local productions must close this Sunday and should not go gently to that final curtain.
POETiCAL, Not to be Played on the Radio
In the Heights
- San Diego Repertory Theatre, 79 Horton Plaza, Downtown San Diego
- $18 - $62
In the Heights at San Diego Rep
Sam Woodhouse (director), Javier Velasco (choreographer) and at least half of San Diego – or so it would seem – have turned the San Diego Rep’s Lyceum Stage into a non-stop fireworks display.
One thing always bothered me about the musical Rent. Its heroes are artists, truly gifted people facing an economic wall. And I root for them with all my heart. But they have their art to keep them warm.
What about non-artists, culturally diverse people, facing the same threat of eviction? In this sense, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegria Hudes’ musical’s a way uptown response to Rent.
The “heights” are Washington Heights in Manhattan. The musical takes place in a three day period, before and after the fourth of July. It follows the fates of non-Anglos soon to be exiled by gentrification.
Each character has an individual voice, and a story often told in song. Some can irk, all have flaws, but somehow all come to matter in the larger canvas.
In the Heights isn’t a feel-good musical. Instead it’s about pinpointing that possibility amid random indifference and overwhelming chaos.
Company
- Cygnet Theatre, 4040 Twiggs Street, Old Town
- $24 - $59
Company at Cygnet Theatre
In hindsight Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical doesn’t look at all experimental. And if one applies a cookie cutter approach based on the musicals that preceded it, it doesn’t work at all. The male lead is a follower.
That’s 35-year-old Robert. He’s, at best, a half-made bed. Just a few clicks above a cipher, he’s decided to try marriage – or, at least open the door to that possibility – and, as a consequence, to try adulthood as well. Robert interviews five couples, all close friends, all apparently doing well. From afar, at least.
Put the play and Cygnet’s fine production back in 1970 and voila! Few, if any, musicals had dealt with the questions it raises about relationships and commitment (and in this sense it spawned the myriad musicals and plays that have considered nothing else!).
Sondheim wrote: “Broadway theatre has been for many years supported by upper-middle-class people with upper-middle-class problems.” They “want to escape that world when they go to the theater, and then here we are with Company talking about how we’re going to bring it right back in their faces.”
POETiCAL: Not to be Played on the Radio
- Educational Cultural Complex, 4343 Ocean View Boulevard, Mountain View
- $10 - $15
POETiCAL, Not to be Played on the Radio
The opening night performance of Calvin Manson’s piece was shaky. But the words merit a hearing – and a heeding.
Artistic director of Ira Aldridge Repertory and author of several musicals and tributes to African-American greats, Manson went to the streets, sometimes in disguise. He interviewed the homeless, the bullied, the fearful, and the frank, like the man who kept an automatic weapon beneath his driver’s seat to avoid car-jacking, and the woman who dedicated her poem ‘to every woman who refuses to be defined,’ and old Sam, who speaks “for us who no longer can.”
Manson talked to the racially profiled and to the daughter whose mother died of crack (“murder by a slim needle…a stranger rifling through her blood, the virus pushing her skeleton through”). He converted the interviews into “Spoken Word” poetry.
The five-person cast performs with the voice and the body. As a result, a reading makes key points in different ways, from harangue, to dancing, to pain buried so deep it’s almost inaudible.
Comments