San Diego Theater Reviews
I won’t be able to review, and therefore shouldn’t comment, on Backyard Renaissance/Oceanside Theatre Company’s production of The Elephant Man. I dramaturged the play twice before and, when asked, did a talk for the cast …
“She’ll be starved and tortured...I want her to accept the punishment of man as a sacrifice to God.”
Jon Lonoff’s comedy is scoring many laughs at Scripps Ranch. The play has one of the simplest plots ever. An overweight, insecure woman meets a rough-cut but sweet guy. They fall for each other. Then …
I’m asking veteran actors to name five dream roles and say why. The answers not only reveal aspirations, they may put an idea in the minds of artistic directors and producers — even choices that …
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? From the big picture to the small details, this is an outstanding production of Edward Albee’s masterpiece. George and Martha’s off-hours, young-faculty-initiation party devolves into a Walpurgisnacht of exorcisms and …
“There are two types of stories: one where the protagonist leaves town; the other, when she arrives,” playwright/librettist Mark Sickman preps the audience. “An example of ‘leaving’ is Huckleberry Finn, while Streetcar Named Desire and …
Two tramps (today they’d be called “homeless”) wait by a leafless tree for a mysterious man. He told Vladimir he’d come yesterday. But didn’t. Then he said today. Nope. So, they wait and try to …
When the house lights go down at the start of Lamb’s Players’ current revival of The Miracle Worker, the audience gets an uncomfortably long moment of pitch-black silence, providing some appreciation for Helen Keller’s blind …
“Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.”
Talk about gumption: Sean Murray, artistic director of a major local theater company, cavorts on stage in layers of splotchy make-up, a black leather bustier, fishnet stockings, with holes, and, for the final “floor show,” …
Here’s Leonard, award-winning novelist: “Am I creating a living, breathing cosmos with language, or am I just scratching at the wall of a cave?” Ostensibly he’s teaching a seminar on the craft of fiction, held …
I’m asking veteran actors to name five dream roles and say why. The answers not only reveal aspirations, they may put an idea in the minds of artistic directors and producers — even choices that …
As part of its 40th anniversary season, the San Diego Rep is remounting Douglas Jacobs’s R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe. The show, which opens Wednesday, March 16, premiered in 2000 …
When Mississippi put its only gas chamber at Parchman Penitentiary, says Fred in Beth Henley’s The Jacksonian, “there was a good deal of opposition from the people of Sunflower County. They did not want all …
On Sunday, February 7, parishioners lost their church, and local theater lost a space. After a farewell service in the sanctuary, where each member signed the paper of dissolution, the Swedenborgian Church of San Diego …
Best of Show: director Bruce Turk devised an inspired curtain call. In the spirit of farceur Georges Feydeau, Turk pulls the equivalent of rabbits out of hats. Four of his five-member cast seek the fifth, …