San Diego Theater Reviews
Seafoam Sleepwalk. The Scripps Institute of Oceanography has catalogued countless species of marine life. But they have never - and will never again after this coming Sunday - witnessed who emerges from the whitewater at …
Some definitions: Harlem Renaissance: a flourishing of African-American art centered on, but not exclusive to, Harlem. Begun in the 1920s, it included writing by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and innovative music by Duke …
There are probably plays as funny, though I doubt there’s one funnier than Oscar Wilde’s “trivial comedy for serious people.” The jokes flow like ocean waves, in sets of three, with the third the capper. …
When he was a “little kid, maybe five or six,” Christopher Ashley watched a man on ice skates at Rockefeller Center. As he skated, the man recited a poem and the blades clacked out the …
A preview of coming attractions at the La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls Festival (October 3-6). You could almost say the festival stages plays anywhere but in a theater. The plays are one-acts. Most run less …
It’s too bad they don’t give a Craig Noel Award for Audience of the Year. I sat in a sure nominee recently at OnStage. High school students packed the house. They hung on every word …
They tell writers never talk about an idea or what you’re working on. The superstition, a favorite of Hemingway’s: some writing only happens once. And not even at a computer or in a notebook. Voice …
I’ve always been wary of theatrical biographies of famous people. Too often they assume you already know, say, James Joyce or Ludwig Van B., Ty Cobb or Rosa Parks. So the bios skip past the …
Conor McPherson’s The Shining City takes some amazing theatrical risks. No, wait, make that anti-theatrical. Imagine the exact opposite of a blockbuster movie: frantic cuts, pulse-drubbing pace, blaring sounds that belt you daffy. Shining City …
According to tour guide Lettice Douffet, Fustian House is inaptly named. “Fustian” means “turgid,” “bombastic,” and “pretentious” speech or writing. Lettice says it’s the blandest, gloomiest, 16th century building in Britain. So she decides to …
One of the most frustrating parts of my job is watching a top notch cast, backed by a polished trio of musicians, performing on an inventive set – and the material doesn’t come near their …
Teatro Mascara Magica’s Detained in the Desert runs through this weekend. The compelling play is about undocumented immigrants, a subject so vital they say the only way to see it fully is to be there. …
A composer hands a chorus line dancer a box full of musical scores – most of them rejects – and says, “do what you can.” The songs have something to do with love: longing for, …
One of the hottest shows of the recent San Diego Fringe Festival will have an all-too brief return run this weekend. The two-character story, by Charlene Baldridge, and the staging by Circle Circle dot dot’s …
It’s always a relief when license plates with Saguaro cacti exodus east this time of year. Our roads thin out, like arteries purged of cholesterol. But Teatro Mascara Magica’s staging a play all Zonies should …
No comedian gets to his inner child faster, or stays longer, than Mel Brooks. “There are no rules,” says the self-annointed psychiatrist in Brooks’s 2000-Year-old Man album. “A hundred years from now, they’ll decide what …