San Diego Theater Reviews
Ancient history tells of kings or wheat contracts, says the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. But what about daily life in Babylon or Greece? Or, more recently, Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire? Wilder chose …
"How can evil and ugliness make a gift of beauty?" When he was six, Asher Lev began noticing the contours and textures of the world. He became alert to shadings of color, to the degrees …
According to Arthur Kopit and Anton Dudley’s new play, Drummhicit — pronounced drum-hkkkt — is a single-malt Scotch. It’ll curl your nose and lacquer your teeth but is not ready for prime time. Neither is …
In the dead of summer, temperatures in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, reach triple digits, with the humidity not far behind. The town, 60 miles north of Tulsa, near the Kansas border, lies along Tornado Alley. But in …
It took an historic, three-way collaboration — the San Diego Rep, Vantage Theatre, and the La Jolla Playhouse — to bring Anna Deavere Smith to San Diego for the first time. The collaboration breaks ground …
In Chaucer’s The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, Chauntecleer the Rooster dreams an omen. A beast “like a hound” terrorized him with such a fearsome look, the rooster almost died. He wakes up groaning and tells his …
Her shoulders arched, her eyes a sniper’s stare, Karson St. John stalks the stage like a linebacker who just made a game-saving tackle. She plays the Emcee in Cygnet Theatre’s Cabaret, a casting choice that …
Every time someone enters in Sam Shepard’s Simpatico, it’s as if the stage dips like a spider web...or waterbed. One move, even a tiptoe, alters what’s come before. Parts rise, others sag. Here is now …
So how do you re-create a road movie on stage? Best of show at La Jolla Playhouse’s hit-and-miss Little Miss Sunshine: David Korins’s set, enhanced by Ken Billington’s bold lighting, depicts the shifting geography from …
After the world premiere of his epic A Lie of the Mind in 1985, Sam Shepard told an interviewer that no matter what he wrote next, the critics would rip it to shreds. Instead of …
Dakin and Macy Adams live on the southern slope of Mount Soledad, about a mile up from Bird Rock. Their terrace overlooks P.B., Mission Bay, and Point Loma. Pan left and there’s SeaWorld and, deeper …
God created time, an old adage holds, to keep everything from happening at once. If so, then Willy Loman is running out of time. Events from now and yesterday inundate him, often with competing claims. …
Andrew, a gay character in Nicky Silver’s Maiden’s Prayer, says he looks for three things in a man: the size of his Manhattan apartment, if he has cable, and external beauty. Then he pauses, sensing …
In one sense the best, in most others the worst of times. Throughout the county the level of performance has never been higher. You can expect competent acting in most local theaters. Two examples: Scripps …
Satan and Moloch just got laid off. Times are so economically splattered, even Lucifer’s minions are getting pink-slipped. Okay, sure, devil-work — tempting sinners and terrorizing saints — wears a mite thin after a millennium …
If plays are boxing matches with an audience, they all throw punches, some solid, some glancing, some airy nothing. Plays that linger counterpunch. These land on your way out the door, in the parking lot, …