San Diego Theater Reviews
For the first of many “don’t try this at home” sequences, in Aurélia’s Oratorio the lights come up on a timeworn, three-tiered chest of drawers. A hand and a foot pop out. Then red high …
At first it looks as if Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers (1991) will repeat the coming-of-age theme in his Brighton Beach trilogy. It’s 1942. When their father hits the road to pay off a loan …
The idea behind Duncan Sheik and Kyle Jarrow’s new musical has potential: What if only certain characters sing? And what if they’re ghosts haunting a lighthouse during World War II? The people in the “real …
David Rabe set Hurlyburly, a three-hour emotional maelstrom, in the Hollywood Hills, early ’80s. As I watched Ion Theatre’s snappy, polished, visceral production, I had a nagging sense of déjà vu. Then it dawned: I …
In the bottom circle of Dante’s Inferno, Satan is a gigantic, three-headed monster waist-deep in a lake of ice. His three mouths chew the world’s worst traitors: Brutus and Cassius, who killed Caesar, to the …
Greatest achievement of 2009: though double-teamed by a rotten economy and the swine flu scare, our theaters survived, though many by the slimmest of margins. Many of 2009’s finest productions were ensemble efforts: each actor …
In 1953, Tennessee Williams sent the equivalent of a neutron bomb to Broadway. He wrote Camino Real to demolish theatrical realism. Don Quixote, the archetypal antirealist, falls asleep and envisions a new kind of theater, …
I must admit a bias. Long before way back when, the Pacific Theatre in Santa Cruz audience-tested movies on Tuesday nights. A bunch of us went for free and filled out questionnaires after. We kissed …
And now for something (almost completely) different: for decades, the San Diego Rep staged A Christmas Carol during the holiday season. On the surface, this year’s yuletide production, The Seafarer, by Conor McPherson, couldn’t be …
Link and younger brother Booth have virtuoso hands. To hear him tell it, Link was “the Stink,” the “be all end all,” best three-card monte hustler in town. He could “throw” the cards — two …
If she’s right, Tiffany Stern has cracked a theatrical mystery: how companies rehearsed — or didn’t — between 1567 and 1780. Her book, Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan, first appeared in 2000. Reactions to it, …
Alexander Dodge’s glitzy set for the Old Globe’s Sammy includes stately, showcase-windowlike structures framed by rows of blinking lights. They feature props for the scene, or people who pose, in Fabio Toblini’s classy period costumes, …
Okay, Hope isn’t quite snockered to the gills. She’s sober enough to recognize a tight spot. In this case, literally: the cramped studio apartment of a man far too young for her tastes. Charles is …
Thus far, the La Jolla Playhouse’s season has been forgettable. In Terrence McNally’s slight Unusual Acts of Devotion and Claudia Shear’s not-ready-for-prime-time Restoration, the sets — for good or ill — were more memorable than …
Ken Carpenter doesn’t look like a dramatic lead. Soft-spoken, bespectacled, a slight humble stoop in the shoulders, the 57-year-old’s a successful insurance salesman in Lincoln, Nebraska. He’s been with one woman for the past 40 …
Tough acts to follow. Welk Resorts Theatre begins The Andrews Brothers with video clips from the old USO Command Performance radio shows. Bob Hope jokes with Lana Turner. Young-ish Judy Garland sings an “Over the …