San Diego Theater Reviews
In UCSD Theatre’s recent staging of The Physicists, Michelle Diaz played Sister Boll, a monobrowed, lock-stepping head nurse at a sanitarium. Diaz made bold physical choices, including reps of one-armed push-ups. Larry Herron played Johan …
Maybe things’re different across the lake, where vacationers play nonstrenuous games and pound down chow on the American Plan: three squares, plus tea, coffee, and snack breaks. They’ve come to the Catskills in the summer …
‘That cat Oedipus is a bad mother-…” “Shut-cho mouth!” “But I’m talkin’ ’bout Oedipus.” In Will Power’s often blazing, at times reductive hip-hop take on Aeschylus’s Seven Against Thebes, Oedipus is an “OG”: an “original …
Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart’s Hello, Dolly! had the requisite chops for a long Broadway run. Add in the Hall of Famers who eventually played the lead, including Carol Channing, Pearl Bailey, and Ethel Merman …
The great boxer Joe Louis and baseball immortal Josh Gibson were contemporaries who thrived in the 1930s. The Old Globe Theatre’s In This Corner tells of Louis’s exploited life in the spotlight, during the Age …
A woman walked into Ion Theatre’s intimate space, glanced at the set, and froze. The stage is an interrogation room: institutional gray, cinderblock walls, a rickety table, and a blindfolded prisoner on his knees, downstage …
Right place, wrong timing: In 1938, a friend of mine’s great-uncle saved his shekels and went to the, at that time, Fight of the Century — the Joe Louis/Max Schmeling rematch at Yankee Stadium. Along …
THE YEAR IN REVIEW: PLAYS AND PRODUCTIONS. Last year, several shows arrived ballyhoo-first. Pre–opening-night accolades promised “Broadway bound” quality and SRO houses both here and in New York. Some of them, however, were a letdown, …
“This year five shows announced themselves ‘Broadway bound’ even before they opened!”
If I could host a dinner for five "unforgettable" San Diegans from long ago, one guest would have to be Apolinaria Lorenzana. Called "La Beata" -- "the blessed one" -- she came to Alta California …
Off the Ground, by Amy Chini and Tom Zohar New Village Arts Theatre Christmas Is Comin' Uptown, Common Ground Theatre, WorldBeat Center Kristianne Kurner's set previews Off the Ground before the actors arrive. It's Christmas …
Sweet 15 (Quinceañera), by Rick Najera San Diego Repertory Theatre, 79 Horton Plaza, downtown Directed by Sam Woodhouse; cast: Rick Najera, Alma Martinez, Nina Brissey, Yvonne Delarosa, Jose Yenque, Carlo D'Amore, Fernando Vega; scenic design, …
Cry-Baby, book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan, songs by David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger, based on the John Waters movie La Jolla Playhouse, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive Directed by Mark Brokaw; cast: Chester …
'I always had a passion for play-making," says Robert Landis, co-founder of the legendary Footlights Theatre of San Diego (1947) and equally legendary Scripteasers (1948). "Theater has always been -- how to put this -- …
Dracula, by Stephen Dietz, adapted from the Bram Stoker novel North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach Directed by Christopher Vened; cast: Matt Thompson, Brenda Dodge, Robert Grossman, Jason Heil, Sean …
Oscar Wilde loved to spin platitudes on their ear. "Fathers should be neither seen nor heard," says Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband. "My Reginald is quite hopelessly faultless," says Mrs. Marchmont. "There is not …