San Diego Theater Reviews
In Cervantes's great novel, Don Quixote, the don interrupts Master Pedro's Moorish puppet show. "You've put church bells in mosques", the offended Don exclaims. Pedro, the puppeteer, replies, "Don't be looking for trifles, Señor Quixote, …
Just across the courtyard, without fanfare, the Globe staged one of the year's gems. I suspect I'll remember 2006 as much for its disappointments as achievements. This was the year Claudio Raygoza's Ion Theatre and …
It is a certain kind of person that is dedicated to life in the theater these days. For one thing, it's a perpetually archaic art form that attracts less and less interest in this age …
Optimists and pessimists differ about the glass being half-full or half-empty. But a graven pessimist would ask, “What glass?” The same applies to the Old Globe’s world-premiere musical, The Full Monty, based on the popular …
“Our job is to create art,” said Sam Woodhouse, cofounder and codirector, with Doug Jacobs, of the San Diego Repertory Theatre. What started out as two scruffy performers calling themselves Indian Magique has, after two …
One thing Robert Smyth likes about his used Merkur is that it's a turbocharged car with no sign on it saying "turbocharged." Power without show: that's Smyth (he pronounces it "Smith"). At 40, he is …
You're wide awake, and suddenly your mind's a blank. You can't even for the words to ask for help. What do you do?
The following awards are drawn from musical and theatrical events I have attended throughout 1980. There may possibly be a better play or concert which I have missed; there are bound to be far many …
Frankly, I can't see why anyone would want to have total recall, the ability to recollect at will every moment of his life on the instamatic lens of the mind's eye. Such an ability, no …
A friend of mine (whom I will refer to — so as not to embarrass him — as Jeff Smith) is a nicotine addict and cannot go for long without a cigarette. At a recent …
On the afternoon preceding Easter Sunday, a group of young men from Baja California performed the Passion Play in San Diego's Old Town. The production — amateur and popular in style, intense and affecting in …
Only in America, the land of opportunity, could a coddled, Ivy-League-trained, rich girl for suburban New Jersey achieve success by turning herself into an uneducated lower-class Zulu.
The Jingler She is an elegant lady who has decorated all available parts of her body with pendant metallic jewelry. From her wrists there hand flurries of fine metal strips; around her neck, more of …
There has been a universal orgy of congratulation and self congratulation over Joan Sutherland’s Lucia di Lammermoor at the San Diego Opera. These feelings are understandable. When one has waited all year to hear a …
Godspell, a musical based on the life and teachings of Jesus, is playing to sold-out houses at the Old Globe. The production is terrific; the play itself is abominable. Christianity has been having a hard …
Reading George Bernard Shaw's play Getting Married is not a very stimulating experience. The usual Shavian traits are there in oppressive abundance: endless talkiness, poor imitations of Oscar Wilde's drawing room wit, shallow philosophizing, and …