Theater antireviews
“I find Haydn’s music to be too formulaic.” “Ah, but he is the father of the string quartet.” This brief exchange between Marianne and Willoughby in the Old Globe’s Sense and Sensibility sealed the deal. …
There’s a scene in the first act of Avenue Q (playing through August 28 at the O.B. Playhouse) where Kate Monster (Catie Marron) argues with her boss, the ancient Lavinia Thistletwat, voiced and performed by …
Junk: The Golden Age of Debt is currently running at the La Jolla Playhouse. The play is set in the financial situation of the mid 1980s. This is the period of Wall Street, Boiler Room, …
Hershey Felder plays Leonard Bernstein in Maestro, a one-man show about music and love told through the life events of the composer/conductor. I had heard of Mr. Felder’s one-man shows based on Beethoven, Gershwin, Chopin, …
Nothing says “equality and an end to homophobia” quite like garbage in the streets and drunk, sunburned straight people enjoying an excuse to slip on a tutu and some sequined leggings.
It’s not every day that a musical adaptation of English Regency drama comes chock full of hipster jokes. But, Paul Gordon’s Sense and Sensibility at the Old Globe, directed by Barbara Gaines, made me stop …
Congratulations, Pride attendees! By all accounts, Pride weekend was a huge success. Tens of thousands enjoyed the music festival, parade, parties, and (of course) the endless day-drinking. The corporate sponsors must be so happy to …
Last month, New York–based dance troupe, Monica Bill Barnes & Company put on a single performance of Every Night’s a Show Night, a self-styled work-in-progress, at San Diego Dance Theatre. To the tune of excellent …
Written and performed by Sylvia Milo, The Other Mozart moves chronologically through the life of Maria Anna Mozart. Nannerl and her musical abilities were oppressed by a society in which some people thought uterine bleeding …
A rich and tricky question. Ask it of yourselves before and after attending Matt Thompson’s The Complete History of Theatre (Abridged) at the Point Loma Playhouse. As the play’s second act finally delivers the titular …
The Old Globe’s tokyo fish story features plenty of big themes from generational disconnection to familial nihilism to art versus commercialism to gender discrimination. The other theme is titling one’s play in all lowercase letters. …
More than once during Scripps Ranch Theatre’s production of Murder at the Howard Johnson’s, ditzy would-be femme fatale, Arlene (Maelyn Gándola), refers to HoJo’s fried clam strip dinner with lustful glee. This is perhaps the …
About halfway through the first act of Cygnet Theatre’s production of Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird, after the “showing” of the play-within-the-play, but before the “We need new forms” speech, occurs a brief dialogue between …
Before Moxie Theatre’s production of Katori Hall’s Our Lady of Kibeho even started — as audience members found their seats, and while director, Jennifer Eve Thorn, eyed the room in anxious anticipation — I began …
The conflict between Old World aristocrats and American New Money was once a real concern. The peerage dreaded the inevitable wresting from their hands of social privilege by plucky upstarts with Gilded Age fortunes. In …
I overheard a few conversations after the show. Constellations at the Old Globe confused some people. It should be stated that some people are persistently confused. The show, by its own admission, is a personification …