Henry Louis Grin (1847–1921) was a jack of many trades: a footman for the famous actress Fanny Kemble, a Swiss banker’s servant, an inventor, and a photographer who took pictures of ectoplasmic auras for psychics. …

Georg Büchner’s Danton’s Death has such a contemporary feel, it’s almost impossible to believe he wrote the play — hailed by many as “the best first play in world literature” — in 1835, at age …

WILL NO ONE MOURN THE CARTER? The Cassius Carter Centre Stage is no more. The Old Globe demolished its intimate theater-in-the-round to make way for a state-of-the-art, ADA-compliant arena. Named for its generous donors, the …

Diane lost her husband, a “brilliant” CEO, in Africa. Now the socialite wants to sell the house, land a job (her first), and sever all connections with her past. Diane’s in such deep denial, her …

In the theater, said Marlon Brando, “You can have a universal experience of fear, of anger, of tears, of love, and I discovered that it’s the audience, really, that’s doing the acting.” Audiences can also …

Flan and Ouisa Kittridge verge on having it all: two children at Harvard, one at Groton; a grand Fifth Avenue apartment near Jackie O’s; a couple of Mark Rothkos and a two-sided Kandinsky on the …

When American Buffalo premiered on Broadway in 1977, critics had to devise new terms to praise David Mamet’s craft. It wasn’t simply realistic, they said; it was “micro-real” or “hyper-real” or even “really real.” Mamet’s …

This column’s late. I got bit but good by that bug going around. “Re-view” a year — would that were possible, literally re-see favorite shows and performances of 2008. But they’re gone. Live theater is …

Each holiday season, Lamb’s Players presents an annual Christmas show at its resident theater and a three-hour extravaganza, An American Christmas, at the Hotel del Coronado. Set 100 years ago, the program for American Christmas …

Hooo-boy… Christmas is just around the corner, yet the residents of Tuna, the third-smallest town in Texas — even counting “greater” Tuna — are so low on holiday cheer it won’t wet the dipstick. The …

Talk of Broadway surrounds The Princess and the Black-Eyed Pea, an African retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen fable. If the buzz refers to the cast, one of the finest ever assembled at the San …

A gutted theater’s a depressing sight. October 25, 2008: painters apply a foundation coat to the Old Town Theatre’s interior walls. A heat wave forced them to open the tall stage doors to catch the …

Tom Stoppard called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern “the most expendable people of all time.” Minor courtiers in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, they barely exist beyond their Renaissance finery and snatches of dialogue. They aim to please, pretty much, …

When the Roman emperor Nero was born in AD 37, an astrologer declared he would have a “naturally cruel heart” and would become a “public danger.” Another warned, Nero “will be king and will kill …

Water and Power, the title of Richard Montoya’s “stage noir” drama, sums up Southern California history in three words. Forget gold, railroads, or waves upon waves of health seekers. Water has always ruled our region. …

When it opened on Broadway in 1933, Jack Kirkland’s subhuman dramatization of the Erskine Caldwell novel Tobacco Road received mixed to negative reviews. Even though it had “spasmodic moments of merciless power,” wrote critic Brooks …

PROGRAM NOTES: Moxie Theatre invited me to dramaturge its latest production. My notes for the program grew beyond its confines, so I decided to present them here. Kate Walat’s Bleeding Kansas begins in 1855, the …

At a time when the light at the end of the tunnel must be an oncoming train, Lamb’s Players Theatre is staging Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas’s harbinger of hope. Based on Elizabeth Spencer’s 1960 …

From 1986 to 1988, the Oakland Athletics had back-to-back-to-back Rookies of the Year: Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, and Walt Weiss. Under ex-lawyer Tony La Russa’s management, the team looked set for a generation. On November …

Picture hell. For those who live in Pacific Beach and work nine-to-five jobs, hell arrives every Thursday afternoon. College students schedule their classes Monday through Thursday. Come that afternoon, especially in the “Kill Zone” around …

On Victoria Petrovich’s set for The Good Body at the Rep, shiny panels reflect clouds and pale blue skies. Projected slides take us from America to Brazil, Africa, and Afghanistan. Standing on small pedestals, six …

When rock ’n’ roll first hit the scene, hipsters swore that “things’s gonna get REAL GONE for a change.” Although it felt born full grown to those it blew away, rock ’n’ roll didn’t spring …

MISS VICTORIA’S IN LOVE On Friday, June 13, 1856, Maurice Franklin invited Victoria Jacobs to join him for a picnic. Even though 17-year-old Victoria suffered a severe toothache, she was thrilled to have “the pleasure …

LIBERTY: SCENES FROM SAN DIEGO’S SHORE-LEAVE HISTORY DANA TOURS SAN DIEGO “A sailor’s liberty is for a day,” writes Richard Henry Dana in Two Years Before the Mast, “yet while it lasts it is perfect,” …

Shakespeare’s range was enormous. He could charm with Twelfth Night, enchant with Winter’s Tale, go deep with Hamlet and Lear. But what if only one play of his survived? And what if that play were …

When Spring Awakening won eight Tony Awards for 2007, including Best Musical, word around the Big Apple went that it would never tour, that it was strictly a “New York show.” Why? Frank Wedekind’s “tragedy …

AMERICAN ICARUS: LINCOLN BEACHEY LOOPS THE LOOP (Part Three) “Aviators are not born like poets,” said Lincoln Beachey, who claimed that anyone could fly a plane but that he, and only he, was the natural-born …

I’ve always been fascinated by sources of artistic inspiration. What triggered Hamlet, say, or The Iliad? What alchemy transformed ambient noise into Don Giovanni? Was it something writ large: a sign in the sky, a …

AMERICAN ICARUS: BEACHEY COMES TO SAN DIEGO (Part Two) “Death was always my opponent,” said Lincoln Beachey at a celebration in his honor, “and I gave tremendous odds.” He spoke at the Olympic Club in …

AMERICAN ICARUS: LINCOLN BEACHEY LOOPS THE LOOP (Part One) Lincoln Beachey was one of America's first superstars. By 1915, the daredevil stunt pilot had performed before more people than anyone in history. An estimated one …

If you judged only by externals, you'd swear that Jonathan Waxman, protagonist of Sight Unseen, has it all. Waxman's a "bad-boy visionary" artist who had an eight-page feature in the New York Times Sunday magazine. …

‘Every show starts with a stack of papers,” says Duane Daniels, founder of the Fritz Theatre, “words on a page, from the script to production demands, and they’re just the tip of one humongous iceberg” …

THE AMERICAN INVASION: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF APOLINARIA LORENZANA (Part Six) On July 29, 1848, the USS Cyane navigated through the thick kelp outside Point Loma and entered San Diego Bay. The sloop of …

The curtain rises at the Old Globe and vwa-lah! We’re in the majestic living room of a Victorian mansion. A bay-window seat, with nine-foot windows, overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge (we’re in San Francisco’s Marina …

RAMPAGE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF APOLINARIA LORENZANA (Part Five) Apolinaria Lorenzana lived for around 90 years. Born in Mexico City in the early 1790s, she died blind and indigent at Santa Barbara in 1884. …

LA BEATA: THE SISTERS' SAD FATE (Part Four) By the time she was 45, Apolinaria Lorenzana had nursed numerous cases of syphilis at the San Diego Mission infirmary. She’d fought plagues of measles and smallpox. …

The Old Globe Theatre’s staging three of Shakespeare’s plays about love: star-crossed Romeo and Juliet, gender-crossed All’s Well That Ends Well (in which the woman gets to choose her husband), and double-crossed Merry Wives of …

Shakespeare’s always up to something. Even in plays that feel written in haste, like All’s Well That Ends Well, the Bard’s twisting conventions and turning tables. Most of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies begin with an arranged …

THE JAMUL INCIDENT: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF APOLINARIA LORENZANA (Part Three) In the spring of 1837, Apolinaria Lorenzana left her duties at the mission for a few days, to break in a new foreman …

LA BEATA: THE LIVES AND TIMES OF APOLINARIA LORENZANA (Part Two) September 1, 1834: the Mexican brigantine Natalia makes an unscheduled entry into San Diego Bay. Onboard are José María Hijar, Juan Bandini, and 129 …

In today’s terminology, you could say that Joe Bonaparte has bipolar gifts. His hands are as adept in the boxing ring, clobbering contenders, as they are playing the violin. His skills are so extreme, in …

Along with dents on every fifth car, which people can’t afford to repair, and a beer at Petco costing more than the hourly minimum wage, short theatrical runs are a sign of the times. High …

LA BEATA: THE LIVES AND TIMES OF APOLINARIA LORENZANA (Part One) In the spring of 1878, Thomas Savage went to Santa Barbara to record recollections for Herbert Howe Bancroft’s massive History of California. In particular, …

We watch a woman just home from work. Her eyes are so blank, it’s hard to tell if she’s glad to be back in her spotless studio apartment or relieved to clock another eight hours. …

Caryl Churchill’s play A Number unfolds like a hall of slowly warping mirrors. The play opens with Salter, in his early 60s, talking to his 35-year-old son Bernard. Their conversation’s jagged. Each interrupts the other, …

What is it about acting that can grab a person’s full attention — and often hold it for a lifetime? Recently I got to dramaturge Holy Ghosts for the Sullivan Players. Romulus Linney’s drama concerns …

The La Jolla Playhouse’s 33 Variations, about Ludwig van Beethoven’s obsession with a paltry theme by Diabelli, concluded its run in early May. San Diego theater’s homage to the maestro continues at the Old Globe, …

The Old Globe Theatre’s “Classics Up Close” series presents some of the great works of American theater on the small Cassius Carter Centre Stage. The theater-in-the-round offers an intimate look at plays usually seen many …

Music is time-bound. It must move forward or cease to be. A few hundred years from now, most likely music will leave linear progression and become vertical as well as horizontal. It may even move …

The “Father of Modern Drama” wasn’t Ibsen, or August Strindberg. He was Andre Antoine (1858…1943), a clerk for the Paris Gas Company and an amateur actor. Cercle Gaulois, for whom he played bit parts, performed …