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Theater
Served With Perfect Proportions of Spice and Drama
To my dismay, there aren't too many Cajun restaurants in the city that I can reference offhand when the craving for piping hot jambalaya, crawfish casserole and oyster touffee hits me every once in a while. You can imagine my pleasure on discovering that Okra, the newest play at the Brava Theater Center, serves up a walloping bowl of gumbo at the end of each performance. But it's not just the gumbo that sits well- everything in monologist Anne Galjour's latest dark comedy is evocative of a summer night by the steamy bayou, underneath lush bumbershoots of magnolia trees... More
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Theater
Fluid Yet Incomplete a Second Time Around
Cherylene Lee's adaptation of Sophocles's 442 BC tragedy, Antigone, riffs off the imperishable motif of the totalitarian state, replete with tyranny, greed, and changeless sermonizing. Despite its imposing status as a play that's been worked and re-worked constantly (by the likes of Jean Anouilh and Bertolt Brecht, to name a couple), Lee's Antigone is an uncommon take on the Greek classic. It's an intriguing yet choppy work that attempts to bridge the lacunae between past and present and East and West. More
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Theater
The Civil War and All its Repercussions
It was at Appomattox Court House in rural Virginia in 1865 where General Robert E. Lee surrendered the confederate army to Union commander, General Ulysses S. Grant, formally ending the Civil War. With this surrender, Appomattox itself has come to represent a point in history where two warring factions made peace. And within Philip Glass’ ambitious, though sometimes uneven, opera, Appomattox is put forth as the point in history when the groundwork for future race relations and battles within America were laid. More
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Theater
Fleecing Heroism
Macarthur Genius and playwright Mary Zimmerman describes her affinity for mythology this way: “As a child, myths always felt to me like grown-up fairy tales. Like fairy tales they contained adventures and supernatural elements…but I always sensed that there was a serious and darker layer to them.” Greek mythology is, as Zimmerman alludes to, alluring for its depth and fantastic symbolism. But these canonical myths are simultaneously intimidating for their layered darknesses. More
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Theater
Experimental Theatre That Doesn’t Suck
Since 1999, Cutting Ball Theater has been regaling Bay Area audiences with the sort of stage productions that tend to be so rare in modern theatre: intelligent, provocative, challenging, impossibly literary pieces that teem with playfulness and a throbbing vein of experimentalism. Artistic director Rob Melrose tends to deal in creating minor monuments to the exhilarating range of possibility that live theatre can offer (without the bombast or ginormous budget), from brief dramaturgical sketches by local playwrights to cheeky, audacious revisions of beloved Shakespeare plays. More
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Theater
Provocative Puppet Jokes -- for Adults
The late great Jim Henson spawned a passel of subversive, potty-mouthed muppet performances for adults, most recently, his eponymous Puppet Improv, in which beloved figures like Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog promenaded about the stage, bowing to the dirty dictates of audience members who couldn’t resist the idea of a saucy barb from a plush, lovable childhood icon. It’s a wonderful gambit, if only because the idea of a muppet -- god bless its googly-eyed, yarn-haired soul -- spewing swear words and dealing in risqué puns is invariably hilarious. More
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Theater
Two acts are better than one
Theater aficionados, thespians and patrons of the alternative art community -- these are the people that will enjoy “Bad Habits", Terrance McNally’s billing of one-acts that highlight the absurdity of our self medicating society currently on stage at the black box Mission space Theater Rhinoceros. Everyone else should stay at home. More
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Theater
Lost in Translation
Federico García Lorca was by all accounts a complex, gifted, but deeply troubled character. Like Rimbaud and other hardcore romantics, his flamboyant and brief life (he was executed by Nationalist Fascist troops at the age of 38) still allowed him plenty of time to churn out enough poetry and plays to earn a spot in the pantheon of Western Art. More
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Theater
Not Necessarily with the Quintessential Happy Ending, But Done with Heart
As anyone who has seen or read "Angels in America" can tell you, Tony Kushner doesn't shy away from ugly juxtapositions, elaborate set pieces, loose ends, intersecting story lines, parallel story lines, biting humor, and moments of shattering revelation, voiced by people who speak the overwrought dialogue so effective on stage. Kushner composes complicated plays and has no problem giving the audience unhappy endings. More
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Theater
Back in 1995, choreographer Michael Smuin decided he wanted to create a holiday ballet for his spectators without resorting to another hackneyed reproduction of the Nutcracker. "I went into a creative gestation period, pondering the situation. When I emerged, the result was the Christmas Ballet - hopefully, a breath of fresh air in the sugar-plum-perfumed days of December!" Smuin quips. Now, his Christmas Ballet performances are old hat in San Francisco, but in the best way imaginable. Lauded as the Bay Area's most popular and sold-out ballet performance of the year, the Smuin Ballet's holiday festivities draw crowds from near and far... More
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