theaterguy
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The Sugar Witch @ New Conservatory Theatre Center
03/25/2010San Francisco Sentinel Blog Archives THE SUGAR WITCH – A Winner At New Conservatory Theatre Center - Seán Martinfield:
THE SUGAR WITCH, now at New Conservatory Theatre Center is a charming and edgy blend of mystery, madness, murder, and mountainous dreams. The production, directed by Dennis Lickteig, is NCTC at its best. Scenic designs by Kuo-Hao Lo and lighting by John Kelly call up an atmosphere of eeriness and dread in this very out-of-the-way ramshackle homestead by the swamps of Florida’s Watchalahoochee River. The playwright, Nathan Sanders, describes his work as a “Southern Gothic Tale”. Bigger than life is one of its traits. Morality another. Sometimes there’s a body around. The kicker is in the subtlety. The brightest fire is its Femme Fatale. Kendra Owens as “Annabelle” – the Sugar Witch – is a steady flame of wisdom, love, and desire. ... [Read More] -
Den of Thieves @ SF Playhouse
03/18/2010Theater review: 'Den of Thieves' brings smiles - RATING: (POLITE APPLAUSE) Den of Thieves: Comedy. By Stephen Adly Guirgis. Directed by Susi Damilano. With Kathryn Tkel, Chad Deverman, Casey Jackson, Corinne Proctor et al. Through April 17. SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter St.... [Read More] -
Den of Thieves @ SF Playhouse
03/11/2010
This is a very funny show. You will laugh and forget your troubles.
SF Playhouse does the job once again. -
Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West @ Berkeley Rep's Roda Theatre
03/08/2010
This show is dreadful. It's boring as hell with little to say. One scene in particular is interminable. The play attempts to elucidate the history of photography in Japan. Got your interest, right? It's poorly directed as well as poorly written. Don't bother. Not to mention, it's costly. -
The First Grade @ Aurora Theatre
02/15/2010Theater review: 'The First Grade' - The turn-on-a-dime shift so deftly executed by Brothers and Rebecca Schweitzer, as her daughter Angie, signals the structure and impact of Joel Drake Johnson's "The First Grade," a world premiere that opened Thursday at Aurora Theatre. The anchor production in the Aurora's annual Global Age Project (GAP), "First Grade" is an incisive comedy of today's manners that veers into tense dramatic standoff before settling into a more traditional domestic-comedy resolution. [Read More] -
The First Grade @ Aurora Theatre
02/15/2010
THE FIRST GRADE
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
The Aurora Theatre Company of Berkeley is presently staging the delightfully dark, but redemptive, comedy THE FIRST GRADE by Joel Drake Johnson.
Anyone who has ever known an Elementary School Teacher with twenty plus years in the cookie crumb trenches knows how such a vet is.
Being accustomed to speaking with diminutive persons equipped naturally with audio processing problems and attention deficit disorders, teachers tend to over articulate even the briefest, least abstract sentence.
Secondly, because Elementary School children have yet to become adept at masking their real selves, Elementary Teachers see everyone as if they were as simple, linear and as transparent as a first grader.
Does seeing the world through the lens of a First Grade Teacher provide one with a better handle on life or greater insights?
That’s the question writer Joel Johnson and direct Tom Ross vividly answer on the Aurora Stage.
Julia Brothers, as the First Grade Teacher, provides the audience with a character that everyone can appreciate for her honesty, intelligence and expectations and yet ironically no one would want her as a spouse or as a parent: she demands too much objectivity from the people around her and, like a First Grade Teacher, is unwilling to tolerate any forms of self indulgence or monkey business.
Warren David Keith, as the defeated retreating husband: Nat, brilliantly portrays a husband that the audience can universally sympathize with; after all, how does a man live with a woman who makes cookies and then hides them so that no one else can eat them; and who brooks no intimation of human weakness?
Nat, unable to get a divorce fast enough, does what most men would do: adapt: he escapes to a quiet corner of the house, buys scotch in two-liter bottles and sneaks in a passionate mistress.
As the expression goes, vengeance is best served cold or on a queen size mattress.
Were it not for his penchant for ice in his scotch, he could side step Frau Elementary Teacher all together.
Rebecca Schweitzer, as the dysfunctional daughter, gives an equally compelling performance.
What’s a daughter to do when she has an overbearing First Grade Teacher as a mother?
Shut down, search for sensual pleasure and oral satisfaction in forbidden cookies, sulk, give off tons of attitude like a squid gives off sepia, and curl convolutedly into the emotional fetal position.
The First Grade Teacher has pretty much destroyed all life at ground zero until a more wretched character: Mora, played superbly by Tina Sanchez dives into the family brew.
THE FIRST GRADE is indisputably a great play: it’s entertaining, elevating and enlightening.
Why? Because it’s a blend of irony and complexity: it’s about adroitness, rectitude and a sober approach to life run amuck and onto the rocks: scotch on the rocks to be specific.
If you are getting a whiff of toxicity in your life, or you just want an intelligent laugh, THE FIRST GRADE is your ticket. -
The Miser @ Ross Valley Players' Barn Theatre, Marin Art and Garden Center
01/22/2010
Reviewed by Jeff Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
Given that The Economist magazine has retreated from even speculating on when or if the Great American Recovery will take place, we might all gain a personal appreciation for the frugal, parsimonious obsessions of THE MISER, whether it be in the theater or in the home.
Instead of a return to the good ole days, The Economist scans the offing for evidence of a mere stabilization: a limping, gasping economic engine that hits frequently on enough cylinders to keep running without too much jump starting from grotesquely profligate deficit spending.
True to the times, the Ross Valley Players (RVP) are presently performing Moliere’s THE MISER as directed by Bruce Vieira.
RVP’s THE MISER is simply stunning and not to be missed; it may have been a light weight comedy that Moliere toured the provinces with, but the RVP have primped it from every possible angle: a fabulous set design by David Apple which makes the miser look like a Rothschild; period costumes that precisely reflect each character’s station in life and a cast that clearly exalts in the art of theater.
Satirical, farcical and perhaps ominous as well, the play revolves around Harpagon: the tyrannical, tightfisted father of Cléante and Elise.
Harpagon, played superbly by Grey Wolf, is the kind of guy everyone hates yet loves to cozy up to simply because he is holding the purse.
Like most spendthrift, entitled children, Cléante and Elise are eager to dip into family capital: just give them a trust fund and you will never see them again.
Cléante and Elise despise their father for all the usual reasons.
Harpagon is rich and yet won’t spend his money; worse yet, he won’t give it to his idling, self-indulgent children who long for the barest necessities: simple essentials like frippery, luxury, leisure and torrid romance.
Harpagon—like many celebrities, sports figures, politicians or any man who has clawed his way to a position of wealth and power—would like to parlay his success into the obvious: a crack at youthful pulchritude; in Harpagon’s case it’s Mariane: the lover of his frivolous son: Cléante.
Meanwhile, Harpagon’s daughter: Elise, is in love with beau Valère: a savvy servant to Harpagon.
Valère is superbly played by Chad Yarish.
Much to MR Yarish’s credit he is able to credibly produce a conspicuously intelligent Valère.
Strange that for all the censure Moliere drew for performing THE MISER, the play is framed by and rooted in stock aristocratic conceits.
At its core are arrogances as elitist and plutocratic as Calvin’s notion of the elect.
Both Mariane and Valère are of noble origin and like Oliver (Dickens), Ernest (Wilde), Luke Skywalker (Lucas) and Tarzan (Edgar Rice Burroughs) their true aristocratic origins beam through the humble circumstances in which they find themselves like a beacon, or a pheromone, to discerning members of their caste.
It is as if Fitzgerald’s maxim were true: “The rich really are different.”
In the denouement, Mariane and Valère discover they are siblings and that their father is the magnanimous Signior Anselme, who will pay for their weddings.
Due to a shipwreck as in COMEDY OF ERRORS, the family was rend asunder, but in the end, the rich marry the rich and the lower classes are precluded from comingling with or diluting aristocratic DNA.
Strange too that Moliere’s miser is arrayed much like we would expect Shakespeare’s Shylock to appear: in North African Sephardic attire: a satin dressing jacket with an inseparable kufi in the style of Thelonious.
It should be remembered that France did not come to grips with its middle age penchant for anti-Semitism until after the Dreyfus Affair.
If the contraction of 401(k) has you down or your house is underwater as the mortgage companies like to say, this play is guaranteed to cheer you up and make you rich if only in spirit.
For tickets contact the Ross Valley Players at http://rossvalleyplayers.com. You can guarantee your tickets by purchasing them online, but you can also call Brown Paper Tickets at (800) 838-3006 to purchase tickets by phone for the current show. -
The Bright River (at Brava Theater Center) @ Brava Theater Center
01/21/2010WORD BEAT - "Traditional" may not be the first adjective that comes to mind when one is confronted with a vision of the afterlife in which an impoverished Iraq War casualty squats homeless in a bus station called Purgatory because he lacks the bus fare to take him to his final reward.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/12/05/PKGPAA2GMH1.DTL#ixzz0dIhwZSwq
[Read More] -
The Bright River (at Brava Theater Center) @ Brava Theater Center
01/19/2010The Bright River fuses mouth magic and hip-hop shtick | j. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California - It's not clear which is more impressive, the words that come out of Tim Barsky's mouth or the sounds that emerge from the throat of his cohort Kid [Read More] -
The Bright River (at Brava Theater Center) @ Brava Theater Center
01/19/2010The Bright River: A Mass Transit Tour of the Afterlife - Brava Theater Center - San Francisco - Events - <i>The Bright River: A Mass Transit Tour of the Afterlife</i> at Brava Theater Center info from SF Weekly. Find info about San Francisco events, concerts, shows, admission and ticket prices [Read More]
