Thursday, December 3, 2015
You really do root for the murderer in the delightful A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder. That may seem an insensitive scene in these brutal, terrifying days we're living in, but the r…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:06PMSunday, November 22, 2015
San Francisco Playhouse puckers up and offers a nice juicy kiss for the holidays in Stage Kiss a delightfully daffy theatrical spin with a touch of real-life melancholy.
This is the first t…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 05:31PMSaturday, November 21, 2015
My knowledge of Lenny Bruce is sorely limited (I've seen the Dustin Hoffman movie and heard other comics express their reverence), but I'd like that to change. After seeing Steve Cuiffo Is L…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:13PMFriday, November 20, 2015
If Bojack Horseman and Mr. Ed count, I can say I'm a horse person. I fell off the back of a running stallion as a child while visiting relatives on a farm in Idaho (that horse really wanted …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 01:06PMThursday, November 19, 2015
When salsa splatters across the unsealed Carrara marble, the horror of the architect played by Danny Scheie resounds through the intimate Aurora Theatre Company. An hors d'oeuvre has fallen …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:33PMSaturday, November 14, 2015
On a day when terrible things were happening in the world, being immersed in William Shakespeare's The Tempest was sweet balm, especially as performed by the fine actors of California Shakes…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:16PMFriday, November 13, 2015
If/Then is not a musical I like much. I saw it on Broadway because I was enthusiastic about creators Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey after their powerhouse effort on Next to Normal (a show that I …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:44PMWednesday, November 4, 2015
Elizabeth Irwin's My Mañana Comes cuts through any pretense and gets right to the heart of real life in these United States. In so much of the entertainment we consume (and, truth be told, …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:40PMSunday, November 1, 2015
Sail Away, the last musical for which the great Noël Coward wrote the whole shebang (book, music, lyrics), had two things going for it when it premiered on Broadway in 1961. First was the c…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 01:16PMThursday, October 29, 2015
Any prospect of a live Rocky Horror Show makes us shiver with antici................pation, And the good news is this Rocky is a rollicking ride through one of the most beloved cult musicals…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:36PMMonday, October 26, 2015
A very personal play, BootStrap Theater Foundation's Arctic Requiem: The Story of Luke Cole and Kivalina is both educational and emotional. You'll learn more about Native Alaskan Inupiat peo…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 06:14PMSaturday, October 24, 2015
Before I rhapsodize about the incredible Ghost Quartet now at the Curran Theatre as part of the Curran: Under Construction series, can I just say how extraordinary this series has been so fa…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:47PMFriday, October 23, 2015
The Hypocrites' Pirates of Penzance is one part Yo ho! and one part Yo, ho! Which is to say, this is not your great-grandparents' Gilbert and Sullivan, and what a blessed relief that is. No …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:31PMThursday, October 22, 2015
Can we agree that Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! is warm and wonderful...and weird? The sepia-tinted 1933 play is a rare light work from tragedian O'Neill, though its fantasy elements – …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:44PMFriday, October 16, 2015
You'd think, from the piles and walls of boxes that fill the stage of the Curran Theatre, that Geoff Sobelle's would involve shame – shame that we're so attached to our stuff and that we a…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 01:24PMFriday, October 9, 2015
What a rare treat to have had two productions of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's Life Is a Dream on local stages this year. First there was California Shakespeare Theater's production (read my…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:31PMTuesday, October 6, 2015
The whole time I was watching Lachlan Philpott's Truck Stop, a Crowded Fire Theater production at Thick House, I was working myself into a state of anxiety imagining being the parent of a te…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:53PMSaturday, October 3, 2015
Two of the Bay Area's most interesting theater artists, Philip Kan Gotanda and Sean San José, were asked to adapt a short story from Lysley Tenorio's 2012 collection Monstress for American …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 06:19PMThursday, October 1, 2015
There are two very good reasons to see the musical Dogfight at San Francisco Playhouse. The 2012 stage adaptation of the 1991 movie starring River Phoenix and Lili Taylor has its moments (mo…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:00PMThursday, August 20, 2015
How appropriate to go (high) camping under the stars in the Orinda hills with the California Shakespeare Theater. One doesn't think of Charles Ludlam's The Mystery of Irma Vep as a play for …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 06:40PMSunday, August 2, 2015
Just when it seems all the colorful characters are fleeing San Francisco, along comes an Oasis of (fake) tits and glitter. Yes, Oasis, the new South of Market nightclub, has defied the real …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:56PMMonday, July 20, 2015
I've never seen anything quite like Now for Now, the new theatrical work devised and performed by Mark Jackson and Megan Trout now at Z Below through July 26 (time is short – go see it). A…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 05:49PMSunday, July 19, 2015
What is it about Roald Dahl that makes his books so ripe for adaptation? Probably the most famous book-to-screen-to-stage example from his canon is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which b…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 01:13PMFriday, July 17, 2015
Robert (Keith Pinto, center) suffers his friends and their attempts to fix him up Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s 1970 musical Company now at San Francisco Playhouse. Below: Amy (Moniq…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 01:09PMThursday, July 16, 2015
If you've ever seen a show by our foremost docudramatist, Anna Deavere Smith, you know the power she has over an audience. She conducts extensive interviews on her chosen topic, then she re-…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 04:17PMWednesday, July 15, 2015
In the wake of my review of TheatreWorks' world premiere musical Triangle someone tweeted a link to the review and suggested that the show could make it to Broadway. I have some thoughts abo…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 12:47AMSunday, July 12, 2015
There's so much talk about nature and stars in Life Is a Dream that it seems perfectly natural to be sitting outside on a temperate summer night watching Pedro Calderón de la Barca's 1635 p…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:24PMSaturday, July 11, 2015
Would that Caryl Churchill's 1982 play Top Girls was something of a dated relic in its details of the horrors, tribulations, indignities and injustices suffered by women through the ages. Th…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 01:55PMFriday, June 26, 2015
There's a particular kind of fear that grips those who have all the things we're "supposed" to have – jobs, houses, marriages, ideals. The fear, of course, is not in the having of it all b…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:25PMSaturday, June 20, 2015
p>Eddie Izzard was back in town this week with his Force Majeure tour. His San Francisco stop at the Golden Gate Theatre offered congratulations to audience members for being the smartest…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 01:37PMSunday, May 10, 2015
Leave it playwright Lauren Yee to bring clear definition to the sub-genre "existential slasher comedy." That's exactly what her Hookman is, a fascinating world-premiere play from Encore Thea…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:29PM 
