Thursday, April 12, 2012
When Darren Criss was a kid going to American Conservatory Theater's Young Conservatory, he attended one of the company's annual galas. Joel Grey was the headliner. Now Criss, all grown up a…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:04AMFriday, April 6, 2012
When faced with the prospect of seeing another production of Othello, I usually gird my loins, wipe my nose with a strawberry-embroidered hanky and settle in for a show I know I'm not going …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 06:42PMThursday, April 5, 2012
Dwelling in the past, as so many human beings come to find, causes nothing but frustration and disappointment. The same is true for Jordan Harrison's play Maple and Vine now at American Cons…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 05:18PMThursday, March 29, 2012
There are all kinds of battles going on in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker – brother vs. brother, brothers vs. the tramp, the tramp vs. the truth, loneliness vs. despair, etc. – but the re…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 04:29PMMonday, March 26, 2012
When Annie Baker made her Bay Area debut with Body Awareness at the Aurora Theatre Company, I was impressed by the arrival of an intriguing, intelligent and compassionate new voice on the Am…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 10:00AMSunday, March 25, 2012
Cringe No. 1 came early in Matthew Lombardo's unsustained High at the Curran Theatre. Kathleen Turner was standing center stage in character as Sister Jamison Connelly, a nun and drug rehab …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 09:00AMSaturday, March 24, 2012
You've heard that insulting phrase, "As exciting as watching paint dry." Well in Berkeley Repertory Theatre's Red, you do watch paint dry, and it's surprisingly exciting.
This is one of th…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:52PMThursday, March 22, 2012
He says he’s been a fan of hers since he was a child. She says he makes her pee.
Quips fly fast and furious when talking to Jason Graae and Faith Prince, especially when they’re talki…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 05:33PMFriday, March 16, 2012
In which there are reminiscences of an eighth grade field trip to Alcatraz and links to a feature story and a review relating to the TheatreWorks production of Now Circa Then, a romantic com…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 06:24PMMonday, March 5, 2012
Singing pirates automatically make me think of two things: the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disneyland with their rousing "Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me)" and the dreadful and u…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:14PMSunday, March 4, 2012
Anna Ishida has a scream to remember – the kind of scream that startles your unborn children. She could supplant Jamie Lee Curtis as the Queen of Scream, but until then, she's wreaking blo…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 08:36PMThursday, March 1, 2012
The year always goes by so quickly. March 7 and 8 – next week, people – is Purim already. Where does the time go?
If you haven't made your festive Purim plans, you should go see The W…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 01:58PMWednesday, February 29, 2012
Wajdi Mouawad's drama Scorched is a riveting, affecting and thought-provoking play – in its last 30 minutes. To get there you have to spend more than two hours slogging through layers of b…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 05:58PMTuesday, February 28, 2012
There's nothing unusual about the following statement: Brian Copeland is a funny, funny man. He has proved that time and time again over the course of his stand-up career and his TV work. We…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 01:37PMFriday, February 24, 2012
Darkness. Voices. Chanting. Then drumming and clapping.
The opening of Cutting Ball Theater's Tontlawald is electrifying. The sheer power of joined voices, unamplified, is undeniable and e…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 06:04PMTuesday, February 21, 2012
Tree City Legends leaves you moved and somewhat perplexed. My experience with Dennis Kim's play as directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph was equal parts fascination and confusion.
There are so m…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 10:37PMThursday, February 16, 2012
Maybe it's a simple case of the winter blahs, but early 2012 has been kind of a drag. There have been high points to be sure, but people seem to be struggling and fighting and dragging aroun…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:59PMThursday, February 9, 2012
I can't imagine what it was like to see Keith Huff's A Steady Rain when it was on Broadway almost three years ago starring Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig as two Chicago cops navigating a tric…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 06:00PMMonday, February 6, 2012
This is the season for artistic directors sharing their writing with their audiences. Tony Taccone at Berkeley Repertory Theatre has actually done it twice this season with Rita Moreno: Life…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 09:59PMFriday, February 3, 2012
Drama in the small college town of Shirley, Vermont, is much like it is anywhere: small, intimate and, for the people involved, earth shattering.
Playwright Annie Baker, one of the theater…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 06:48PMMonday, January 30, 2012
The humor is in direct proportion to the discomfort in Gina Gionfriddo's Becky Shaw, now in its West Coast premiere at SF Playouse.
If David Mamet were good at anything other than provocat…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 09:00AMSunday, January 29, 2012
Seeing some of the Bay Area's best actors collected on one stage is a pleasure in and of itself. But Lee Hall's The Pitmen Painters has other things to recommend it like its unapologetic cha…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 06:27PMFriday, January 20, 2012
The Bay Area has been pretty good to Lee Hall of late. Last year, his musical adaptation (with music by Sir Elton John) of his movie Billy Elliot received rapturous notices (though closed a …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 09:00AMThursday, January 19, 2012
Now, apparently, it's time to hear from Bay Area sons.
At Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Jonathan Moscone (with an assist from Tony Taccone) is grappling with the loss and legacy of his fath…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:41PMFriday, January 13, 2012
That most scrumptious of Bay Area theater companies, Word for Word, is going the way of the foodie. Yes, Word for Word, the company that turns short fiction into extraordinary theater, is di…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 09:00AMThursday, January 12, 2012
Jonathan Moscone and Tony Taccone have found the courage to stay out of what they call "the suck drawer."
The phrase comes from Ghost Light, the play Moscone and Taccone conceived togethe…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 04:27PMThursday, January 5, 2012
I interviewed Don Reed about his new autobiographical solo show The Kipling Hotel, which opens this weekend at The Marsh Berkeley.
You can read the article here.
This is the second cha…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:59PMThursday, December 29, 2011
Let's just get right to it. 2011 was another year full of fantastic local theater (and some nice imports). Somehow, most of our theater companies has managed thus far to weather the bruising…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:44PMThursday, December 15, 2011
Like a weak episode of "Glee" shot up with steriods and stuffed full of anti-depressants, Bring It On: The Musical sends up a rousing cheer for the robotic vapidity of the new Broadway. The …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:12PMTuesday, December 13, 2011
The Secret Garden will always hold a special place in my heart. It was the first show I ever saw on Broadway. And because I was there with friends who had friends in high places, we got to g…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 10:00AMMonday, December 12, 2011
When I called playwright Douglas Carter Beane to interview him for a San Francisco Chronicle story on Xanadu: The Musical at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, he happened to be taking a b…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 05:44PM 
