Monday, 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 05:44PMThursday, December 8, 2011
Such joy. Such wicked, delicious, heart-pounding joy.
That's what it feels like at the end of The Wild Bride, the dark fairy tale come to life on Berkeley Repertory Theatre's Roda stage.…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 04:45PMTuesday, December 6, 2011
As a fading Southern belle in a Tennessee Williams play might say, "Well I do declare! What's a theatergoer to do with so many scrumptious Williams play from which to choose?"
The answer …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 06:38PMWednesday, November 30, 2011
Tennessee Williams' first brilliant move was to let everyone off the hook – himself included. By alerting the audience that The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, he removes it from reality…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 04:03PMMonday, November 28, 2011
Theater folk know Amy Glazer as one of the busiest directors in Bay Area theater. But she also has a burgeoning career as a film director, which is no surprise given that she grew up on movi…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 01:55PMFriday, November 18, 2011
As the weary soldier trudges down the road home, you see the weight of his exhaustion as well as his excitement to see his mother and fiancée in his every step. The remarkable thing is that…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:48PMThursday, November 17, 2011
You don’t walk into Fela! expecting Oklahoma!. With the visionary Bill T. Jones serving as director, choreographer and co-writer, you know this is going to be different. And it’s going t…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:18PMWednesday, November 16, 2011
Talk about your unconventional love stories! Lauren Yee’s charming world-premiere play A Man, his Wife, and his Hat is a romance between an elderly hat maker and his favorite hat.
So wh…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:03PMFriday, November 4, 2011
I was enthralled by the form and baffled by the content. That, in a nutshell, is my reaction to the world premiere of Sticky Time, an experimental new work from writer/director Marilee Talki…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 01:49PMThursday, November 3, 2011
Last summer at Berkeley's Impact Theatre, Trevor Allen dusted off Working for the Mouse, his finely tuned one-man show about his years as Pluto, Mr. Smee, the Mad Hatter and others on the pa…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 01:06PMWednesday, November 2, 2011
In 1993, an ebullient comedienne with a head full of red curls, danced and sang her way across the stage of the Gershwin Theatre (aka the Presentation Theatre) as the bubbly title character …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 05:50PMSunday, October 30, 2011
It's never good to speak ill of those no longer with us, but the last touring Cirque du Soleil show that stopped in San Francisco, Ovo, was all about the insect world. And truth be told, it …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 11:48PMFriday, October 28, 2011
David Mamet never fails to fog me up.
He's never been one of my favorite playwrights because, although he's a wizard of compelling dialogue and unquestionable intelligence, his view of the…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 07:09PMIn which I discuss my Broadway debut in Hair and link to my San Francisco Chronicle review of the touring production.
Let the sun shine. Let the sun shine. The sunshine in. Continue readin…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:02PMThursday, October 27, 2011
You don't go to a Cirque du Soleil show just to see the costumes. Audiences are usually slathering for the death-defying acrobatics and goofy clowns. But what separates a Cirque show from th…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:29PMTuesday, October 18, 2011
Not many people can claim success in the fields of musical theater, bread baking and crooning. Todd Murray can.
Growing up in a small Pennsylvania farming community, Murray had two loves.…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:20PMMonday, October 17, 2011
The Bridge Project, that transatlantic experiment in blending American and English actors and designers is slowly wending its way to a close after three seasons. The final lap of the project…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 07:06PMFriday, October 14, 2011
In this week's edition of the Palo Alto Weekly I reviewed the world premiere of Clementine in the Lower 9 at TheatreWorks.
You can read the review here.
Continue reading →
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 01:53PMThursday, October 13, 2011
Sometimes you experience a work of art – for me that art is usually theater – and it connects you with something bigger and more powerful than your individual experience. You connect wit…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:01PMWednesday, October 12, 2011
Audacious, entertaining and chilling, Steve Yockey’s world-premiere Bellwether at Marin Theatre Company goes where few plays dare to tread.
What starts out as a satiric look at suburban…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:47PMFriday, October 7, 2011
The sensational zing of the Phaedra myth has always come from the incestuous relationship at the story's heart: Phaedra is secretly in love with her stepson, Hippolytus. When that love becom…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:55PMThursday, October 6, 2011
Bill Cain's last two Bay Area outings, Equivocation and 9 Circles, both at Marin Theatre Company, were absolutely fantastic. So there's reason to be excited about the world premiere of his l…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 05:36PMMonday, October 3, 2011
Docuemntary film director/producer Austin Forbord (below right) has created a fascinating documentary about the history of San Francisco theater from the post-World War II days up to the pre…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 01:45PMThursday, September 29, 2011
American Conservatory Theater opens the season with a play that only American Conservatory Theater could do. And I mean really do – the way it should be done.
The play is George S. Kauf…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 06:39PMTuesday, September 27, 2011
The horrific stories about kids and bullying just keep on coming. Even in the face of something extraordinary like the "It Gets Better" campaign, bullying persists. It may take generations t…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 03:57PMSunday, September 25, 2011
If you think you've seen The Taming of the Shrew, you might want to think again. Director Shana Cooper's production – the season-closer for the California Shakespeare Theater – is fresh,…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 04:27PMSaturday, September 17, 2011
Though hardly a senior citizen, Marga Gomez needs to talk about her age. That doesn't mean she'll tell you her age, but it does mean she'll regale you with her thoughts on the aging process …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 04:27PMSunday, September 11, 2011
"Once you start to ask," Eleanor says, "there are more questions than answers." Not a surprising statement in a play whose title, Why We Have a Body promises an answer to an implied question…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 08:59PMSaturday, September 10, 2011
The original production of Spring Awakening, the musical based on the 1891 play by Frank Wedekind, was so vivid, so powerful and so widely seen throughout the Bay Area, it's rather astonishi…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 07:00PMFriday, September 9, 2011
Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance only looks like a suburban comedy. It's really an existential nightmare slightly more gussied up than your average slasher movie. Oh, blood flows in this ev…
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:32PMThursday, September 8, 2011
She’s charming and gorgeous. Vivacious and soulful. In short, Rita Moreno is the perfect candidate for an autobiographical show.
Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup is not yet the perfect …
SOURCE: Chad Jones' Theater Dogs at 02:29PM 
