Is there a darker or more depressing Broadway musical than Cabaret? Kander and Ebb’s 1966 musical (with book by Joe Masteroff) won eight Tonys for its original run and four more for its 1998 revival. It’s become a staple of regional and community theatres, as evidenced by the umpteen productions throughout the Bay area in…
“Jukebox” musicals tend to use really flimsy connecting material to string together the musical hits of an artist or genre in the creation of a show. Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, running now through June 9 at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco, has the advantage of having the really interesting true-to-life tale…
Courtroom dramas have long been a staple of mass entertainment. From TV’s Perry Mason to plays and films like The Caine Mutiny Court Marshall and A Few Good Men, audiences have long enjoyed the compact drama provided by a judicial trial. Playwright Selina Fillinger has written a worthy addition to that canon with Faceless, running…
The members of a James Dean fan club reunite twenty years after his death in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, the latest Novato Theater Company production running through June 9. It’s set in the Kressmont Five and Dime in West Texas, just a stone’s throw from where James Dean…
Who knew that an employee break room could be such a fertile setting for compelling theatrical drama? First, David Harrower set his harrowing Blackbird in a nameless one, then Samuel Hunter (The Whale) set his fascinating A Bright New Boise in the break room of an Idaho Hobby Lobby. The College of Marin brings…
Serendipity. Fate. Chance. Destiny. Karma. Fortune. Kismet. Call it what ever you like, but playwright Steven Dietz (Becky’s New Car) doesn’t believe in it so much so that his play This Random World, running through May 26 at Left Edge Theatre, is even sub-titled The Myth of Serendipity. The connections that people have, make, or…
The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘jazz’ as a type of music of black American origin characterized by improvisation, syncopation, and usually a regular or forceful rhythm. The same definition could be applied to Nambi E. Kelley’s Jazz, her theatrical adaptation of Toni Morrison’s 1992 novel of the same name. Awoye Timpo directs the Marin Theatre Company…
