There are works of art that are exciting and captivating to experience, but which quickly lose their initial spark of pleasure, diminishing in brightness the more you think of them. Guards at the Taj, by Rajiv Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo), does the exact opposite. It leaves one a bit stunned and baffled, then…
Last weekend, two Neil Simon plays opened in the North Bay, each a demonstration of the legendary playwright’s mastery of rat-a-tat dialogue, skillful one-liners and flawed but relatable characters. At San Rafael’s Belrose Theater, Marin Onstage presents The Sunshine Boys, Simon’s 1972 hit about a long-feuding former vaudeville duo lured into reuniting for a television special.…
‘Hold still and sip the pain.” It’s a brief, swift line, uttered kindly but fiercely by the wise, wary slave Azucar (Cathleen Riddley), combing the hair of the impulsive, 13-year-old Zuri (Dezi Soley). Azucar’s simple sentence is a strong early example of how playwright Star Finch will be weaving words together in the stunning world…
The poster art for Marin Theatre Company’s current production of the high-school comedy “Peerless” is mischievously ingenious. It features an illustration: a pair of smiling school girls, a silhouetted rat and crow, and a cartoonish x-eyed corpse – all so cutely and crisply drawn one might assume that – rats, crows and corpses aside –…
“You want to tell me about black people?” In director Carl Jordan’s sensitive, doggedly humane staging of David Mamet’s 2009 drama Race – running through March 26 at Left Edge Theater – that confrontational line comes early, as a brilliant black lawyer, Henry (Dorian Lockett, funny, furious, and absolutely superb) faces off against a potential client, the cocky…
You know the story: A young woman, a bit too obsessed with who’s cool and who’s not, sets out to make the world a better place by fixing up her friends with the perfect boyfriends and girlfriends. She gets it all wrong. Feelings are hurt. She’s especially mistaken in regards to who she belongs with…
There’s a line that comes about halfway through Edward Albee’s classic play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Unlike so much of the rest of Albee’s brutal and brilliant drama, it’s not a line full of anger or recrimination, or witty humor, or caustic observation. As such, it stands out like a whisper in a rainstorm.…
