Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty begins, before it starts, with a single word. Asked to compare Steph, his girlfriend of four years, to the new “hottie” at the warehouse, Greg said Steph has a …
December 18, 2013
Prosperina
Sticks and stones
Eureka! SD Theater History Gold
I was researching at the San Diego History Center and Jane Kenealy, she of the encyclopedic memory, asked me if I’d ever seen the Temple collection. I hadn’t. She emerged from the archives with two …
December 20, 2013
Lamb’s Players Festival of Christmas: Catch a Falling Star
You get the feeling Ella Eden wants something to go right, just this once. With good reason: her father no longer recognizes her — Alzheimer’s. All he can recall is the moment, years ago, when …
December 23, 2013
Edward II at Diversionary; The Marvelous Wonderettes at Moonlight
In the movie Braveheart, Patrick McGoohan plays silver-bearded, steely-eyed Edward “Longshanks.” A mere aside of his could kill — or a fit of anger, as when he heaves his son’s male lover out a castle …
September 21, 2011
The theater year in review
For musicals, San Diego must be World Premiere Central. We see all kinds, in varying stages, and send two or three to Broadway each year. But once in a blue moon, one’s produced here that’s …
December 31, 2013
Craig Noel Award Nominees
On February 10 at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle will offer awards in the following categories.. RESIDENT MUSICAL. Chicago, San Diego Musical Theatre, Fiddler on the Roof, …
January 2, 2014
Odd lover out
Might have felt like a good news/bad news situation. Renowned director Mark Lamos gets to do Shakespeare at the Old Globe. The bad news? It’s “Two Gents.” The Two Gentlemen of Verona was a popular …
August 27, 2014
In the Time of the Butterflies at San Diego Rep
In 1960, Rafael Trujillo, the brutal dictator of the Dominican Republic, confessed to his inner circle: “My only two problems are the church and the Mirabel sisters.” Patria, Minerva, Maria Teresa, and Dede Mirabel grew …
January 14, 2014
Deborah Gilmour Smyth blooms
In person, if you didn’t know her, Deborah Gilmour Smyth wouldn’t strike you as a performer. Soft-spoken and humble, she calls little attention to herself. But onstage, Smyth blooms into someone else, literally and figuratively, …
January 15, 2014
The best acting advice I ever received
I thought it might be interesting to ask some of the nominees for Craig Noel Awards for their best advice. Am so glad I did. Steve Gunderson, Featured Performance in a Play, Male. “The late …
January 16, 2014
Anything Goes at Welk Resort Theater
Somebody should write a musical: The Last of the Tap Dancers. There’s only one left and the uniquely American art may vanish. When the Tap Dancer learns he/she’s the end of the line, he/she goes …
January 19, 2014
Bug at Ion Theatre
A rogue male aphid’s dining on Agnes and her new friend Peter? No, he says. Must be a female, a “matriarchal aphid,” and she isn’t just slicing skin, she’s spawning a world-wide infestation from a …
January 23, 2014
Who Am I This Time? (& other conundrums of love) at North Coast Rep
Tom Newton sounds a lot like the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. He welcomes us to the North Crawford Mask & Wig Club, in Connecticut. With a down-home, folksy voice he says his …
January 27, 2014
Maple & Vine at Cygnet Theatre
There’s good news about Cygnet’s show: Amanda Sitton is back on a stage. She took time off — a decade, it seemed — for maternity leave. She’s in tip-top shape as Jenna, a social-mediated NYC-ite …
January 28, 2014
Southern woe
Billy Cane is home from World War II. He wants to follow his “bright star” and write for the prestigious Asheville Southern Journal. The editor, Alice Murphy, works with the Southern Renaissance headliners: Faulkner, Eudora …
October 8, 2014
Ritualized conjuration
Take away the spectacular theatricality and Marco Ramirez’s The Royale would be a thin-ish script that makes some important points. The characters stand as much for a position in a debate as for themselves. But …
October 11, 2014
New translations, New Fortune
Upstart company of young veterans seeks to make the classics new and the new into classics, starting with Henry V.
October 12, 2014
Claudio Raygoza: the acting process at Ion Theatre, part one
Ion Theatre has earned an impressive reputation — and a number of Craig Noel Awards to back it up — for quality acting. I asked Claudio Raygoza, the artistic director, to provide a behind-the-scenes look …
January 30, 2014
Claudio Raygoza: the acting process at Ion Theatre, part two
Read part one of this interview. Claudio Raygoza, artistic director of Ion Theatre, and Glenn Paris, the producing director, stage plays in a 49-seat theater, with obviously special demands. They include others for the plays …
February 1, 2014
The Foreigner at Lamb’s Players
Though unlike in countless ways, Joe Orton and Larry Shue shared two things in common: one comic, the other tragic. They wrote two of the funniest plays in the English language, and both died young. …
February 4, 2014