Moxie Theatre must close its outstanding production of Trouble in Mind this Sunday, February 22. A big “what if?” hovers over Alice Childress’ 1955 backstage comedy-drama. Trouble won an Obie Award for excellence off-Broadway. Childress …
The night I saw his one-person show, Darrell Hammond had a cold. He’d squelch a cough and sniffle enough to warrant a night off. Bundle up, maybe a toddy or twain, and give the understudy …
Performed indoors, Catherine Harroff and Circle Circle’s site-specific “walking adventure play for the romantic in us all” might lose something in the translation. Six scenes at a university follow the breakup of two relationships and …
Sarah Ruhl took her five-year-old daughter to the theater. When her daughter asked if the actors were “real people,” Ruhl realized that “she must have asked because of the profusion of digital images she sees. …
The San Diego Theater Critics Circle held its 12th annual awards ceremony last night. Congratulations to the winners, the nominees, and the entire community of theater artists for one heck of a year. Resident Musical: …
Cygnet Theatre must close its outstanding production of Sons of the Prophet this Sunday, February 15. Stephen Karam’s comedy-drama is one of those rare plays that are, often at the same time, extremely funny and …
“You know what’s great about acting?” asks D.J. Sullivan. “You can do it from birth to death and never skip a beat. “Okay, I’m skipping a beat and headed into retirement — and I can’t …
Murder for Two, a musical/detective story, would be a lot more fun in an intimate, cabaret setting: clinking glasses, lubricated laughter, face-to-face interaction. But on the Old Globe’s Donald and Darlene Shiley mainstage, the two-hander …
Some background: Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind won an Obie Award for best off-Broadway show in 1955. It was scheduled to move to Broadway, which would make Childress the first African-American to have a play …
It’s just a room upstairs, in an old two-story house. They say when it opened, on December 1, 1868, 150 watched the Tanner Troupe perform a song and dance revue at the “Brick Building.” A …
MVP: Becky Biegelsen Every year the San Diego Performing Arts League honors volunteers for special recognition with a STAR award. These are the workers who devote hours and hours to keep an organization going. There …
Eddie Yaroch earned a Craig Noel Award nomination — Outstanding Featured Performance in a Play, Male — for his raptor-loving Andy Fastow in Moxie Theatre’s Enron. But that’s not all. In 2014 he also: — …
I’m asking veteran local actors to name five dream roles and say why. The answers not only reveal aspirations, they may put an idea in the minds of artistic directors and producers — even choices …
For all of his 51 years, Scotty Templeton has been allergic to reality. He can’t take anything seriously. Since he could never become an actual performer (because he’d have to take it seriously), he makes …
Kahlil Gibran wrote one of the best-selling books of all time. Translated into over 40 languages, The Prophet (1923) records the poetic observations of the Lebanese mystic Almustafa on self-knowledge, good and evil, death, and …
“The truth you wouldn’t see,” says crusty gumshoe Sam Gallahad, “‘till you finally saw too much.” An attractive woman “had a mouth that would have sent Shakespeare thumbing through a thesaurus.” Hardboiled fiction’s always been …
I’m asking veteran local actors to name five dream roles and say why. The answers not only reveal aspirations, they may put an idea in the minds of artistic directors and producers – even choices …
No theatrical enterprise is risk-free. But staged readings come close. They’re low-priced, come-as-you-are, one-night-only affairs. And actors can read plays too expensive to mount otherwise. Staged readings also have an added bonus — a “what …
The San Diego Performing Arts League announced the volunteers it will honor at the 22nd Star Awards Ceremony, on January 26. Every year, 40 arts organizations select a volunteer for special recognition. SCPAL President D. …
I’m asking veteran local actors to name five dream roles and say why. The answers not only reveal aspirations, they may put an idea in the minds of artistic directors and producers — even choices …
Earnest intentions, not fully realized. There’s about 35 minutes of solid entertainment and edification in Herbert Siguenza’s 90-plus minute tribute to Abbie Hoffman, activist, co-founder of the Youth International Party (aka. the “Yippies”), and media …
San Diego Theatre Critic’s Circle: Craig Noel Award Nominees for 2014: Resident Musical Catch Me If You Can, Moonlight Stage Productions Les Miserables, Lamb’s Players Theatre Mary Poppins, Moonlight Stage Productions Next to Normal, San …
San Diego is finally catching up with the rest of the world, which has been “wall-less” for decades.
I’m asking veteran local actors to name five dream roles and say why. The answers not only reveal aspirations, they may put an idea in the minds of artistic directors and producers – even choices …
“Tripspace”: 1. theater outside, beyond, sometimes even prior to the box; 2. slang term for “what box?” The “box,” well one of them, is the standard, stage-audience configuration of traditional theater. Actors perform a story …
For several years, Cygnet Theatre did a popular version of A Christmas Carol as a live, 1940s radio show — 100 years removed from the original. Sean Murray’s world premiere script returns the durable Dickens …
Clifford Odets’ great drama (1937) is staged so rarely, it could qualify as a Lost Classic. As in all of Odets’ work, when it becomes “found,” the story of the rise and fall of a …
I’m asking veteran local actors to name five dream roles and say why. The answers not only reveal aspirations, they may put an idea in the minds of artistic directors and producers – even choices …
“I’m a writer, and I use everything. Did all those people think I was just there to entertain them?”
Before it begins to look a LOT like Christmas, there’s still time to catch three shows that must close Sunday. 1.) Les Miserables in Concert at SDSU. Lamb’s Players did a minimalist version of the …
I’m asking veteran local actors to name five dream roles and say why. The answers not only reveal aspirations, they may put an idea in the minds of artistic directors and producers — even choices …
Alan Ayckbourn’s three-act “black farce” (his word for it) takes place on three consecutive Christmas Eves. Each ends up in the kitchen. Over that span of time characters flip-flop and somber shenanigans prevail. Ayckbourn needed …
Sylvestro Morales swore to get even with Wilson and Castillo. “I will never rest,” he shouted, “until I have squared accounts!”
By definition, staged readings are not reviewable. They have no set, little lighting, few rehearsals. They’re actors seated behind music stands reading a play, maybe a bottled water to one side, maybe a costume that …
Rich Kinder doesn’t appear in Laura Prebble’s satirical, three-ring circus based on the colossal collapse of Enron. From 1990 to 1996, he was President and Chief of Operations. According to Robert Bryce, author of Pipe …
I’m asking veteran local actors to name five dream roles and say why. The answers not only reveal aspirations, they may put an idea in the minds of artistic directors and producers – even choices …
He stayed up to give them the news. When they hadn’t come by 11:00 he went to bed. They woke him around midnight. “Murray surrendered,” Griffin told maybe two dozen men. “Gone to San Diego three hours ago.”
“Sup now?” Peter wrote an ad for a basketball sneaker, the Sky Max. Told to target “urban” youth from 14 to 24, he assumed that meant young black men and invented the expression “sup now?” …
Sophocles’ Antigone begins with the unthinkable: two brothers kill each other in battle before the gates of Thebes. Their father, Oedipus, prayed they would die this way. Etiocles fought to continue ruling the city; older …
The Phantom meets Les Miz on the belfry of Notre Dame. Victor Hugo titled his 1831 novel Notre Dame de Paris. When the English translator changed it to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hugo blew …
Asked if the shot was fatal, Stroud replied, “It could not have been more fatal.”
Somehow D.J. Sullivan wrangled Tim Firth’s script for Calendar Girls from Samuel French — dispensers (and often hoarders) of the rights — and has staged the local premiere. For a “small” theater to land the …
Craig Noel Award-winner shares the roles he longs to play. “After 35 years of stage acting, I thought a ‘bucket list’ might be difficult to come up with. It has been a long journey and …
The New Fortune Theatre Company has opened its doors with an outstanding production of Shakespeare’s Henry V. The play describes one of England’s most illustrious victories: the Battle of Agincourt against the French army, October …
I’m asking veteran local actors to name five dream roles and say why. The answers not only reveal aspirations, they may put an idea in the minds of artistic directors and producers — even some …
When the Hotel del Coronado opened in 1888, Oceanside already had two “grand” hotels, the St. Cloud and the South Pacific. They faced each other, just two city blocks apart, separated by the California Southern …
These shows must close this Sunday, November 2 — aka “Black Sunday,” given their high quality. The Royale, Old Globe Theatre One of the year’s best directed shows is so well done you’d think Marco …
I’m asking veteran local actors to name five dream roles and say why. The answers not only reveal aspirations, they may put an idea in the minds of artistic directors and producers — even some …
On the verge of suicide, Prince Hamlet wonders if he should live or leave. And if he chooses to go, what awaits? Endless sleep? Or the dread of “the undiscovered country,” from where no travelers …