Richard O'Brien's Rocky Horror Show at Old Globe
Decades ago, the best show in town was in Ocean Beach, Saturday at midnight. The Strand Theatre screened The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The audience, dressed as the various characters, carried on a dialogue with the dialogue. Bics flicked, rice …
Susurrus at San Diego Botanic Garden/La Jolla Playhouse
Life imitates art, in David Leddy's drama, a lot. This "site-specific audio-play" requires adjustments. You don't sit. You walk and wear headphones and listen to a Scottish-lilted voice who calls you "Wanderer." You stop at eight stations, press pause or …
Past Lives?
Local theater currently offers a rarely produced play by Christopher Marlowe (Edward II) at Diversionary, and a play about Don Miguel de Cervantes (Man of La Mancha) at the Welk. Along with receiving capable productions these otherwise very different writers …
THOM PAIN (based on nothing) at New Village Arts Theatre
All plays gear toward an audience's experience. But Will Eno's does much more than most. Just about every step is meant to disturb those sitting comfortably in the dark. The narrator's dressed in a charcoal-gray, unstylish suit. He begins by …
An Alert for People in Theater
And maybe not just them. Several local theater people got an email this morning from Fred Moramarco, SDSU professor emeritus and artistic director of Laterthanever Productions: "Apologies for having to reach out to you like this. My wife and I …
Man of La Mancha at Welk Resort Theatre
The Spanish Inquisition stuck Miguel de Cervantes in a dungeon on a trumped up charge (he allegedly foreclosed on a monastery). When the other prisoners set up a mock trial, Cervantes defends himself with a play they'll all act out. …
Lend Me a Tenor at North Coast Rep
Marty Burnett's set for Ken Ludwig's farce ranks among his best in some time. It's an art deco hotel suite, circa 1934, white with black accessories, geometric shapes, and squared corners. Five of its six doors have mirrored trim. Everything's …
Milk Like Sugar at La Jolla Playhouse
Snap decisions with lifelong consequences: a tattoo, saying something ridiculous on the Internet...a pregnancy pact? In Kirsten Greenidge's drama, Annie, Margie, and Talisha thrive on the social network. They are at once sprinting and standing still (like sitting behind a …
Sam Woodhouse's List, Part II
In this week's theater column, Sam Woodhouse looks back on the San Diego Rep's first 35 years. I asked him not for a Greatest Hits list, but to talk about shows where the Rep or he, personally, made a leap. …
The Tempest: A Re-view
A slow week let me do something I haven't done in years: see a show a second time, away from the pressures, the hoopla, and what Walter Kerr called the "catastrophic importance" of opening night. I went back to The …
Audrey II: Fruitful and Multiplying
At the end of Little Shop of Horrors, Audrey II -- the carnivore plant that looks like a Great Green Shark -- vows to multiply, consume all humanity, and take over the world. Though its growth hasn't been colossal, Audrey …
2 Pianos 4 Hands at North Coast Rep.
Sociologist Malcolm Gladwell says to be a success at anything takes 10,000 hours of honing your skills (roughly a decade). "The classical musician who starts playing the violin at four," he writes in Outliers: The Story of Success, "is debuting …
A Gripe from the Doldrums
Between now and September 10, local theater has few openings. The summer shows are still running, and the restarting of schools keeps this stretch of days quiet. But come September 10, San Diego theater once again catapults from the doldrums …
When "I Know Where I've Been" Almost Didn't Get There
"There's a light In the darkness Though the night Is black as my skin. There's a light Burning bright Showing me the way But I know where I've been." At the end of Hairspray (currently at the Moonlight Amphitheatre), Motormouth …
Trying at Lamb's Players Theatre
When not assaulted by the infirmities of old age, or "senior moments" in which memory calls a time out, Judge Francis Biddle is in memoir mode. He's 81 and convinced it's his final year ("the EXIT sign is blinking over …
O'Neill's Absent Youth
An exercise for writers: compose a long account of your childhood, only make it the opposite of the one you lived. Eugene O'Neill did just that with Ah, Wilderness. The play's set in a small-ish, Connecticut town similar to New …
Ah, Wilderness at New Village Arts
It's like a parallel universe apart from Eugene O'Neill's other plays. After he wrote Mourning Becomes Electra and lived the torments of Long Day's Journey Into Night, O'Neill created a time and place where tragedy dare not tread. In Ah, …
Spring Awakening at San Diego Actors Conservatory Theatre
We're in the midst of an unplanned rock musical festival (Tommy at the Rep, Little Shop of Horrors at Cygnet, Hairspray at Moonlight, and upcoming: Rocky Horror at the Old Globe and Jesus Christ Superstar at La Jolla Playhouse). Through …
Managing Tommy
In the prologue to The Who's Tommy, which closes this Sunday at the Rep., five WWII paratroopers stand in a row above the stage. Special lights point to each. One by one the lights go out. From the audience, it …
Gonzalo's Utopia
Shakespeare's The Tempest takes place on a mysterious island. In the Old Globe's terrific production, after a mighty storm, a shipwreck, and strange beings lurking about, Charles Janasz comes on stage, as kindly Gonzalo, and talks out of this world. …