One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at New Village Arts
A rebel with a cause. In Ken Kesey's novel and its younger sibling, the Paul Newman movie Cool Hand Luke, evil triumphs, but something's gained from the struggle. Randle P. McMurphy could out-con cons, fool old foolers. Imprisoned for a …
Damien at Lamb's Players
Hear the word "saint" and you might imagine a cherubic face and gentle spirit floating three feet above ground and beautific as all get out. But look at a photo of Mother Teresa - at that face! Read G.K. Chesterton's …
Accomplice: San Diego, by La Jolla Playhouse
Dude comes up to you on a street in Little Italy. He's got the sniffles, and not the Kleenex kind, if yunnerstan what I'm sayin. He assembles strangers into a group. Says he needs our help. Why? Because we're so …
Grey Gardens at Ion Theatre
Longtime San Diego theatergoers will remember Will "Willy" Simpson, the white-haired Puck who directed shows at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre with sophistication and wit. One time he mentioned an endowment at Harvard or Yale - I forget which - that …
An Inspector Calls at Scripps Ranch
J. B. Priestley's mystery/morality drama begins where comedies end. The Birling's have it made. The clan gathered for a white-tie celebration at their mansion in Brumley, Yorkshire, in 1912. They toast not just the engagement of young Sheila (she's marrying …
Anisa Shamis Cox
Anisa Shamis Cox passed away March 19. Chula Vista should name a street after her. She co-founded OnStage Playhouse in 1985, turning a small store into a viable theater space. And, using her background as a bookkeeper, she kept it …
Assassins at Cygnet Theatre
When Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman wrote their musical collage about presidential assassins, they wanted it to be as audacious as possible. But, Sondheim wrote, "audacious is an inch away from smartass." Assassins is that too. The musical links nine …
Born Yesterday at Moonlight Stage
Mr. Pygmalion goes to Washington. In Garson Kanin's 1946 comedy Billie Dawn's the American Eliza Doolittle. Billie was a chorus girl - even had five lines in Anything Goes - when Harry Brock made her his moll. The robber baron …
March Maddening: NCAA and SDSU
March Madness begins today. Along with wall-to-wall college basketball games, it means a zillion charge-or-block-block-or-charge deliberations, a time-out followed 10 seconds later by a TV time out, which means four minutes of the same commercials ("what is better, kiddies, less …
Charles M. Hatfield: Rain or Shine (on)?
The Reader will convert some of my history columns into eBooks. This gives me something few who write on deadline ever have: a second chance. I can buff and vacuum stuff I wrote long ago. And change my mind. I'm …
Beside Sondheim
In 2010, the year he turned 80, Stephen Sondheim did a surprising thing. The author of umpteen musicals - including his controversial Assassins, which opens at Cygnet Theatre March 23 - published Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant …
Senior night at SDSU
Tonight the Aztecs are honoring their senior basketball players: DeShawn Stephens, James Rahon, Jeremy Castleberry, Aaron Douglas, Narbeth Ebrahimian, and Chase Tapley (the Rock of Ages on the mesa). I played one year of junior college basketball, many moons ago …
Tonight We Improvise at UCSD
"He who lives, while he is living, does not see himself live," wrote Luigi Pirandello. "If one can see his own life, it is a sign he is no longer living it." People want to define themselves, he adds, to …
Time Stands Still at North Coast Rep
Sarah's a photojournalist renowned taking award-winning shots of international atrocities. When we first see her she can barely move. A roadside bomb killed her "fixer" - interpreter - and blasted her with shrapnel. Her arm's in a sling, a leg's …
Fosse's Chicago: a post-view
The great lyricist E.Y. "Yip" Harburg wrote: "Woe to the culture that woos TV/Where sponsors flourish and songs decay,/Where clay is hailed as cloisonne/And catch-penny poet is sage and seer." Bob Fosse's Chicago - currently in a fine production at …
Birds of a Feather at Diversionary
They may flock together, but it's more complicated than that in Mark Acito's allegorical comedy. Married birds find themselves aboard a "relation ship," on smooth and stormy waters. And yet the unmarried birds, and human bird-watchers, yearn to find a …
Punk Rock at Ion Theatre
In Lord of the Flies (1954), William Golding isolates a group of young British students on a deserted island. In time, most revert to savagery. Simon Stephens' Punk Rock (2009) serves as an update. The students at Stockport aren't isolated, …
Yes Virginia, there is a Bali Ha'i, but...
In the Welk Resort Theatre's current production of South Pacific, Bloody Mary (Brenda Oen) points to a volcanic island across a blue Pacific channel. She sings "Bali Ha'i," such a haunting song you'd think she 's pointing to Eden. "Most …
The Trip to Bountiful at New Village Arts
Trip began as a TV play Horton Foote wrote for Lillian Gish. A white woman. Given her extraordinary performance at New Village Arts, you'd swear he wrote it for Sylvia M'Lafi Thompson, an African-American. If a script calls for a …
The Bluest Eye at Moxie
It's about time Cashae Monya got a featured role, and about time she worked with Delicia Turner Sonnenberg (recent winner of the 2012 Craig Noel Award for outstanding direction of Moxie's A Raisin in the Sun). Putting them together's a …