1,373 stories by "Chad Jones"
After hosting three cabaret performances, the Aurora Theatre Company's rehearsal/black box/office space (the Dashow Wing, to be specific) known as Harry's UpStage at last beings life as a pl…
There is not another drama about family, about communication, about the very essence of language like Nina Raine's Tribes. The 2010 British play now on Berkeley Repertory Theatre's Thrust St…
I've always been moved by August Wilson's Fences, the 1950s installment of his extraordinary Century Cycle of plays depicting African-American life in the 20th century. But the current produ…
The song titles say a lot about what this musical is like: "Livin' in the Sunlight," "You Hit the Spot," "Sweeping the Clouds Away." If it seems there's a rosy glow emanating from these titl…
You don't have to have a college degree to enjoy David Davalos' Wittenberg a the Aurora Theatre Company, but it sure will help.
If 16th-century academia is your thing, then you probably alr…
I loved Linda McLean's Any Given Day so much that I proclaimed it my favorite show of 2012 (read my review here). And that makes it all the harder to convey just how much I disliked her worl…
Showbiz legend Liza Minnelli, currently in the midst of a multi-city tour with her Simply Liza concert, pulled into Davies Symphony Hall last Friday for a 90-minute show that encompassed old…
Is it just me, or is it hot in this theater?
Live theater is not usually a hotbed of eroticism " so often attempts at sexiness inspire laughs more than they do accelerated heart rates " but…
There's something very sly at work in She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange, the world-premiere from Amelia Roper with Crowded Fire Theater at the Thick House. From looking at the vivid, s…
A mysterious chapter in modern art history receives some theatrical exploration in the world premiere of Lauren Gunderson's Bauer at San Francisco Playhouse. If you've never heard of the abs…
Maybe you have to be in the right mood for a satirically slapstick political farce. I can tell you I was definitely in no mood for satirically slapstick political farce " not that I knew tha…
Last Saturday I reviewed the TheatreWorks production of Once on This Island, the charming musical fairy tale by the Ragtime/Rocky team of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. My review ran in t…
Blood is fun " at least it is within the confines of Impact Theatre's omnibus presentation Bread and Circuses, a collection of nine short plays fairly dripping with the thick red stuff.
As …
From the moment you walk into the Ashby Stage auditorium to see Shotgun Players' Edward Gant's Amazing Feats of Loneliness, you know something special is going to happen. The space contains …
In many ways, John Patrick Shanley's Storefront Church, now at San Francisco Playhouse for a well-timed holiday run, is less about the battle between the material world and the spiritual wor…
The thing about a love story is this: you want to feel it. You need to feel it. When Juliet wakes just after Romeo bites it, if you're not feeling that dagger in your own chest, what's the p…
The remarkable thing about Mona Mansour's Urge for Going and the work of Golden Thread Productions is how effectively the complex world of the Middle East comes through in a moving family dr…
Don't you love it when a new play starts out and you really like it, then it turns into something else and you like it even more? That's what happens with Ideation, a world-premiere play by …
The last time Cirque du Soleil rolled through town with Totem in 2011, the company seemed refreshed and revived. Gone was the pretentious stuttering and back was the purely enjoyable spectac…
For a second time this fall theater season, a play is dealing with the Rapture, that moment when believers will ascend and everyone else...doesn't. First it was the young gay actor in the Sa…
p>The music of Porgy and Bess is so pervasive in the musical landscape that actually seeing the show and how the songs fit into the story is a little startling.
I know the George Gershwi…
The company of Peter and the Starcatcher opens Act 2 with a rousing number involving Neverland mermaids. The Tony Award-winning play continues through Dec. 1 at the Curran Theatre as part of…
There's something extraordinary happening at Intersection for the Arts, and only part of it has to do with theater. Intersection, along with Campo Santo and California Shakespeare Theater ha…
Simply listening to Mona Golabek play the piano would be pleasure enough. But in her remarkable one-woman show The Pianist of Willesden Lane now at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, her music goes…
What's the haps in Hoofddorp, you ask? Well, for a small town in Holland, things are pretty dull, actually, thanks for asking. The good news is they've got a heck of a library in Hoofddorp, …
