Heidi Armbruster's delightful new play "Mrs. Christie," running thru Oct 29th, the true-life, never-solved mystery of British novelist Agatha Christie's 11-day disappearance in 1926, is well…
JOHNNY MORENO, JEFF KIM & especially MICHELLE TALGAROW are excellent in Bill English's beautifully directed San Francisco Playhouse production running through June 29th.
On opening night of the Drag Kings' wacky and wonderful parody of "Turnabout Intruder" " the final episode of the original "Star Trek" TV series from 1969 " the audience » The post 'Sta…
The nature of shame, the power that perhaps can be found in not being "normal," and gay culture assimilating into the mainstream are among themes Z Space playwright-in-residence Peter Sinn &…
The main character in Chicago writer Andrew Hinderaker's latest play, "Colossal" — a theater-dance drama in a West Coast premiere at San Francisco Playhouse — is a sort of Billy …
The title of Terrence McNally's "Mothers and Sons" (now at New Conservatory Theatre Center in a regional premiere) is a bit of a misnomer. It's actually about one very particular » The …
Playwright Will Eno has a brilliant way of manipulating language to probe the heart of the human experience, at least as seen in the current production of his four-hander, "The » The po…
Do go to see Word for Word's text-verbatim staging of two short stories by Irish-born writers Emma Donoghue and Colm TóibÃn, but don't expect anything like the Oscar-nominated films ba…
The abundant acting and directing talent on display in African-American Shakespeare Company's production of George C. Wolfe's "The Colored Museum" — not to mention Wolfe's brilliant, s…
Enough happens in Jessica Hagedorn's 1998 drama "Dogeaters," now in a revised version at the Magic Theatre, to make the mind reel. The sprawling and ambitious play about the Philippines …
Jennifer Haley's 2012 award-winner, "The Nether," is deceptively formulaic at first: In a claustrophobic, nondescript gray room, a terse law enforcement officer is aggressively interrogating…
At the beginning of Wall Street Journal theater critic Terry Teachout's "Satchmo at the Waldorf," a 2010 one-actor play now at American Conservatory Theater, the great jazz musician Louis Ar…
A virtuoso pianist, singer, actor and playwright, Canadian-born Hershey Felder has for years been charming audiences with his solo "musical plays" about composers George Gershwin, Beethoven,…
In "Mother's Milk," a tender tribute to his late mother, performer Wayne Harris so beautifully embodies her as a character that you may find yourself loving her just as he » The post Mu…
In the multi-Tony-winning musical "A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder," the show-stopper occurs when the "gentleman" in question, Monty Navarro, is accepting a marriage proposal from …
What a day for a daydream, indeed. The Magic Bus takes off in a cloud of bubbles. It's 1967, the Summer of Love. Our guide, "Gaia," dressed à là Janis » The post Feelin' groovy on…
It's been awhile since San Francisco's Word for Word, the inventive troupe that stages literary works verbatim, has produced a holiday-themed show. Now, "Holiday High Jinx: Bums, Broads and …
New York playwright Tanya Barfield's "Bright Half Life," now in a Magic Theatre West Coast premiere, is the kind of two-hander that is so specific and detailed in all the » The post Poi…
With the Paris attacks on everybody's mind on Friday the 13th, it seemed an especially significant opening night for American playwright Ayad Akhtar's powerful, Pulitzer Prize-winning drama …
"Art must always be dangerous," a theater-loving German POW camp commander tells Harry, a young American prisoner, in Theatre Rhinoceros' new play by John Fisher, "Shakespeare Goes to War." …
In his only comedy, "Ah, Wilderness!," written in 1932 in the midst of the Depression but set in 1906, the normally dour playwright Eugene O'Neill was imagining a young man's » The post…
If you've ever been a teenage girl, you're likely to identify with at least one of the three 14-year-olds who comprise the trio "the Skanks," in Lachlan Philpott's "Truck Stop," » The p…
The two short stories by San Francisco writer Lysley Tenorio, "Monstress" and "Save the I-Hotel" (from his collection "Monstress"), which are adapted for the American Conservatory Theater st…
With two mutable characters and one cameraperson who tracks them, Mugwumpin's multimedia "Blockbuster Season" is an intriguing, funny and at times confusingly disjointed devised-theater piec…
In "Fred's Diner," each of the three women working long hours in dead-end jobs in this roadside diner cherishes hopes for the future. So do the diner's two regular customers. » The post…