Watch Carl Lumbly’s face in SF Playhouse’s production of Red Velvet, and it seems as if you can read hundreds of distinct variations of despair, hope, and dismay on it.
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There have been too many corpses in San Francisco recently -- the bullet-ridden bodies of Alex Nieto and Mario Woods -- killed in strange and discouraging encounters with the police. Paul Flores understands why, kind of.
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The strangest and most unnerving aspect of Edgar Oliver’s beautiful solo performance, Helen & Edgar, is that he seems to be living his childhood all over again, as if it were a boa constrictor strangling any chance at real life.
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Plays are written and felt, not designed. And that's always a crucial problem with Mary Zimmerman's work.
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The actors run out with the peppy bonhomie of game show contestants, line up in a row before us, and wait. Who will play Hamlet? And for that matter Claudius, Ophelia, Polonius, Laertes? Jackson pulls the cast list out of Yorick’s skull and assigns the parts one by one. It’s a goofy, curiously intense moment.
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Artistic vision is a tricky thing. It has almost nothing to do with money, or skill, or talent, or anything that you can properly quantify. Whatever the case, it's clear that the Ubuntu Theater Project has it.
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A House Tour makes us want to take on the delusions of an angry fool and see even the nastiest of that fool’s desires as significant and worthy of respect.
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There are no explanations or big scenes in Kevin Rolston's Deal with the Dragon, and nothing that lets you easily gauge the scope and ambition of this strange, satisfying tale of emotional and spiritual ineptitude.
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You certainly feel the grandeur of Eno's designs and aspirations in this drama. His characters' concerns are everyday ones, but his viewpoint is cosmic. And that tension is what makes his work fascinating, if also somewhat unrealized and jerry-rigged.
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Colossal takes the sports melodrama into aesthetic and philosophical territory that one never would have imagined possible. And like most truly innovative art, you forgive its weaknesses and embrace its strengths.
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