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“A CHRISTMAS STORY” at Pickwick Players

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Posted at TimesofSanDiego.com on 12/7/17 RUN DATES: 12/1/17 - 12/17/17 VENUE: Pickwick Players, Santee It’s really cool when small theaters premiere a show before any of the Big Boys. Backyard Renaissance snagged the world premiere of the musical, “Tarrytown.” Coronado just closed the musical “Fly By Night,” and this spring, they’ll open the acclaimed speculative history, “King Charles III.” And now, Pickwick Players is presenting the musical version of the beloved 1983 movie classic, “A Christmas Story,” based on the Read More →

“TARRYTOWN” at Backyard Renaissance Theatre- copy

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Posted at TimesofSanDiego.com on 12/10/17 RUN DATES: 11/30/17 - 12/17/17 VENUE: Backyard Renaissance Theatre Two spooky elements conflate in the world premiere musical, “Tarrytown”: Halloween and the Headless Horseman. Riffing on Washington Irving’s 1820 short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Adam Wachter, who created the book, music and lyrics, sets his piece in the same locale – Tarrytown, NY, about an hour north of Manhattan – but in the current day instead of 1790. (Interesting side-note: The adjacent Read More →

“BLACK PEARL SINGS” at the San Diego Repertory Theatre

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Aired on KSDS-FM on 12/7/17 RUN DATES: 11/22/17 - 12/17/17 VENUE: San Diego Repertory Theatre We hear Minka Wiltz before we see her, and her voice is what we will remember of “Black Pearl Sings!,” a 2009 drama-with-music by Kansas City playwright Frank Higgins. Wiltz plays Pearl, and her aching contralto gets us in the gut from her first notes. Alberta Johnson, called ‘Pearl,’ is at a southeast Texas women’s prison work camp. Her rich voice is heard by cultural anthropologist Susannah Mullally, Read More →

“THE SEASON OF LOVE” at Scripps Ranch Theatre

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Aired on KSDS-FM on 11/24/17 RUN DATES: 11/10/17 - 12/10/17 VENUE: Scripps Ranch Theatre ‘Tis the season – for food, family and friends. It’s also the season of anxiety, conflict and conflagration. But local playwright James Caputo isn’t really interested in the dark underside of the holiday lights. His new work says it all: “The Season of Love.” He’s put together four of his award-winning short plays to examine the ages and stages of amour, from new love to stale love, Read More →

“THE MOORS” at Diversionary Theatre

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Posted at TimesofSanDiego.com on 11/20/17 RUN DATES: 11/9/17 - 12/10/17 VENUE: Diversionary Theatre You can practically hear Heathcliff and Cathy calling to each other across the desolate, windswept landscape. What with the ominous music, the funereal wood and wine-colored furnishings, and the fog wafting in, you get the creepy feeling that things will not end well. And of course, they don’t. “The Moors,” by Jen Silverman, is a macabre satire, conjuring (and Americanizing) those Victorian literary oddballs, the Brontës: Charlotte, Read More →

“FLY BY NIGHT” at Coronado Playhouse

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Posted at TimesofSanDiego.com on 11/27/17 RUN DATES: 11/10/17 - 12/10/17 VENUE: Coronado Playhouse There’s nothing fly-by-night in this 2014 musical, five years in the making, having its San Diego premiere at the Coronado Playhouse. There’s a deliberateness about “Fly By Night,” a sense of contrivance, a circularity that jumps around in time and arrives back where it started, more or less. In short, the show’s reach exceeds its grasp. It’s a parable, a fable, a cautionary tale about Fate and Read More →