Reviews Categories | Reviews | Page 87

“BUDDY: THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY” at OnStage Playhouse

Views:1538

Aired on KSDS-FM on 7/29/16 RUN DATES: 7/1/16 - 8/6/16 VENUE: OnStage Playhouse “Oh Boy,” as Buddy Holly used to sing. His sure was a fast, short but influential ride. During his tragically brief career, the rock and roll pioneer had 10 hit records over the course of just 15 months. His band name, The Crickets, inspired the Beatles moniker; and his death, at age 22, in a 1959 plane crash that left behind “a widowed bride,” who was also Read More →

“WOODY GUTHRIE’S AMERICAN SONG” from Intrepid Theatre

Views:1799

Posted at Timesofsandiego.com on 6/5/16 RUN DATES: 5/12/16 - 7/17/16 VENUE: Intrepid Theatre at the Horton Grand Theatre His most famous song is “This Land is Your Land.” But while everyone knows the upbeat, patriotic verses of the Woody Guthrie classic, few are familiar with the more chilling verse – the one about hunger and poverty and welfare lines that ends, “Is this land made for you and me?” In “Woody Guthrie’s American Song,” a story-song narrative conceived in Read More →

“SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE” from ion theatre

Views:1742

Aired on KSDS-FM on 7/8/16 RUN DATES: 6/28/16 - 7/16/16 VENUE: ion theatre at the San Diego Museum of Art “Art isn’t easy.” That’s a lyric, and the through-line, in Stephen Sondheim’s audacious 1984 musical, “Sunday in the Park with George.” It also applies to the audacity of tiny ion theatre in undertaking this massive project – in a delightfully apt collaboration with the San Diego Museum of Art, where the piece is staged. The Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, one of Read More →

“MACBETH” at The Old Globe

Views:1391

Aired on KSDS-FM on 7/1/16 RUN DATES: 6/19/16 - 7/24/16 VENUE: The Old Globe In an effort to enhance, re-set or deconstruct Shakespeare’s plays, concept often overrides the spirit, the story or the poetry. So it is with the current production of “Macbeth” at The Old Globe. Nothing about it feels Scottish, but there is a great deal of red – on the oddly circular floor; in a shower-curtain-like affair that’s pulled, ever so slowly, across the curved rear Read More →

“THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WAY” at ion theatre

Views:1277

Posted at TimesofSanDiego.com on 7/21/16 RUN DATES: 7/12/16 - 7/24/16 VENUE: ion theatre There’s theatrical and there’s meta-theatrical (self-referential). But what do you call meta to the max? Um, that would be “The Twentieth Century Way,” by Tom Jacobson, having a brief local premiere at ion theatre, as part of its Off-the-Radar series. As the program cover helpfully informs us, “In 1914 Long Beach, actors were hired by police officers to entrap gay men. In 2014, it was still Read More →

“SISTER ACT” at Moonlight Stage Productions

Views:1443

Posted at TimesofSanDiego.com on 6/21/16 RUN DATES: 6/15/16 - 7/2/16 VENUE: Moonlight Stage Productions The relationship between film and theater is long but rocky. Though screen-stage adaptations move in both directions, they are not consistently successful. For every Tony-winning “Kinky Boots” and “The Full Monty,” musicals made from non-musical films, there are clunkers like “Rent” or Jersey Boys” that didn’t make the transition from stage to screen. Put “Sister Act” in the ‘Success’ column. The 1992 movie, which starred former Read More →