PAT LAUNER TIMES OF SAN DIEGO 6/22/15 Becky Shaw isn’t the lead character in the dark comedy that bears her name. But she may be the most enigmatic. Is she just a loser, an awkward, often inappropriate, sadsack single woman who’s seen more than her share of misery? Or is she a grasper (like Becky Sharp, the Thackeray character from “Vanity Fair” who inspired her), a con artist and consummate manipulator? Even the ambiguous final moment doesn’t provide Read More →

PAT LAUNER TIMES OF SAN DIEGO 6/16/15 If you wanna get “All Shook Up,” you’ll have to hightail it over to Vista, where hips are swiveling and forbidden love is blooming. “All Shook Up” is a 2005 jukebox musical (with an actual jukebox onstage!) that borrows 25 songs from Elvis’ films and recordings. As usual in these cases, a story is uncomfortably grafted onto the music (book-writer Joe DiPietro won a Tony for “Memphis”). Here, slipped into the mix are Read More →

PAT LAUNER TIMES OF SAN DIEGO 6/14/15 There’s text… and there’s subtext. Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” is all subtext. On the surface, the conversations seem terse, minimalist, a series of trivial near-non sequiturs. But the real drama is roiling underneath: layers of deception and multiple levels of disloyalty. Beneath those quotidian lines, within those famous Pinterian pauses, are all the real feelings, the genuine emotions: the rage, the disillusionment, the fear of loss or change, the self-doubt, the sour hopelessness. This Read More →

PAT LAUNER TIMES OF SAN DIEGO 6/14/15 Billie Holiday had a right to sing the blues – though she considered herself a jazz singer. At least that’s what she tells us in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill,” Lanie Robertson’s 1986 biographical concert/play that’s set in a seedy South Philly club in 1959. This was her final performance; Billie died three months later. Her early (and later) life was something of a disaster, as she relates in 85 Read More →

PAT LAUNER TIMES OF SAN DIEGO 6/11/15 Stop! In the name of love. If you’re a fan of Motown music (and really, who isn’t?), you’ll rush right down to the Civic Theatre to see “Motown, the Musical” (through Sunday only, and tickets are going fast). The national touring production of the 2013 Broadway hit (738 performances, nominated for Read More →

PAT LAUNER TIMES OF SAN DIEGO 6/10/15 Did you know that a coastal cactus wren can’t fly? Me neither. That’s one of many factoids we learn about local flora, fauna and endangered species in “Wrenegades: An Ecological Adventure,” the latest premiere creation of Circle Circle dot dot, penned by Katherine Harroff and Michael Nieto. C2d2, as it’s familiarly known, Read More →