SmallWaR: sustained passages of theatrical brilliance
Check out the texture of this piece. (In Vancouver, SmallWaR is being performed in English). There are passages in SmallWaR that are as exquisite as anything I’ve seen. The opening is a stunner. Valentijn Dhaenens, the Belgian artist who created SmallWaR, also...
David Petersen’s memorial
Here’s some information about David Petersen’s memorial that I didn't get in time to include in this morning's FRESH SHEET. It will be held on Sunday, November 25, at PAL (581 Cardero Street) starting at 4:00 p.m. David’s family is asking folks, if they’re able, to...
Red Birds: twitter-brained
Aaron Bushkowsky’s new script Red Birds is flat-out dumb and—very occasionally—funny. It’s tricky to talk about this play without giving away major plot points, but I’ll do my best. In Red Birds, Carol, who has just turned 50, contacts her birth mother Hannah for the...
The Believers Are But Brothers: See it, believe it, and think really hard
The Believers Are But Brothers is about the internet and it’s like the internet: it’s bursting with information and I’m not sure how to make sense of it, but I find it really fucking stimulating. In The Believers Are But Brothers—the title comes from the Quran—writer...
Backbone: this show has plenty of it
Backbone made me really, really happy in my body. Another way of saying that is that, for about the first ten minutes of the show, I was moaning and gasping and—let’s face it—talking as if I was having sex with the entire company of ten acrobats and two musicians....
Sex With Strangers: not as much fun as it sounds
Sex With Strangers is boring. (Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.) In Laura Eason’s drama, 39-year-old Olivia is holed up in a writers’ retreat/B & B in Michigan when 28-year-old Ethan bursts out of the snow and through the door. Olivia is a...
The Ones We Leave Behind: Leave this one behind
This script landed on the stage before it was ready. It’s in terrible shape. In The Ones We Leave Behind, playwright Loretta Seto explores abandonment and belonging. On one of her first cases as a public trustee, Abby has to find anybody who might be related to...
Sweat: don’t sweat it
It takes too long for the plot to hit the fan. Playwright Lynn Nottage has set Sweat in a working-class bar in Reading, Pennsylvania. A local steel-manufacturing plant defines the lives of everybody associated with the place. The central trio of women—Cynthia, Tracey,...
The Wolves: they shoot, they score, they stupefy
This is a guest review by David Johnston * It begins by throwing the audience to the wolves. We are thrust unceremoniously into a gaggle of chattering teenage girls in identical soccer jerseys. They're stretching for a match, but that's only discernable from context...
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