Year: 2013

“Superior Donuts” serves up more than “dessert cakes”

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By Ande Jacobson

Playwright and actor Tracy Letts describes Superior Donuts as involving a “clash of cultures”.  Letts intersperses some light moments and witty exchanges between several colorful and diverse characters with some darker, more serious situations.  Much of the story provides background on unseen family members and circumstances that encumber, or scar the visible characters.  The play is well written, and right from the start, the action turns the quaint little donut shop on its head.  In the first blackout at the top of the show, the shop is transformed from a neatly kept eatery into a disheveled establishment with chairs overturned, rubbish strewn everywhere, and graffiti on the wall. Continue reading →

Flights of fancy land on the Lucie Stern Stage

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boeing-boeingBy Ande Jacobson

It can be hard to keep up with the hubbub of juggling work and one’s personal life, though keeping to a predictable schedule can help.  Now imagine how one might use airline timetables to arrange liaisons with multiple fiancées, carefully ensuring their visits don’t overlap.  Imagine further how such a plan might go awry, and you have the foundation for Palo Alto Players’ current show, Boeing Boeing, written by Marc Camoletti (originally in French), and translated by Beverley Cross and Francis Evans. Continue reading →

Happiness is remembering a mother’s love

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Wild with Happy 5_MKitaokaBy Ande Jacobson

Losing your mother is tough.  Things can sometimes be a bit surreal as you try to deal with that loss while fanciful memories flood your mind at the most inopportune times – like when you’re at the funeral home trying to make final arrangements.  Mix all that with a sideways Cinderella story, and you have actor and playwright Colman Domingo’s Wild With Happy which just opened at TheatreWorks in its West Coast Premiere. Continue reading →

“Dear Broadway…my play is named Spacebar”

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cltc-spacebar_14c621fe12_cBy Ande Jacobson

Motivated by myriad reasons, many a playwright dreams of having his magnum opus performed on a Broadway stage, but how does he achieve that goal?  Enter Kyle Sugarman, a 16-year-old high school sophomore from Fort Collins, Colorado.  His manuscript looks more like a telephone book than a script for a play, but he writes letters to “Broadway” (as though it were a person) asking him to please produce his play entitled, Spacebar.  We soon find out that his title refers to a bar in outer space in the distant future, not part of a computer’s keyboard.  Such is the premise of Spacebar: A Broadway Play by Kyle Sugarman by Michael Mitnick. Continue reading →

The night smiles three times

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Hillbarn-night-music-MKitaoka_130507_3906By Ande Jacobson

Hillbarn Theatre Company’s latest offering is A Little Night Music which opened on Friday, 10 May.  This highly acclaimed Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler musical, suggested by the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, follows the lives and loves of several mismatched couples in early 20th Century Sweden.  As Sondheim recalls in his memoir Finishing the Hat, director Harold Prince once described A Little Night Music as “whipped cream with knives.”  An apt description as the plotline is both sweet and sharp.  Sondheim claims he focused on the knives and spent his energy pursuing his dream of writing a “Theme and Variations,” in this case, using a metric theme, or more specifically a triple-meter theme exploring the myriad options available to him beyond the waltz. Continue reading →

East meets west in “Miss Saigon”

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Saigon129FBy Ande Jacobson

Palo Alto Players (PAP) tackles a classic story with their production of Miss Saigon, by Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, and Richard Maltby, Jr., which is based on Giacomo Puccini’s tragedy, Madama Butterfly, about a doomed romance between an Asian woman and her American GI lover.  The modern version keeps the drama and concept on which Puccini’s opera was based but modernizes the story and brings it to Vietnam, and PAP makes a valiant effort to stay faithful to the script.  Overall, it’s a production worth seeing in spite of a few shortcomings. Continue reading →

The Pear presents nine more “Slices”

A Good Reed Review Review

slices12-5503By Ande Jacobson

Spring is here, and that means it’s once again time for The Pear Avenue Theatre’s annual installment of slices in Pear Slices 2013.   For the tenth time in its eleven year history The Pear welcomes audiences to enjoy a varied evening’s entertainment, this year with nine plays by nine different playwrights from the Pear Playwrights Guild spanning multiple generations and four dimensions. Continue reading →

Sister and brother, mother and son, and a journey through time

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johnjensliderimagelrgBy Ande Jacobson

Hillbarn Theatre’s latest offering, John & Jen, is best described as a chamber musical.  Written by Andrew Lippa and Tom Greenwald, the show calls for two actors and three musicians to bring the audience the winding story of Jen Tracy and the two Johns in her life.  Alicia Teeter plays Jen, and William Giammona plays her baby brother and her son, both named John.  The story covers almost 40 years from 1952 to 1990, and as the plot unfolds, we see humor, pathos, and drama, all in slightly less than 2 hours.  In the beginning, Jen is 6 and her baby brother is a newborn.  At the end, she’s 44 and her son is 18 and just getting ready to start college. Continue reading →

Meet Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the man behind the legend

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TheMountaintop7_MKitaokaBy Ande Jacobson

TheatreWorks celebrates the accomplishments of an American icon, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the regional premiere of The Mountaintop.  Playwright Katori Hall takes us on a journey to better understand the man behind the legend through a chance meeting between King and Camae.  Camae is the maid on duty when King calls room service to bring him a cup of coffee to help him stay awake to finish his speech for the next day.  The next day is 4 April 1968, King’s last.  Despite the story taking place the night of his “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech and immediately before his assassination, Hall’s play is not morbid.  It is instead a gripping story filled with grit and humor showing us King’s fears and his triumphs, making him more accessible than public perceptions would imply.  As Michael Eric Dyson states in his forward to the play, “The Mountaintop portrays a man who is much more interesting and useful when his blemishes and virtues are shown together.” Continue reading →

Ignorance is not bliss

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Spring_Awakening_2_Karen_SantosBy Ande Jacobson

Foothill Music Theatre has taken on a German impressionist masterpiece presenting Spring Awakening, a musical based on Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play, Frühlings Erwachen.  The musical keeps much of the intensity of the play, although it softens a few scenes and deletes others, but the message is clear as noted in the title of this review.  Ignorance is not bliss, and parents don’t do their children any favors by keeping them in the dark about human nature and sexuality. Continue reading →