WPLongform

Georges captures the many colors of life

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Sunday in the Park Production 5_David AllenBy Ande Jacobson

Foothill Music Theatre just opened their production of a rarely done, but arguably the most ethereal show in the Sondheim canon, Sunday in the Park with George – a musical based on the Georges Seurat painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The painting is surreal, an example of Seurat’s Pointillism technique that was a vivid departure from the approach used by the impressionists of his time. Pointillism is essentially a mosaic of complementary colors that, when viewed at a distance, causes the brain to fuse the colors and register a complex color, such as seeing violet emerge when only blue and red are actually painted. Likewise, this first collaboration between composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim and playwright and director James Lapine whisks the audience members into a surreal world of color and light worthy of Seurat. Continue reading →

It builds!

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www.siliconvalleydesigns.comBy Ande Jacobson

Build, by Michael Golamco, is enjoying its Northern California premiere at City Lights Theater Company. In his previous career, Golamco was a software developer, but now he’s a veteran writer for stage and screen. He is currently one of the staff writers for the television show Grimm, though unlike Grimm, there aren’t any monsters in Build. The play is rife with storytelling and technology, and the script presented City Lights with several significant challenges. Fortunately director Lisa Mallette and the rest of her creative staff were able to meet those challenges head-on. Continue reading →

Dragon’s stage is haunted this Halloween

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dragon-woman-in-black-2By Ande Jacobson

The Woman in Black, adapted by Stephen Mallatratt, is an impressive ghost story set in a small Victorian theatre and currently haunts the Dragon stage. Susan Hill’s 1983 horror novella of the same name was the source for this stage version, a play that has been running in London’s West End since 1989. It’s tough to tell an effective ghost story on stage, but this one is riveting. The plot follows Arthur Kipps, a man haunted by a terrible secret from early in his career as a London solicitor. He hires an actor to help him reenact the events that have haunted him so his family and friends will finally understand the horror that he’s been living with. Then he hopes he can bury the past and move on with his life. Sounds simple, right? Continue reading →

Stanford Rep continues its Orson Welles festival with a visit from Mars

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War.Frank.Chen-3By Ande Jacobson

Could the earth be overtaken by invaders from Mars? On October 30, 1938 a lot of people thought so when the Mercury Theatre on the Air presented a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds. The broadcast took the form of a series of radio news reports, many on location as the invasion was supposedly taking place. Even with the disclaimer at the beginning of the broadcast that what followed was a fictional story, widespread panic ensued, in part because many listeners didn’t tune in at the top of the hour and missed the announcement. They were late because they had been listening to the Charlie McCarthy Show on a rival network, but that was in 1938. In the summer of 2014, Stanford Repertory Theater continues its Orson Welles festival with a must-see, fully staged version of this famous radio play. Continue reading →

The language of love vs. the love of language

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cltc-tla-the-fightBy Ande Jacobson

Few would argue that the primary purpose of language is communication. Still, there is a vast difference between transmission and reception between two people even when they ostensibly speak the same language. City Lights Theater Company’s current production of Julia Cho’s play, The Language Archive, takes a compelling look at the language of love vs. the love of language. Continue reading →

Life’s bruises and beauty have purple in common

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mkitaoka_140324_6311-color-purpleBy Ande Jacobson

Hillbarn’s final show of its 73rd season is The Color Purple, based on Alice Walker’s novel of the same name. The story winds its way through the bruises and beauty that life has to offer a poor black woman living in the Southern US from 1909-1945. This production is packed with emotion and power, and yes, plenty of purple.

Walker’s most famous work has enjoyed success in many forms making its debut in 1982 and becoming a Pulitzer Prize winning novel in 1983. The Steven Spielberg film adaptation followed soon thereafter. Finally, the musical adaptation (with book by Marsha Norman, and music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray) hit the Broadway stage in 2005. Continue reading →

Climbing out of the pit

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Fiddler_0332By Ande Jacobson

In the fall of 2012, A Good Reed Review published a commentary entitled “The role of the pit musician in musical theatre”. The article discussed the unique role pit musicians play along with some of the challenges they face. Part of that discussion focused on some of the differences between being a pit musician versus a cast member. While I am a pit musician and musical director (normally the reason for periodic breaks from publishing theatre reviews), last fall, a different opportunity presented itself. For a change of pace, I climbed out of the pit and onto the stage as a cast member in West Valley Light Opera’s production of Fiddler on the Roof, an experience which confirmed, amplified and expanded upon much of the discussion in my previous commentary. Continue reading →

Big Pharma and romance can make for a complicated combination

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rx-2By Ande Jacobson

Big Pharma has what many would say is a well-deserved reputation as being an industry solely focused on its profit margin. This theme is explored as Dragon Theatre Company opens its 2014, nine show season with Rx by Kate Fodor. Fodor’s script is a quirky satirical romance that also indicts Big Pharma. The plot follows one company’s pursuit of chemical solutions to non-problems as it convinces patients they are sick and that a pill can solve everything. Along the way, an unassuming researcher gets a bit too close to his study subject, and the resulting romance threatens both of their livelihoods. Continue reading →

“If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans”

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MGL FamilyBy Ande Jacobson

As she was researching shows for this 13th season, the title Making God Laugh jumped out at Tabard’s executive director, Cathy Spielberger Cassetta. Intrigued, she started corresponding with the playwright, Sean Grennan. As she says in her program notes, she found “merit, wisdom, and folly in it” and decided to add this little yet-to-be-published gem as one of the “Twists” to the season. Grennan describes his play as a “dramedy that takes place in four scenes at a family home, each ten years apart.” First is a Thanksgiving dinner in 1980 and the play continues with one scene per decade until spring of 2010.  Grennan too has a program note and says “all playwrights have to write their Family play.” This is his, and Grennan’s characters are each familiar in some ways. The script is very funny, and he uses several pop-culture references both in musical quotes (e.g., “Jet Song” from West Side Story, “Everything’s Comin’ Up Roses” from Gypsy, Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind”) along with some period-specific failures (e.g., AMC’s Pacer, Yugo, Enron) to help hammer home the points he’s making. Continue reading →

Magic from within

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By Ande Jacobson

Everyone searches for meaning at some point in their lives. Some aspire to greatness, some aspire just to survive, and others are somewhere in between. Sunnyvale Community Players presents Pippin, the Roger O. Hirson and Stephen Schwartz musical that is very loosely based on the life story of Pippin the Hunchback, son of Charlemagne, as he searches for meaning in his life. The story is extremely disjoint. It has generous doses of farcical humor and cheap magic tricks (reminiscent of Godspell) mixed with threads of meaning if you look below the surface. Continue reading →