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Continue reading →: Musica y raíces of the Bay Area’s Afro-Cuban community on full display in Flores’ very personal ‘We Have Iré’Paul S. Flores draws a clear delineation between the stories of Cuban exiles and those of Cuban immigrants. An exile story has themes such as Fidel Castro and the city of Miami, stories often found in plenty of American theatre narratives about Cuba. But an immigrant story is extremely different,…
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Continue reading →: Review: A foggy Chinatown the backdrop for Palo Alto Players’ delightful ‘Flower Drum Song’It only takes a single viewing of the opening tableau of the Palo Alto Players production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Flower Drum Song” to feel the richness of what’s to come. There is a sliver of painful poetry as the ocean pelts the new immigrants in their rickety boat that brings…
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Continue reading →: For the Kilbanes, A.C.T.’s ‘Weightless’ is a marriage made in music heavenLike so many artists who marry, musicians Kate Kilbane and Dan Moses met, made beautiful music together, fell in love as a result, and are now creating shows all over the Bay Area. Well, it didn’t quite happen like that, at all. The falling in love part happened first, and…
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Continue reading →: O’Toole’s great talent leads her to Berkeley Rep’s ‘Good Book’It is hard, maybe impossible even, to think of a book that has influenced the world more than the Bible. “The teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life,” President Theodore Roosevelt once said. “There is nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary,…
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Continue reading →: Review: Curran’s white-hot ‘Jungle’ forces us to look within our souls“You have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” – Warsan Shire It is a haunting, brutal image. Blue short pants. Red shirt. A little boy on the beach. Not playing, or building a sand castle, or picking sand…
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Continue reading →: Review: Decadence on display in SHN’s delightful ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’Chocolate for a little child is purely joyful. Unless you’re Charlie Bucket. The little lad, who is on the cusp of another birthday, loves chocolate, loves its taste, loves its magic. So much so that Charlie gets a special Wonka chocolate only once a year from his mother and spends…
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Continue reading →: Review: Warmth, joy and the mundane are found in wonderful ‘Home’There is always a moment when a person, a couple or a family walk in and see their new digs fully unoccupied. It is in this moment that the new tenants fantasize over the blank canvas. Once the boxes are unpacked, pictures occupy the wall, the refrigerator is stocked and…
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Continue reading →: Review: Lend an ‘ear’ to Herrera in the Marsh’s ‘Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name’His name was Otilio. To her, he was Tio Otilio. Irma Herrera’s aunts and uncles came from a generation where names like Dominga, Socorro and Epifania were commonplace. Those were names rooted in sacred and secular traditions, names rich with heart and history. But Herrera noticed something odd about Tio…
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Continue reading →: Ramirez removes the cloak of homeless invisibility in Ubuntu’s ‘Down Here Below’Invisibility. It’s a world that homeless people live in constantly. As many stand on a street corner or a turning island, their eyes yearn for a connection, hopeful that a driver may see their cardboard sign and toss a scrap. Maybe those scraps come in the form of loose change,…
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Continue reading →: A house is not a home, or is it? Sobelle’s ‘Home’ looks at the differences between the two at Berkeley RepOn the surface, the defined differences between the words house and home are subtle. But as the connotations of each word are more deeply explored, they couldn’t be further apart if they tried. A house is purely a structure, a static collection of spackle, sheet rock and wires designed to…
David John Chávez
Bay Area theater critic/reporter, Executive Chair – American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association, Two-time Pulitzer Prize for Drama jurist (’22-’23). Follow me on socials and say hi! #hellatheatre
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