The Opera Tattler

Reviews of Performances and their Audiences

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Category: Theater Review

  • Filter Theatre’s Twelfth Night at Cal Performances

    * Notes *Filter Theatre brought a manic 90-minute multi-media version of Twelfth Night to Cal Performances last night as part of a tour of the state. Directed by Sean Holmes, Shakespeare’s comedy — already chock full of love triangles, cross-dressing, and mistaken identity — involves a lot of music and takes audience participation to a…

  • Pan Pan Theatre’s The Seagull at SFIAF

    * Notes *Pan Pan Theatre performed a frenetic mash-up version of The Seagull at the San Francisco International Arts Festival last night. Chekhov's dark play of overlapping love triangles, artistic failure, and suicide is not only interspersed with Bach and Tchaikovsky (complete with balletic dancing), but with scenes of cocaine binges and very self-reflexive commentary.…

  • Long Day’s Journey into Night at the Apollo Theatre

    * Notes * A new production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night opened at the Apollo Theatre in London last month. Directed by Anthony Page, the play stars David Suchet as James Tyrone and Laurie Metcalf as Mary Cavan Tyrone (pictured left, photograph by Alastair Muir). The detailed set, designed by Lez Brotherston was…

  • Love’s Labour’s Lost at Cal Performances

    * Notes * Shakespeare's Globe Theatre opened a run of Love's Labour's Lost at Cal Performances yesterday. Musicians played in the audience, there were a mere five instrumentalists that played recorder, shawms, dulcian, ocarina, hurdy-gurdy, sackbut, viol, hunting horn, Baroque guitar, theorbo, and percussion. Many of the actors also walked around in the lobby and through the…

  • Souvenir at ACT

    * Notes * Stephen Temperley's Souvenir, a play about Florence Foster Jenkins, is closing at ACT this weekend. The work is hilarious, and Judy Kaye does an impressive job singing quite badly. For the most part, Donald Corren was engaging as her accompanist, Cosmé McMoon. His piano playing and singing were both perfectly fine. R.…

  • Rock ‘n’ Roll at ACT

    * Notes * Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll opened the 2008-2009 season at ACT last month and closes tomorrow. The play includes the years between the Prague Spring (1968) and the Velvet Revolution (1989), with a distinct focus on Syd Barrett, The Plastic People of the Universe, and Václav Havel. The production, directed by Carey Perloff, included…