- The Road to Afterlife
- Published: Nov 17, 2009
Afterlife continues an international tradition of making art out of everyday objects, including the stuff most of us routinely kick to the curb.
- The Horses
- Published: Nov 03, 2009
"I'm going to get a gun!" Marv is whining. He is turning 75 today, and he just can't face it. His wife, Lois bellows back at him from off stage. "That's all I need! Holes in the remodel."
- William T. Wiley does Washington, D.C
- Published: Oct 12, 2009
A few weeks ago, our nation's capital tilted noticeably to the left when friends, associates and supporters of the Bay Area's William T. Wiley stormed Washington, D.C. for the opening of What's It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect.
- The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, at City Lights
- Published: Sep 27, 2009
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, a 2005 play by Stephen Adly Guirgis, is playing now through October 18, 2009 at City Lights Theater Company in San Jose. This fierce and frequently hilarious production, directed by Kit Wilder, follows the imagined trial, in purgatory, of Judas Iscariot.
- American Idiot
- Published: Sep 21, 2009
Michael Mayer of Spring Awakening fame has turned the biggest album of Green Day's storied career into a poseur-punk version of Disney's High School Musical.
- Eastern Virtuosity at Cantor Arts Center
- Published: Aug 31, 2009
The centerpieces of From the Bronze Age of China to Japan's Floating World are a handful of Chinese bronzes dated 1600-700 BCE. I guess I appreciate the historical importance of these somber pieces, but I have to confess that I was nowhere near as excited by these ancient artifacts as I was the profusion of woodblock prints in this modest and handsome show.
- The Producers at Foothill Musical Theatre
- Published: Aug 12, 2009
Through August 16, 2009 Foothill Musical Theatre in Los Altos Hills is having its way with the story of Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, the crooked producers who do everything in their power to create a sure-fire flop, only to have it succeed beyond their wildest nightmares.
- Todd Schorr: American Surreal
- Published: Jul 28, 2009
Schorr's intricately detailed paintings create Daliesque scenes that suggest an autopsy gone terribly wrong at Toontown General, where a shipment of leaking ether bottles has caused the visions before us to swirl and morph, at once impossibly beautiful and hideously grotesque.
- Tinyard Hill
- Published: Jul 25, 2009
Set in 1964 Georgia, the four-person musical spends a tumultuous summer with a father-and-son blacksmith team and their busybody next-door neighbor, whose niece is in town to be fitted for her wedding dress.
- Fan Ho's Living Theatre
- Published: Jun 27, 2009
For Fan Ho, Hong Kong is a shadow-filled and smoky place, where children grasp what they can of their youth and everyone else toils in placid determination.
- Lips Together, Teeth Apart
- Published: Jun 13, 2009
In the new Theatre Q production of Terrence McNally's Lips Together, Teeth Apart, playing now through June 28, 2009 at Dragon Theatre in Palo Alto, two heterosexual couples are marooned for a lost 4th of July weekend on the gay enclave of Fire Island, circa 1991.
- You, Nero
- Published: Jun 08, 2009
Amy Freed's You, Nero, now through June 28, 2008 at Berkeley Rep, is the best screwball comedy about the Roman Empire to hit the boards since A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
- The Way of the World
- Published: May 16, 2009
Breasts overflow their cinched bodices, men prance like peacocks or stagger drunkenly about, servants pulls strings behind the scene for their masters, couples cannot keep their hands off each other.
- It's Not Us, It's You
- Published: May 07, 2009
The exhibit begins at the front door with a text piece by Anthony Discenza called "The Way It Is." "We won't be in touch. We aren't going to hang onto your resume. We don't want to stay friends."
- Pop to Present
- Published: Apr 30, 2009
Even though Pop to Present, on display now through August 16, 2009 at the Cantor Arts Center, is billed as a survey of the Stanford museum's recent acquisitions of post-Eisenhower-era art, the show is really a stealth homage to Robert Arneson.
- Breaking the Code
- Published: Apr 22, 2009
The British mathematician Alan Turing, who helped break the Nazi Enigma codes, devoted his life to the exposure of unsolvable secrets. So perhaps it isn't completely surprising that Turing essentially invited the police to discover his homosexuality.
- Always... Patsy Cline
- Published: Apr 11, 2009
When a character in a play is based on a real person, especially one who spent time in the public eye, an actor must navigate the audience's familiarity with that individual, along with all the prejudices and expectations such familiarity breeds.
- The Three Musketeers at City Lights
- Published: Mar 26, 2009
Kit Wilder's adaptation of The Three Musketeers is the stage equivalent of your basic Hollywood popcorn movie, except without the popcorn.
- The Prints of Andy Warhol
- Published: Mar 08, 2009
In the financial press, it is customary for reporters to disclose their holdings in a stock before writing or talking about it. And so, I must preface this review of The Prints of Andy Warhol, now through May 31 at the San Jose Museum of Art, by revealing my stake in four pieces by the pop master.
- Pick Up Ax
- Published: Mar 05, 2009
Once upon a time there was no World Wide Web, no Nintendo Wii, no GTA. State-of-the-art software was chained to primitive hardware and video games were so archaic that you had to actually type in written commands to do something as rudimentary as opening a door.
- In the Next Room
- Published: Feb 15, 2009
In addition to bringing light to homes once illuminated by fire, electricity has spawned a number of crackerjack new inventions, including electric vibrators, which are used by male doctors to treat women (mostly) whom they have diagnosed with hysteria.
- Marco Benevento Settles In at Yoshi's
- Published: Feb 09, 2009
Pianist Marco Benevento's instrumental arrangements, be it of an original composition or a cover, exude a friendly, effortless vibe, even as layers of synth fuzz, squelches and squeaks punctuate the often simple melodies that he coaxes from his Steinway grand.
- SF Sketchfest
- Published: Jan 22, 2009
The headline act for the opening night of SF Sketchfest was a live version of the Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!. Just as Robert Rauschenberg strove to create an art that was post-retinal (i.e., not necessarily appealing to the eye), the duo have perfected a form of comedy that is not funny.
- Rich and Famous
- Published: Jan 21, 2009
Okay. The desire to be rich and famous clouds the mind, causes us to do insane, unforgivable things and corrupts everything it touches. Got it.
- Willie Nelson at The Fillmore
- Published: Jan 16, 2009
History will judge whether the almost-annual, multi-night runs of Willie Nelson at The Fillmore will rank with Otis Redding's trio of performances there in 1966 or Tom Petty's 20-show residency in 1997.
- Rockin' the Civic Center on New Year's Eve
- Published: Dec 29, 2008
When it comes to live music, San Franciscans are just plain spoiled, and no night better typifies the city's embarrassment of auditory riches than New Year's Eve.
- The Don't List: Looking back on 2008, ahead to 2009
- Published: Dec 27, 2008
Of the dozens of performances and exhibitions I've been fortunate enough to cover for KQED during the past year, several stand out as events I don't think I'll ever forget.
- The Arabian Nights
- Published: Dec 01, 2008
Zimmerman borrows freely and subjectively from The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, stories spun by the clever Scheherezade to keep the gleaming knife of frozen-hearted King Shahryar from slitting her virgin throat.
- Execution of Precious Memories
- Published: Nov 19, 2008
The practice of making art, in whole or in part, out of other people's ideas and experiences is hardly new. Soliciting audience submissions from the stage has been a staple of improvisational theater and sketch comedy for as long as those forms have been around.
- Turn of the Screw
- Published: Oct 19, 2008
Around this time of year, theater companies across the country dust off their favorite gothic dramas in the hopes of filling a few seats with patrons, and then scaring the bejeebus out of them. San Jose Stage is doing its Halloween thing through November 2, 2008 with a fine production of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
- Patti Smith: Dream of Life
- Published: Oct 17, 2008
Eleven years in the making, with all the lack continuity that you'd expect from such an extended shooting schedule, Dream of Life is like some sort of qualude-soaked sleep walk, more dream at times than life.
- Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival
- Published: Oct 02, 2008
It's the first weekend in October, which means it's time for everyone's favorite investment banker, Warren Hellman, to unwrap his annual auditory gift to the city of San Francisco known as Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.
- Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll
- Published: Sep 26, 2008
With a running time of three hours including intermission, Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll, is as much of an endurance test as a Grateful Dead concert, albeit without the painfully late start and interminable set break.
- Yellowjackets at Berkeley Rep
- Published: Sep 11, 2008
One of the most laudable traits of high-school students is their ability to seize upon a compelling notion and run with it. A profound reverence for the truth, whatever they might perceive that truth to be, has yet to be beaten out of them by experience and exhaustion.
- Contemporary Glass at Stanford
- Published: Aug 31, 2008
This summer, with little fanfare, the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University borrowed fewer than 20 rather superb works of Contemporary Glass from local collections and put on a show.
- All's Well That Ends Well
- Published: Aug 09, 2008
All's Well That Ends Well is not really a comedy, though it does have many funny moments. Nor is it a tragedy, thanks to its turn-on-dime ending in which all of the problems that the playwright has taken such pains to contrive are suddenly tossed aside.
- Burn This
- Published: Aug 07, 2008
Try as we might to be nostalgic for the big shoulder pads, the moody British techno-pop, and all that Nicaragua-Contra cocaine that kept everyone partying till dawn at Studio 54, our affection for the 1980s is strained.
- Bach at Leipzig
- Published: Aug 05, 2008
Somewhere in the middle of the first act of Bach at Leipzig, I realized that I was already plotting my next trip to UC Santa Cruz's Theatre Arts Mainstage to see this wonderful play at least one more time before it closes on August 31, 2008.
- DOUBT, A Parable at TheatreWorks
- Published: Jul 28, 2008
Father Brendan Flynn (Cassidy Brown) is a man who likes to tell stories, which he does every Sunday at St. Nicholas church in the Bronx, and through August 10, 2008, at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto, where TheatreWorks is presenting John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play, DOUBT, A Parable.
- Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare Santa Cruz
- Published: Jul 23, 2008
If you like watching Gossip Girl on The CW and you've never seen an actual performance of Romeo and Juliet before, then maybe, just maybe, the current Shakespeare Santa Cruz production of the William Shakespeare's most popular play is for you.
- Gross Indecency
- Published: Jun 05, 2008
The tone of theatre Q's production of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde by Moisès Kaufman, which runs through June 22 at Palo Alto's Dragon Theatre, is set even before the play begins.
- The Importance of Being Earnest
- Published: Jun 03, 2008
Wilde's last play,The Importance of Being Earnest opened in London on Valentine's Day in 1895. Just a little more than three months later, Wilde's three trials would be over and he would be in prison for "gross indecency" (the formal charge for being a homosexual, which was then illegal in England).
- Northanger Abbey at The Pear
- Published: May 24, 2008
Everyone is reading at the beginning of Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen's posthumously published commentary on late-18th-century Gothic novels, adapted for the stage by Pear Avenue Theatre artistic director, Diane Tasca. Gentlemen in top hats strut across the Pear's small space, their long noses pressed deep into their books. Young girls cluster and titter, discussing a delicious intrigue or plot twist that they, as privileged readers, have just shared.
- Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon
- Published: May 12, 2008
Nostalgia is the prevailing sentiment in Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon, an exhibition of sculpture, video, paintings, and works on paper by 20 artists at the San Jose Museum of Art. For senior curator JoAnne Northrup, the word robot conjures the walking tin men of science fiction's golden age, whose physical similarity to us (arms, legs, eyes, etc.) was essential to our embrace, and fear, of these in-our-image fantasies.
- The Color of Palo Alto
- Published: Apr 29, 2008
Only in Palo Alto could an inventory of real estate be mistaken for a work of art. But that pretty much sums up The Color of Palo Alto, a seven-years-in-the-making quest on the part of artist Samuel Yates to photograph every last one of Palo Alto's 17,725 property parcels and then to use those photographs to determine the peninsula suburb's signature hue, which, until Yates showed up, was something the city had not realized it lacked.
- TheatreWorks' Caroline, or Change
- Published: Apr 12, 2008
Change and loss are the parallel themes of the closing production of TheatreWorks' 2007/2008 season, Caroline, Or Change now playing at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. The musical's heroine, Caroline Thibodeaux, brilliantly realized by C. Kelly Wright, is coping with both the loss of an abusive spouse and the stirrings of a growing daughter who refuses to remain a child.
- Lysistrata at City Lights
- Published: Mar 28, 2008
Lysistrata, now playing at City Lights in San Jose, opens with Diahanna Davidson, who gives a penetrating performance in the play's titular role, screaming at the top of her lungs. As a harbinger of things to come, this pretty much nails it. Director and adaptor Will Huddleston's Lysistrata is a noisy and orgiastic affair, in which actors bellow, moan, shriek, and thunder their lines to the heavens, as if their collective feet were pushing against the theater's very rafters.
- Church, Homer and Moran: Tourism and the American Landscape
- Published: Mar 11, 2008
On the last wall in the last room of the Cooper-Hewitt organized Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Moran: Tourism and the American Landscape, on view through May 4, 2008 at the Cantor Arts Center, there hangs an enormous reproduction of a painting of Niagara Falls by Frederic Edwin Church. The outsize scale of this banner is no doubt meant to give visitors to the Cantor a taste of the magnitude of the falls themselves.
- Glengarry Glen Ross at San Jose Stage
- Published: Feb 12, 2008
"Shut up and listen." "I want to tell you something." "Listen to me!" These phrases, and countless variations thereof, are a recurring mantra in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, now running through March 2 at San Jose Stage Company. Okay: The f-bomb is dropped with far greater frequency throughout the 1984 two-act play, but it is this insistence to be heard, this demand to have one's say, that characterizes this pitiless look into the heartless souls of real men doing a real man's job, which, in this case, is selling bogus real-estate investment opportunities to a world full of suckers and fools.
- Geir Jordahl: Searching for True North
- Published: Feb 08, 2008
There are numerous arresting, odd, and luminous images in the new exhibition of black and white photographs by Geir Jordahl, on view through March 4, 2008 at Modernbook Gallery in Palo Alto, but one of my favorites is perhaps the most ostensibly obvious.
- Doghouse Riley at JJ's Blues
- Published: Jan 27, 2008
At 7pm on most Monday nights, JJ's Blues is about as quiet as you'd expect a dive with modest signage on Stevens Creek Boulevard to be. Melissa is standing behind the long counter, chatting with a couple of regulars while pouring an irregular, me, a drink. Johnnie, the proprietor of San Jose's most venerable blues club, is dividing his attention between a computer, to update the online calendar for the club's website, and a mixing board. On stage, singer, guitarist, and all-around swell guy Peter Stanley is prattling into a microphone and noodling on his red Gibson Firebird to check and double check the levels in the monitors. Looking up, Johnnie lifts a hand from the keyboard, turns just three of the board's hundred or so dials, and returns to his task. He's been here before.
- True West
- Published: Jan 22, 2008
Somewhere in the thick of True West, Sam Shepard's classic tale of brothers, alcohol, Hollywood -- and toasters, ne'er-do-well Lee tells his younger, Ivy League-educated, screenwriter brother, Austin, about an idea he has for a movie. Lee's story is a preposterous riff on Steven Spielberg's first full-length film, Duel, in which Dennis Weaver is stalked by the mysterious driver of a menacing 18-wheeler. Like Weaver and the truck in Duel, Lee's pair tear up a lot of asphalt. Unlike the characters in Duel, Lee's cartoon daydreams dodge twisters in the Texas panhandle, run out of gas on cue, and then continue their four-wheel struggle on four legs. (Did I mention that both drivers are conveniently pulling horse trailers?) Austin, the artiste, is appalled by the stupidity of his oafish older brother's story, embarrassed that he could even be related to someone whose mind could harbor such implausibly idiotic plot twists. But Lee has a metaphysical side. "The one who's chasin' doesn't know where the other one is takin' him," Lee explains. "The one who's being chased doesn't know where he's going."
- Dreaming of a Speech Without Words: The Paintings and Early Objects of H.C. Westermann
- Published: Dec 27, 2007
It's fitting, I suppose, that Dreaming of a Speech Without Words: The Paintings and Early Objects of H.C. Westermann should be tucked away in a dark upstairs gallery at the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University. The show, which runs through March 8, 2008, is first and foremost an academic exercise, filled with lots of ah-hah moments for fans of one of the 20th century's most inventive and influential artists, and just as many opportunities for shoulder shrugs by those who are encountering Westermann for the first time.
- Twelfth Night
- Published: Dec 10, 2007
The current TheatreWorks production of Twelfth Night, perhaps the most beloved of William Shakespeare's numerous comedies, is a delightful, first-rate gimmick. Set in San Francisco during the Summer of Love, the play is a bit like watching The Wizard of Oz while listening to Dark Side of the Moon: How many times, we are meant to wonder, will the 17th-century work sync up with one of the most mythologized events of the 20th?
- De-Natured: Works from the Anderson Collection
- Published: Nov 09, 2007
Whenever works from the collection of Hunk and Moo Anderson are on display in a public place, people who enjoy contemporary art should absolutely make the effort to see them, even if the objects selected have been forced into as slender a conceit as De-Natured: Works from the Anderson Collection and the Anderson Graphic Collection, now on view at the San Jose Museum of Art through January 6, 2008.
- Neil Young: Chrome Dreams II
- Published: Oct 25, 2007
Chrome Dreams II, the third studio CD from Neil Young in as many years, takes its name from an album that was recorded more than 30 years ago but was never officially released. A bootleg of Chrome Dreams surfaced in the 1990s -- I listen to my beloved downloaded copy about two or three times a month. Other than their shared title and author, the two works have little in common. Chrome Dreams is a richly textured, rough-around-the-edges collage of 18 tracks, including a love song to Pocahontas, an ode to homegrown pot, and I'm betting the only song ever written that features the lyrics "even Richard Nixon has got soul." Chrome Dreams II is an uneven follow up: Would that it were as unpolished, irreverent, and ineffable as its mysterious predecessor.
