It’s no wonder journalist-playwright Lawrence Wright was drawn to Italian superstar author-reporter Oriana Fallaci as the subject for “Fallaci,” his two-character drama receiving its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre under the assured direction of Public Theatre artistic director Oskar Eustis.
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According to Bob Gaudio, one of the original Four Seasons whose lives are chronicled in the hit musical “Jersey Boys,” the typical fan has seen the show three times.
As a new member of the club, this writer can vouch for the show’s ongoing appeal. The national tour of “Jersey Boys,” onstage through April 28 at the Curran Theatre in The City, is as exciting — if not quite as sharp or thrilling — as ever.
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The “lady” of the title in Georgia State University professor and playwright Shirlene Holmes’ 1997 “A Lady and a Woman” is Miss Flora, an innkeeper and healer in the mid-1890s South.
As portrayed by the gifted Velina Brown in Theatre Rhinoceros’ local premiere, Miss Flora is regal, lonely, self-assured, devoutly Christian and full of yearning.
When she says, initially, “I don’t trust nobody on first sight,” you believe her — so it’s wonderful to see her let her guard down as the two-person, two-act play continues.
Miss Flora is issuing that warning to the “woman” in
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We all have issues, and New York writer-director Ben Rimalower deals with his creatively in “Patti Issues,” his autobiographical show framed by diva worship.
His “Patti” is Patti LuPone, who has said, “I don’t know if I was a conduit for him, but it has less to do with me than with how Ben came into himself, given the stuff he had to deal with as a kid.”
The “Issues” revolve around how Rimalower’s childhood changed when his father came out as gay and exited the family, and how Rimalower worked though his own sexual identity in the wake of those events.
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“I’m just a man,” sighs Martin Luther King Jr. several times in Katori Hall’s two-character, 2010 Olivier Award-winning one-act, “The Mountaintop,” a regional premiere now at TheatreWorks.
Indeed he is in this altogether funny, thought-provoking and poignant play. Depicted with convincing charm and inner turmoil by Adrian Roberts, he cusses, apparently cheats on his wife, smokes, and has stinky feet and a hole in his sock.
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Whimsical takes on human connection, separation and interdependence connect new works by artists in residence at CounterPULSE, one of The City’s primary incubators for provocative performance art.
The program, opening Thursday, includes “Twindependent” — a piece exploring the concept of “twinship” — by Rowena Richie and Jennifer Chien, who collaborate under the name richien.
Developed over two years, the piece also examines the pair’s own unlikely “twinship,” formed despite their different ethnicities and ages.
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It’s a good month for the furniture department: First, Cutting Ball’s brilliant “The Chairs.” Now, 3Girls Theatre’s welcome revival of San Francisco writer Lynne Kaufman’s award-winning play “The Couch.”
A fictionalized day in the life of psychotherapy pioneers Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung; Jung’s wife, Emma; and his mistress, Toni, the show premiered at Magic Theatre in 1985.
Directed here by Amy Glazer with great panache, it features a stellar cast, right down to 10-year-old Hattie Rose Allen Bellino as Jung’s daughter, Katherine.
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The adventurous Mugwumpin’s new production, “The Great Big Also,” has a lot going for it: an intriguing title; an eight-member ensemble with all the requisite vocal, movement and emotive skills; a potentially rich premise; and an imaginative setup.
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Cutting Ball Theater’s current staging of mid-20th-century French playwright Eugene Ionesco’s “The Chairs” is probably one of the best theater of the absurd productions to be seen locally — ever.The almost-entirely-two-character tragic farce, or farcical tragedy, is blessed with numerous advantages: A new translation by artistic director Rob Melrose, who turned some of Ionesco’s nonsensical French wordplay into equally nonsensical English-language wordplay.
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Despite thoroughly amusing claims, Steve Seabrook’s motivational course “Better Than You” isn’t likely to significantly change anyone’s life.It’s also both the beauty, and conundrum, of Kurt Bodden’s one-man show onstage at The Marsh in The City. Bodden is pitch-perfect as the smooth-talking Seabrook, who heads up a weekendlong personal growth workshop in which he offers confoundingly true philosophical gems like, “People who are no better than you are more successful than you.”
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