It’s understandable that the stellar literary theater company Word for Word decided to stage “The Last Stand” and “Gold Star” in choosing among the linked short stories that comprise “You Know When the Men Are Gone,” Siobhan Fallon’s acclaimed book about life at Fort Hood, a military base in Texas.In “The Last Stand,” a young male soldier, Kit, has just returned home from more than a year in Iraq, wounded, to find that his wife is about to leave him.
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Yosephina Peters is ready for her moment in the spotlight.
This weekend, the 12-year-old is appearing in “Bells Are Ringing” presented by the San Francisco Arts Education Players. It’s her third appearance with the youth musical theater troupe, whose members come from 24 Bay Area schools.
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It’s understandable that the stellar literary theater company Word for Word decided to stage “The Last Stand” and “Gold Star” in choosing among the linked short stories that comprise “You Know When the Men Are Gone,” Siobhan Fallon’s acclaimed book about life at Fort Hood, a military base in Texas.
In “The Last Stand,” a young male soldier, Kit, has just returned home from more than a year in Iraq, wounded, to find that his wife is about to leave him.
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“West of Memphis” revisits the case of the “West Memphis Three,” the doozy of a miscarriage of justice that led to a trio of Arkansas teens spending 18 years in prison for a grisly crime they didn’t commit.
The film is the fourth documentary inspired by the case, following three HBO “Paradise Lost” films, and it treads familiar terrain. But new findings introduced by director Amy Berg, combined with a solid presentation of known events, should engross newcomers and generally satisfy the initiated.
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Stephen Adly Guirgis’ comedy-drama “The Motherf**ker with the Hat” begins so explosively in its excellent SF Playhouse production, it’s hard to imagine where it can go from there.
What’s so great about the play, which opened on Broadway in 2011, and about Bill English’s fearless direction, is that it goes to lots of places — places that are at various times violent, comic, profane and poignant.
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Bird-watching isn’t the only tie that binds the six women of “Our Practical Heaven,” now in its world premiere at Aurora Theatre. Sibling rivalry, aging and loss also fuel Anthony Clarvoe’s gentle multigenerational drama. And then there’s the family’s crumbling seaside home, which may soon be swallowed by the rising tides of climate change.
Clarvoe, whose “Pick Up Ax” was a Bay Area hit, combines family themes with environmental concerns in this play, the third new work premiered in Aurora’s Global Age Project.
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When local playwright Tanya Shaffer first imagined “The Fourth Messenger,” a musical world premiere opening in previews today in Berkeley, she was on a meditation retreat.
She found herself thinking of the moment centuries ago when, according to legend, Siddhartha Gautama sat under the bodhi tree and refused to get up until he was enlightened. Various forces tried to lure him away, a scene Shaffer suddenly pictured as a highly theatrical song and dance of the temptations.
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Laughter fills the Marin Theatre Company as Vladimir and Estragon, the down-on-their-luck tramps of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” take their places once again to await the theater world’s best-known no-show.
If “Godot” is the last play you would expect to be funny, revisiting it is definitely in order. Sixty years after its Paris premiere, audiences still approach this existential masterpiece with trepidation.
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Although British choreographer Wayne McGregor’s “Borderlands” made its world premiere at the War Memorial Opera House on Tuesday night, the piece looks rather familiar.
The finale to San Francisco Ballet’s Program 1, “Borderlands” feels like a B-side to McGregor’s 2006 work “Chroma” – which SFB performed just last year. The works share similar sets, costumes, lighting and staging but use different music.
“Borderlands’” score, by Joel Cadbury and Paul Stoney, sounds like a 1980s industrial soundscape infused with melodramatic piano.
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You may think you don’t know what a “manic pixie dream girl” is — that’s the title of Katie May’s new play, a PlayGround-commissioned world premiere at the tiny Costume Shop — but you do. Think Annie Hall. Think Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Think Zooey Deschanel. Apparently the term was coined by a film critic.
As explained during the course of this short, crisp and devilishly entertaining comedy, it refers to the generically adorable, free-spirited girl-woman who shows up in movies to rescue the brooding, troubled male and teach him about the joys of life.
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