William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is one of the most produced and adapted plays in the history of western culture. Its themes and quotations are intricately woven into our cultural zeitgeist. A myriad of options are a click away on streaming devices. Sure, you can watch Romeo and Juliet with guns and […]
Calder Johnson
Posted inArts + Scene
NCRT’s Sweeney Todd Stays Sharp
Sometimes the uncanny ability that live theater has to evoke jouissance is more a product of the audience than the production. On the night I attended North Coast Repertory Theatre’s Sweeney Todd at the 5th and D Street Theatre, people clutching flowers waiting to reward months of their friend’s commitment to the show, new-to-theater locals […]
Posted inArts + Scene
First Rate Twelfth Night
The sight of someone smoking a cigarette in costume is shocking to those of us who have been conditioned by every stage manager — some even threatening our lives should we disobey. My shock faded when I found out the man I saw outside the theater was not an actor, but 5th and D Street Theater’s […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Crazy for Poetry
I’ve written before about how the past is the ultimate foreign land, shrouded permanently by the forward nature of time in our particular dimension. We can read texts and compare accounts, study architectural systems — both physical and linguistic — all in the service of conjuring an image of a departed era. Things get even […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Who’s Your Venus?
It would be foolish to not see the limited run of Venus in Furs at North Coast Repertory Theatre. Also, what a shame that this is not a full run of David Ives’ 90-minute comedic play of intricacies, intrigue and intimacy. Jesse March and Kathryn Cesarz will undoubtedly find even more nuance layered between the […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Not to Be
Leira Satlof and her team chose Clue: The Musical for Ferndale Repertory’s 2020 season because they thought people needed some fun. “We chose it because things were already kind of bad,” says Satlof, the theater’s artistic producing director. “We chose a season of things we thought were fun. We thought our patrons would appreciate it.” […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Christian Rock
Before Evita, before Cats, before becoming a household name from the West End to Broadway, Andrew Lloyd Webber made a mark a half-century back in the nascent genre of rock opera. Along with his career collaborator lyricist Tim Rice, he wrote Jesus Christ Superstar, now a long way from its point of origin but lively […]
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Fool Me Once
First performed in France in 1664, Molière’s Tartuffe is a comedy for the ages — a hypocritical individual seeks to relieve an impressionable gentleman of his wealth, possessions and social standing by means of flattery and persuasion. Currently on stage at the North Coast Repertory Theatre, the play perfectly illustrates the willingness of some people […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Conversations Across Time and Space
My good friend Tom is very much a man of science and mathematics, and also the smartest person I know. I talk with him about all manner of things and while he may have a way of viewing the entire universe in terms of equations and probability, he also sees connections down to art and […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Alternative Farce
The truth is a tricky thing. It can be objective or subjective, slippery or elusive. It can be deep and bitter and hard to hear. It is rarely absolute. More rarely, it can be very funny. Now, lying — that’s funny. Not so much when it’s done to you but in the service of comedy, […]