Recent Articles
Culture,
Dance
A Twyla Tharp encounter is like an assault you'd pay your last dollar to repeat. Whatever your access point to the acclaimed choreographer — as a dancer, a regisseur staging her ballets, a writer shotgunned through an interview, or as…
by Lou Fancher
October 7, 2015
Tags: Dance
Culture,
The Exhibitionist
Splendid visuals, polished dancing, lush orchestration and a 1930s-style torque on Charles Perrault’s 17th century fairy tale lifted Mariinsky Ballet and Orchestra’s West Coast premiere of Cinderella to contemporary spectacle. The production commissioned and premiered by the centuries-old Mariinsky…
@The Exhibitionist
by Lou Fancher
October 2, 2015 @ 1:30 pm
Tags: Dance, Cinderella, Mariinsky Ballet, Video
Music,
In a 27th season characterized by broad ambition, there's one thing becoming smaller for an Oakland music troupe: its name. Streamlining "Oakland East Bay Symphony" to its essentials, the newly named Oakland Symphony "debuts" Oct. 2 with the West Coast…
by Lou Fancher
September 30, 2015
Tags: Music
Culture,
The Exhibitionist
Anyone who’s seen a foolsFURY production knows that the actors in the edgy, risk-taking ensemble dive into their work, often literally. They’re not the only ones. Like an actor digging into a role, a translator of a play must…
@The Exhibitionist
by Lou Fancher
September 29, 2015 @ 2:00 pm
Tags: Theater, The Unheard of World, Michelle Haner, EXIT Theatre, foolsFURY, Fabrice Melquiot, translation, Video
Culture,
The Exhibitionist
Berkeley Rep’s Amélie: A New Musical, is a flat-out splurge: a magical, timeless plunge into love, art, goldfish puppetry, snake-eyed marbles, coin-operated photo booths, Parisian bedrooms, sex shops, cafés, and all manner of desirable targets. Amélie is deft social…
@The Exhibitionist
by Lou Fancher
September 14, 2015 @ 10:30 am
Tags: Theater, Amelie, Berkeley Rep, Video
Culture,
The Exhibitionist
At 35,000 feet, flight attendants are like demigods. Back here on earth? Not so much. Playwright Marisa Wegrzyn portrays the high-low dynamics of three middle-aged flight attendants on layover in a Chicago O’Hare Airport hotel in Aurora’s season opener,…
@The Exhibitionist
by Lou Fancher
September 9, 2015 @ 11:00 am
Tags: Theater, Aurora Theatre, Mud Blue Sky, Marisa Wegrzyn, Video
Culture,
The Exhibitionist
Take a politically awkward position and be thankful for theater groups lacking permanent homes and grateful for America’s longstanding exploitation of blue-collar workers. Without them, there might be no Ubuntu Theater Project or playwright Clifford Odets' 1935 play Waiting…
@The Exhibitionist
by Lou Fancher
September 8, 2015 @ 8:00 am
Tags: Theater, Waiting for Lefty, Clifford Odets, Ubuntu Theater Project, Classic Cars West, Video
Culture,
The Exhibitionist
“Dazzling” and “smoldering” are the best words to describe Shotgun Players' multi-layered Eurydice — a play based on one simple turn of a man’s head. Confounding, comic, cacophonous, and constructed by master engineers playwright Sarah Ruhl, director Erika Chong…
@The Exhibitionist
by Lou Fancher
September 2, 2015 @ 8:00 am
Tags: Review, Theater, Shtogun Players, Eurydice, Orpheus, Greek tragedy, Megan Trout, Kenny Toll, James Carpenter, Sarah Ruhl, Erika Chong Shuch, Sean Riley, Video
Music,
All Shook Down
Steve Martin and The Steep Canyon Rangers August 19, 2015 Wente Vineyards, Livermore Better Than: Having to watch the Coen Brothers’ movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? to get your bluegrass fix. There’s a certain glow and a tingling aftereffect…
@All Shook Down
by Lou Fancher
August 20, 2015 @ 3:14 pm
Tags: Last Night, steve martin
Music,
Hear This
Most of us feel fairly chipper if we make it past the age of 50 without replacement parts.Imagine the condition of Sergei Rachmaninoff'sAll-Night Vigil(Vespers), a 100-year-old war horse of Russia's golden age of sacred music with 1,000-year-old parts. Performed by…
by Lou Fancher
August 19, 2015
Tags: Hear This
Music,
All Shook Down
Grace Potter Rayland Baxter August 15, 2015 Fox Theater Better Than: Indulging in controlled substances. Seriously, you can get high on Potter. Beauty is in the ear of the beholder during a Grace Potter performance. Appearing at the Fox Theater…
@All Shook Down
by Lou Fancher
August 17, 2015 @ 3:08 pm
Tags: Over the Weekend, grace potter
