Kpfa - Bay Area Theater

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “The Monsters” by Ngozi Anyanwu at Berkeley Rep’s Peets Theatre through May 3, 2026. West Coast Premiere.           TEXT OF REVIEW: (minor differences between the text and the recorded review). Putting aside solo performances, the heart of the theatrical experience usually lies in the interaction between two characters, no matter the size of the cast. Obviously, several characters in plays can interact with each other at once, but the most intense scenes are usually one on on. When these interchanges work well, we talk about the chemistry between actors. When they don’t, it becomes obvious. One actor is listening and responding, the other pretending, and the audience knows it. Here’s the thing, though. None of it quite works the same way in film or TV. There are multiple takes, cross-cutting. Confrontations might even be recorded separately and put together in post-production. It feels real, but too often it isn’t. Only in live theatre, happening in real time, can

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “Flex” by Candice Jones, at San Francisco Playhouse through May 2, 2026.           TEXT OF REVIEW: Film and TV audiences love sports stories, groups of disparate people thrown together striving to work as one to achieve their goal, usually to win the big game. From Major League to Ted Lasso to The Sandlot, we are entranced by how the characters grow and mature, and hopefully, in the end, they will become heroes. Sports stories in live theatre are few and far between, most likely because you can’t really show the games. And sports stories about girls, black girls in particular? They’re nowhere to be found, except in the play Flex by Candice Jones, having its West Coast premiere at San Francisco Playhouse through May 2nd. Flex tries the impossible: to actually show the game, or at least some facsimile. The stage has basketball hoops at both ends, the one stage right in a playground, and stage left at a gym. We’re in a small town in Arkansas in 1998, a team of five hi

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews :”The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?” by Edward Albee at Shotgun Players Ashby Stage through April 28, 2026.                 TEXT OF REVIEW: (some wording is different in the recording) Edward Albee’s reputation beyond theatre junkies mostly rests on one play, his masterpiece, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.  While that play shows off his caustic wit to great effect, it’s perhaps one of the least absurdist of his plays. And Edward Albee, over all, is one of the greatest of absurdist playwrights, in plays ranging from his early masterpiece, The Zoo Story, to Tiny Alice and Seascape. The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? , which won the Tony Award for Best New Play in 2002, excels in both strains. Absurdist and deeply weird, it also contains some of Albee’s most cutting wit, all elements in full display in Shotgun Players current production, which runs through April 28th at the Ashby Stage. In this production, directed by Kevin Clarke, the play opens on a bare stage. Later we will le

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “Assassins” by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, at Oakland Theatre Project extended to April 12, 2026.         TEXT OF REVIEW: When Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins first opened in 1990, the show focused on the relationship between America’s gun culture and the need to be seen. Looking at presidential assassins and would-be assassins, we see desperate people finding all kinds of excuses to rationalize their actions. Today, mass shooters don’t care about being seen, and obviously neither do the masked thugs of ICE. But Assassins still speaks to us in different ways, as is evident in the production now at Oakland Theatre Project through April 5th. As Oakland Theatre Project’s Executive Artistic Director Michael Socrates Moran says , Assassins was always a work of experimental theatre, so why not experiment further and turn a show, which usually features eight actors, into a one-person tour de force, signifying modern day loneliness and desperation. He

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “All My Sons” by Arthur Miller, at Berkeley Rep Roda Theatre through March 22, 2026.               TEXT OF REVIEW Great plays stay relevant, no matter the time or setting, or even subject matter. It could be a castle in Denmark in medieval times, a diner in Pittsburgh’s Hill District in the 1960s, a cramped Chicago apartment in the 1950s, a shabby dacha in Tsarist Russia, or even Central Park during the AIDS crisis. Or it could be 1947, Just after World War II, in the backyard of a house in an Ohio town, as is the case with “All My Sons” by Arthur Miller, the classic play that gave the playwright his first success in the theatre, and is now seen in a brilliant and unforgettable production at Berkeley Rep through March 22nd. Joe Keller is the successful owner of an appliance company, having made his money on government contracts during the war years, it’s the American dream come true. Joe’s wife Kate refuses to believe their son Larry died three years ago after bein

Photo: Teresa Castracane KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “Paranormal Activity” at ACT Toni Rembe (Geary) Theatre through March 22, 2026.             TEXT OF REVIEW In real life, we hate being scared, but in a theatre or on TV, there’s nothing quite like it.  The slow burn of suspense, the shock of horror. Ghosts, demons, and the old cliché, things that go bump in the night. On television and film, there’s Amityville, The Exorcist, Stranger Things, a long list of Stephen King adaptations, and they date back to the earliest days of the silents.  And CGI makes everything real. It’s a bit different live on a stage. We suspend our disbelief, but we’re in a community with the actors, we’re seeing effects live as they happen, all with the question, How exactly did they do THAT? Which is a question asked multiple times in the entertaining if often incoherent and vapid play, Paranormal Activity, now at ACT’s Toni Rembe Theatre through March 22nd. The curtain rises on a two-tiered set. Downstairs, the kitc

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “M. Butterfly” at San Francisco Playhouse through March 14, 2026.               TEXT OF REVIEW (minor changes were made during recording and editing): M. Butterfly Back in 1964, a French Diplomat in China became infatuated with a singer from the Beijing Opera. When they met, the singer, now wearing men’s clothing, said she was a woman presenting as a man. They embarked on an affair that began in China and ended several years later in Paris, where it turned out the diplomat was passing secret information to his lover. He later said he never knew that the singer was really a man. That story caught the public’s eye, and not long afterward, first time playwright David Henry Hwang used that story to create a play,which launched the career of B.D. Wong and later became a film with Jeremy Irons. And now a production of M. Butterfly is at San Francisco Playhouse through March 14th. Of course, times change. When first produced on Broadway in 1988, gender roles outside of th

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews the national touring company of “The Notebook, the Musical” at ATG Orpheum Theatre through March 1, 2025.       TEXT OF REVIEW Towards the end of the twentieth century, as the corporate world eyed the record-breaking receipts of shows like Cats and Les Miz, it became clear that if you could turn any IP, intellectual property, into a musical, a new stream of profits would come a-calling. Its also true that producers have always been searching for properties that might sing, and often it’s a labor of love. So is “The Notebook: The Musical”, now in a national tour at the Orpheum theatre through March 1st  a labor of love, or just another brand name for Broadway’s corporate class to exploit for profit? Based on the weepy best-seller by Nicholas Sparks and the 2004 film with Ryan Gosling and Gena Rowlands, among others, The Notebook on Broadway presented theatregoers with a free box of tissues at each performance. The show received mixed reviews and closed after nine mo

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “The Mountaintop” at Oakland Theatre Project through Feb. 15, 2026.       TEXT OF REVIEW: In late 2008, it felt as if we’d entered a new world. The Republicans were out of office, people of color were being appointed to key positions in business and government, and a black man had just been elected president. Martin Luther King’s dream seemingly had come true. Stories of his infidelities had come to light two decades earlier, and he’d been shown to have, as they say, feet of clay. He was no longer a god, but he was a hero. And Obama’s election had proven it. And in June 2009, The Mountaintop, a play by Katori Hall, about the last evening in the life of Martin Luther King, premiered in a small theatre in London, later moving to the West End, and coming to Broadway two years later. Now, under a very different national circumstance, The Mountaintop can be seen in an Oakland Theatre Project production, which runs through February 15th, this coming weekend. We are in Dr

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “The Cherry Orchard” by Anton Chekhov at Marin Theatre through February 22, 2026.           TEXT OF REVIEW (differs slightly from final edit for time). ​​​​​For centuries, serfs had no power in Russia. They weren’t quite slaves, but they also were not free. It was a feudal society, run by a powerful nobility ruled by an all-powerful Tsar. Due to societal and economic advances, that all changed in 1861 when Alexander the second freed the serfs. Even though their economic status shifted, and a new middle class was born, the old nobility carried on as before, eventually finding themselves in poverty. The great playwright Anton Chekhov wrote about these newly impoverished aristocrats, first in Uncle Vanya, and then later in his final play, The Cherry Orchard, which runs in a new production at Marin Theatre through February 22nd. The spendthrift Madame Lyubov has returned to her country estate with her two daughters, having bankrupted the family while in Paris. The esta

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “How Shakespeare Changed My Life” at Berkeley Rep Peets Theatre through March 1, 2026.           TEXT OF REVIEW You’re just a kid. You’re Black .Your teachers think you’re stupid, a hopeless fat boy. At home, your mom tossed out your junkie dad. Mom herself is ice cold, and when you’re sixteen, Mom throws you out on the street. You’re homeless, destitute, and you love Shakespeare. That’s the start of the world premiere one person play, How Shakespeare Saved My Life, written and performed by Jacob Ming-Trent, now at Berkeley Rep’s Peets Theatre through March 1st. The play is billed as semi-autobiographical, and it’s unclear what the relationship is between Jacob the character and Jacob the playwright performer. The real Jacob, for example, was already on stage at age eleven, and was admitted to acting school in New York at the age of seventeen, before developing a career in Hollywood. It shouldn’t matter, but in retrospect, it does. The story, at least, feels real,

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews the Streetcar Project’s production of  “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams at ACT Toni Rembe Theatre through February 1, 2026.           TEXT OF REVIEW (some changes were made during recording and cuts for timing were made for radio). ​​​​​The greatest of plays often allow for multiple interpretations. We see that all the time in Shakespeare. We see it in Arthur Miller, in the musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein, even in August Wilson. And of course we see it in Tennessee Williams. Most interpretations of Williams’ second play, A Streetcar Named Desire, are inhibited by the famous movie, which catapulted Marlon Brando to fame. It’s hard to see Blanche Dubois beyond Vivien Leigh’s faded Southern belle, and it’s even harder to see the crude Stanley Kowalski past Brando’s scream of “Stella!” But those interpretations, however close to Williams’ wishes, obscure the play’s lyricism and more to the point, his greatest creation, Blanche Dubois. This productio

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “Sunday in the Park with George” at Shotgun Players Ashby Stage extended through January 31, 2026.   Text of Review: The late great composer lyricist Stephen Sondheim tackled a variety of subjects in his work, from an examination of relationships in Company to obsession in Passion, to gun culture in Assassins But two shows seem a bit more autobiographical, Merrily We Roll Along, which incorporates elements of his own life, and Sunday in the Park with George, which examines the role of the artist, both as creator and promoter. Because of the large cast and the giant canvas of the show itself, pun intended, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park is usually presented in large venues. Now Shotgun Players has taken on the Pulitzer Prize winning musical in the moreintimate confines of the Ashby Stage in Berkeley, running through January 31st, 2026. Musically, lyrically, in most ways, Sunday in the Park is sui generis. Act One focuses in on the creation by

A short excerpt from a 2019 interview with James Lapine, who collaborated with Stephen Sondheim on “Sunday in the Park with George” and “Into The Woods.” Sunday in the Park with George plays at Shotgun Players Ashby Stage through January 31, 2026. “Into the Woods” plays at San Francisco Playhouse through January 17, 2026. The post James Lapine on his collaboration with Stephen Sondheim appeared first on KPFA.

KPFA Theatre critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “Sally and Tom” by Suzan Lori-Parks at Marin Theatre through November 23, 2025.           Text of Review: All Men Are Created Equal. Or so Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence. It’s kind of weird then, to know that Jefferson owned slaves. And it’s even weirder to realize that one of them, Sally Hemings, was his mistress. What was that about? Which doesn’t stop playwrights and screenwriters and novelists from trying to figure it out. Thomas Jefferson took to his bed a child, fourteen years old, a human child he owned. The Merchant Ivory film, Jefferson in Paris, presented the 22 year old Thandwe Newton as Hemings. Thomas and Selly, a play produced at Marin Theatre in 2017 showed Hemings as in her late teens, and perhaps a bit of a seductress. That one didn’t go over well in the age of me too. What Suzan Lori-Parks does in her play, Sally and Tom, first presented in 2022 at the Guthrie,  and now through November 23rd at Marin Theatre, is find a w

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “A Driving Beat” by Jordan Ramirez Puckett, directed by Jeffrey Lo, at TheatreWorks Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts Second Stage through November 23, 2025.   TEXT OF REVIEW ​​​​​The nature of identity puzzles all of us. Who are we exactly? Are we ourselves, or the tribe to which we belong? Are you a Jew if you don’t believe in the religion? Or better yet, are you Latino if you’ve been raised in a white foster home, and live in a neighborhood with no people from your tribe? That last question is the reason why fourteen year old Mateo wants to go on a road trip, in the world premiere play A Driving Beat by Jordan Ramirez Puckett at TheatreWorks Mountain View through November 23rd. Mateo, we learn as the play unfolds, has been bullied by his white classmates and now he wants to go on a road trip with his mom, traveling from Ohio to the hospital in San Diego where he was adopted shortly after his birth. Who am I, he asks. If I’m going to be bullied, the le

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews the national tour of “Stereophonic” at Broadway SF Curran Theatre through November 23, 2025.           TEXT OF REVIEW ​​​​​What does it take to put together a hit rock album, especially if the band itself seems to be falling apart, particularly the two couples that comprise most of the group? How do you separate the personal from the professional when you’re stuck in a recording studio for months? Those questions lie at the heart of the Tony winning play with music, Stereophonic, now in its national and London touring production at BroadwaySF’s Curran Theatre through November 23rd. The unnamed band in the play is fictional, barely. The year is 1976, the studio is in Sausalito, and the group bears a remarkable resemblance to Fleetwood Mac, on their way to recording the album “Rumours,” a resemblance so close that the playwright, David Adjani was forced to settle a lawsuit with a chronicler of the band, though publicly he denies it all. He says he wanted to create a

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews the national touring company of “Suffs,” now at BroadwaySF Orpheum Theatre through November 9,, 2025.   REVIEW TEXT: Imagine a political movement that seems to be on the ropes. Demonstrations aren’t doing it, talks with political leaders fall on deaf ears. There’s no elected way forward, and the only thing going is hope and perseverance. Sound familiar. But we’re talking here about women’s suffrage, and the movement that led to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote – and which is dramatized in the national tour of the musical Suffs, now at the Orpheum Theatre through November 9th. The play opens at a 1913 rally in which suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, in her mid-fifties and a leader of the movement for thirty years is accosted by the young firebrand Alice Paul, tired of the slow and tedious path forward. Alice wants direct action, and she wants it now. From here, Suffs focuses on Alice and her group of activists who will do what it

KPFA theatre critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “Little Women,” adapted by Lauren Gunderson, at TheatreWorks Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts through October 12, 2025.   Little Women Review The classic pre-twentieth century books never die, on stage or on film. A Christmas Carol keeps coming back in December, year after year after year. Maybe the setting is contemporary. Maybe Scrooge is a woman. But the same template carries on and on. Marley. First ghost. Second ghost. Third ghost. Count the beats. Yawn. There are others. Mr. Darcy and the Bennets. Huck Finn. Dracula. Anna Karenina. Alice and the Rabbit. Frankenstein. And then there’s Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. There are seven feature length films, eight TV adaptations, two plays, an opera, a ballet, and a Broadway musical. Now there’s Lauren Gunderson’s adaptation of Little Women, at Theatreworks in Mountain View through  October 12th. Little Women’s ageless popularity rests, as the playwright notes, on its proto-feminism, its focus on fam

KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “The Motion” by Christopher Chen at Shotgun Players Ashby Stage through October 12, 2025.   TEXT OF REVIEW ​​​​​THE MOTION With so much news in the world today, and with a CDC corrupted by politics and mentally ill cranks, the subject of animal testing seems to fall by the wayside. But the discussion about using animals to test potential life-saving medicines remains as ongoing as the one that drives many to become vegetarians. This question about animal rights lies at the beginning of “The Motion” by Christopher Chen, now in a Shotgun Players production at the Ashby Stage through October 12th. The play presents itself as an on-stage debate./ It’s based on a podcast called Intelligence Squared Debates. So, there are two people on either side of the stage, flanking the moderater. The moderator points out that this is a Shotgun production, in Berkeley at the Ashby Stage. He then announces the motion to be debated, for and against, should animal testing be banned. All