Jeffrey Hatcher’s plays tend to revolve around historical events, and “Compleat Female Stage Beauty,” presented by City Lights, is no exception. The main character, Edward Kynaston (Thomas Gorrebeeck), is a man who specializes in playing females roles on the stage the 17th century.
Articles by Beau Dowling
‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’ opens up with the look and feel of a ballroom set in 1944. Backed by the 11-piece San Jose Jazz Orchestra, the 10 cast members not only sing and dance to the old tunes but also encourage the audience to get up and dance as well.
Naive 16-year-old Luisa (Ashely Rae Little) and Matt (Frankie Mulcahy) are rapt with teenage love. Their disapproving mothers, Bellomy (Linda Covington) and Hucklebee (Linda Piccone), have built a wall between the neighboring lovers in ‘The Fantasticks.’
Set during the Great Depression in the early 1930s, Susannah (Jessica Wortham) is a stiff, staunch and white ethnomusicologist for the Library of Congress. She’s ambitious about getting a teaching job at Harvard, so she travels from prison to prison to find black singers to record songs that date back “before slavery times.”
