‘It’s the early 19th century/ And we’re gonna take this country back/ For people like us.” With this battle cry begins Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, a rock musical about populism, celebrity culture and the seventh president of the United States.
Articles by Sean Conwell
This title, now on the marquee at City Lights Theater, suggests a lightweight sex farce. In reality, while the play is erotically charged and uproariously funny, Pulitzer-nominee Sarah Ruhl (The Clean House, Eurydice, Dead Man’s Cell Phone) has crafted something that is also unexpectedly complex and stunningly poignant.
San Jose Rep’s West Coast premiere of Theresa Rebeck’s rollicking three-person comedy The Understudy begins, like a track race, with a gunshot.
Thanks for Playing … The Game Show Show! depicts events on the set of The Secret Square, a fictional 1950s quiz show. A casting assistant (Shannon Guggenheim) braves sexism and the stresses of live television production
San Jose Stage Co. looks at the history of the Buffalo Soldiers in the Philippine-American war.
Reza’s play has been translated from its original French, made into a movie by Roman Polanski and is now on the boards at San Jose Rep. This co-production with Arizona Theatre Company, directed by Rick Lombardo, features a cast and crew that were warmly received last year in Tucson and Phoenix.
When viewing such a “modernized” version of Shakespeare, it’s hard not to be struck with an initial sense of incongruity. Can we really accept an actor in 21st-century street clothes speaking in early-modern English? If the play is done well, as the powerful new City Lights production of Hamlet is, then we can accept it just as readily as we can accept actors talking to themselves in soliloquy.
San Jose Stage Company’s new production does justice to Sam Shepard’s dark, surreal and often hilarious family drama ‘Buried Child’
Rob Handel’s Aphrodisiac, now at City Lights theater, is a political thriller—with a twist, which I’ll get to in a moment—that speculates about the mystery of the political beast.
San Jose Stage Company opens their season with a steamy production of Kander and Ebb’s burlesque musical.
