Cy Ashley Webb
Cy spent the ‘80’s as a bench scientist, the tech boom doing intellectual property law, and the first decade of the millennium, aspiring to be the world’s oldest grad student at Stanford where she is interested in political martyrdom. Presently, she enjoys writing for Stark Insider and the SF Examiner, hanging out at Palo Alto Children's Theatre, and participating in various political activities. Democracy is not a spectator sport! Cy is a SFBATCC member.
Original Broadway Cast: ‘IF/THEN’ at the Orpheum, San Francisco (Review)
Superficially, the execution appears unremarkable until it hits that your brain has been stolen by the shape of the entire dance, moving on the stage like a school of fish, leaving you more aware of the geometries that power it forward.
Philharmonia Baroque and Richard Egarr: Lithe, light, friendly
This material highlights how different the historically informed performances of PBO (and the Academy of Ancient Music) are from anything most of us grew up with. This was driven home by snippet of what must have been an early ‘60’s recording which sounded stultifying, thick, and very unBaroque.
Not Just a Morality Tale: Date Night at Pet Emergency
Rothman's considerable strengths, as a writer and performer, make this show worth taking in.
Premiering Noel Coward: ‘Sail Away’
Even if you don’t like her acting style, you’ll marvel at her command, her timing, her eyebrows. Watching her makes me start connecting lines back to a young Carol Burnett.
Shaping sound, shaping dance
This touring show has even more of the flash and glitz of the reality TV, which audience seemed to revel in, breaking into spontaneous applause after sequences of multiple pirouettes.
Making Piracy Pay: The Hypocrites’ Pirates of Penzance
This take on the Gilbert and Sullivan classic tweaks a more than a few bits, with Frederic confused with Frodo, and pilots with pirate.
The Berkeley Submarine
Within seconds of lights going down, kids in the audience began to burst into irrepressible giggles at the sight of Slater Penney and Jaron Hollander, as if all were privy to some inside joke.
Let X Be the Universe: ‘Proof’ at TheatreWorks
Peter Callender travels the biggest distance as Robert, moving between living and dead, from compulsively filling notebooks with meaningless drivel to one who arrives from the hereafter, moving with a generous slowness and clarity that reads as wisdom, in a way that only Callender can.
At The Stage: ‘RFK’ reminds us of a different kind of politics
Arrow’s got RFK’s pointed elbow jabs, along with hair that falls like Kennedy hair when pushed aside, and a Boston accent that takes me back to Dorchester Ave. where “war” still requires two syllables.
Wildly Exuberant & Coyly Petulant at Smuin Ballet’s season opener
This seductive dreaminess even penetrates the second movement, but dreamy woodwinds yield to more assertive sounds, and the dancers (starting with a group of four men and a woman) respond in kind.
