Great news! FAT PIG at Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley has been extended. If you get a chance it's a highly recommended show. Don't forget to watch our interview with the star of the show, actress Liliane Klein. And here is the link to the StarkSilverCreek review by Clinton Stark. In...

by Charles Dickens Adapted by Carey Perloff and Paul Walsh Music by Karl Lundeberg Choreography by Val Caniparoli Directed by Domenique Lozano Based on the original direction by Carey Perloff The Bay Area's favorite holiday tradition returns to A.C.T. with a sparkling, music-infused A Christmas Carol. Featuring mean ol' Scrooge, adorable Tiny Tim, those spooky Christmas...

Is Santa Claus real or is he just a homeless man with a jolly attitude, bursting belly and good sense of humor? Grumpy, burnt-out Karol (Lisa-Marie Newton) must search for the answer when The Man (Michael Johnson) breaks into her home on Christmas eve. His motives are unclear; instead of stealing...

Oh, what would Bing Crosby think—or sing? Yes it's a white Christmas in 1940's Indiana, but they're no chestnuts roasting by the fire. Instead we enter the wacky, even sometimes gloriously campy, world of the Parkers: leg lamps, hound-stealing turkeys, rubber snakes falling from the skies, and grumpy mall...

Through-and-through, fantastic! Yet again I'm impressed with the quality of family entertainment Berkeley Playhouse offers its lucky theater goers. A packed house of kids and parents on Sunday relished in the magic, singing, dancing of this updated version of the venerable The Wizard of Oz. It is first class family entertainment...

The Devil is in the Delivery

"It's a pseudo documentary about reality in the theater," says one of the characters/actors in David Greenspan's She Stoops to Comedy which premiered last night at SF Playhouse. It's one of several, pithy lines that occasionally inject entertainment value into the otherwise uneven gender-bending production. The pieces don't add up and instead of a...

AURORA THEATRE COMPANY SCRIPT CLUB New installment examines LaBute and Williams Monday, November 30, 2009, 7:30pm WHAT: Berkeley’s acclaimed Aurora Theatre Company presents the second Aurora Script Club meeting of the season with Tennessee Williams’ 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Aurora Theatre Company Education Director Michael Mansfield hosts this moderated...

Guest post by Pat Reardon. Sideman: A sideman is a professional musician who is hired to perform or record with a group of which he is not a regular member. Sidemen are generally required to be adaptable to many different styles of music, and so able to fit smoothly into...

Near the end of Fat Pig, a no-holds barred look at how we think about ourselves and others, plus-size Helen says, "I would change for you." But the real question is whether Tom, her peer-pressure laden lover, will do the same. Written by American playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute, the...