Wendy MacLeod’s Black Comedy Stacks the Deck by Jennifer Ann Charron It’s Thanksgiving, a day for holding our tongues and biting our lips. But in Wendy MacLeod’s “The House of Yes,” at the Pascal family’s posh home, secrets and eccentricities are seeping out, helter-skelter. A tale of comic, catastrophic family dysfunction, “The House of…
Jaclyn Backhaus Spins Men, Gender, & Western Lore by Jennifer Ann Charron and Barry David Horwitz In “Men on Boats,” Jaclyn Backhaus transforms the deadpan journals of a 19th century explorer into a thrilling, hilarious play that ridicules masculine myths and U.S. “Manifest Destiny.” One-armed Major John Wesley Powell, (self-assured Liz Sklar) keeps meticulous…
REFLECTIONS Elizabeth Craven Creates Exceptional Live Theater by Jennifer Ann Charron Grinding through life as a single mom of two teenagers in the East Bay—you know the drill—underpaid, overworked, I’m lucky enough to spend many weekends in West Sonoma County. A beautiful piece of the North Bay, West Sonoma juxtaposes new vineyards, old hippies,…
Conor McPherson Infuses Down & Out with Poetry & Grace by Jennifer Ann Charron Conor McPherson’s beautiful, award-winning “The Night Alive” steals a glimpse at five broken lives in modern Dublin. Intimately set in the filthy rented room of 50-ish Tommy (superb Anthony Abateʹ), we get an in-your-face look at how far he has…