CRITIC AT LARGE
2018: A Year of Winning Musical Collaborations Across the City
In 2018, the key players of San Diego’s classical music scene struck gold by collaborating with each other. Enlisting some 10 musical organizations in its month-long “It’s About Time Time” festival in January, the San Diego Symphony set a high bar of cooperation for the coming year, but other organizations readily took up the challenge with rewarding results.
Read MoreCan San Diego Go From a ‘Good’ to a ‘Great’ Theatre Town?
I don’t pretend to be an expert in the business of theatre, but as an interested observer I have been alarmed by both the decrease in the number of professional productions, as well as the difficulty of finding venues where work can be produced.
Read MoreSan Diego Theater in 2018 Marked a Long 15 Years of a Disconcerting Trend
Just as ‘Hamilton’ was the best show in the history of the universe in 2018, all wasn’t exactly right with the theater world. Case in point: San Diego had an enormous success in ‘Hamilton,’ even as its general theater climate has been quietly drifting toward commercial enterprise for some time.
Read MoreNeil Simon (such as he was)
Marvin Neil Simon, whose name and reputation equated with massive Broadway and Hollywood success amid stories about the grit of the big-city day and the familial entanglements within it, died Sunday, Aug. 26 at Manhattan’s New York-Presbyterian Hospital of complications of pneumonia. He was 91. For those familiar with the mid-20th century’s Sid Caesar and…
Read MoreSleek ‘Much Ado’ Takes a Mediterranean Break At The Old Globe
On the sunny Riviera of the 1930s, Facist troops take a break from combat to pursue the ancient nonsense of the beloved Shakespearean comedy ‘Much Ado About Nothing.’ almost everybody does a fine job and there’s one extraordinary turn.
Read More‘Angels in America’ Confronts the Politics of the Trump Terror
If you think that the timing of the current successful revivals of Tony Kushner’s award winning play “Angels in America: a Gay Fantasia on National Themes” in New York City and at the Berkeley Rep in the San Francisco Bay Area is accidental, then you have not been paying attention to either the playwright or to Washington politics.
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