theater

Finding Love's Labours This past week brought the consummately skilled young actors of the Globe Theater to Cal Performances’ Zellerbach Hall stage in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost—not one of Will’s most satisfying plays. Nevertheless, the production brought to it everything that was possible, gilding its edges with superlative acting and a charming traditional theatrical production. Everything was in place, so that the play’s lapses—its...

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Recreating Shakespeare One of the best things about being in London, besides the simple fact of being in London, is the opportunity it offers for going to the theater. And chief among its theater delights are productions of Shakespeare. It’s not just a matter of having the right accent; it’s a dedication to the work, which is rightly considered a diamond in England’s tiara and which forms the foundation of many of England’s acting schools. Perhaps ironically, the...

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Physical theater and performance The room we are milling around in is a small black box. On three walls are projected newsreel footage from World War II. Nazis march in lines, Churchill stands before an assembly, J. Robert...

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Brides ... Based loosely on Aeschylus’ trilogy on the Danaides, the 50 daughters of Danaus who killed their bridegrooms on their wedding night, the play Big Love, by Charles Mee, examines gender and power-based gender relationships. Full of physicality—both male and...

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Sending Out a Stylish SOS The stage was filled with screens; downstage center, three cameras faced upstage into the screens. Wires, cables and the stark trees of tripods clustered downstage. From the ceiling a grid of pipes suspended projectors over the no-man’s-land between stage and audience. It was all part of the act as the New York–based Big Art Group performed its own techno Big Top at the Forum at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts this past weekend, in its most...

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Problem solving ... Measure for Measure is considered a “problem” play: that is to say, not only one that does not fall neatly into tragedy or comedy but also one in which a problem is solved. In this case, the problem of punishing human desire and the probity of mercy. It’s a play whose problems are solved indirectly, however, so that the ethics questioned are never completely addressed, and the playwright steals off like a thief down an alley, leaving us...

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