Alex Bigman

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• Posted Absurd Humanity: The Chairs at Cutting Ball Theater to Culture/Entertainment
  Theater of the absurd, the catchall term for the works of post-World War II writers like Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, is...
• Posted Just Crass: Dead Metaphor at A.C.T. to Culture/Entertainment
  Dead Metaphor, George F. Walker's political "black comedy" now running at American Conservatory Theater, begins at a job placement agency for veterans, with what...
• Posted The Appalling Spectacle of Mike Tyson's "Undisputed Truth" to Culture/Entertainment
  "Don't worry - everyone's leaving with both ears tonight," joked a dapper-looking Mike Tyson toward the start of his travelling one-man performance, Mike Tyson:...
• Posted A Berkeley Travesty: Our Practical Heaven At The Aurora Theatre Company to Culture/Entertainment
  Beating out hundreds of other scripts, Anthony Clarvoe's Our Practical Heaven received top honors in the Aurora Theatre Company's 2011 Global Age Project (GAP),...
• Posted Oh, the Mendacity!: African American Shakespeare Company's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to Culture/Entertainment
  The African American Shakespeare Company's production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof comes during an off-year for Tennessee Williams plays. The American Conservatory...
• Posted Solid But Safe: 4,000 Miles At A.C.T. to Culture/Entertainment
  Amy Herzog's 4,000 Miles begins with shaggy, smelly, twenty-one-year-old Leo (Reggie Gowland) showing up one night at the Manhattan apartment of his ninety-one-year-old Grandma...
• Posted Kick-A Adventures, Cut Short: Troublemaker at Berkeley Rep to Culture/Entertainment
  "I'm having trouble getting into the mind of a twelve and a half-year-old." This was more or less the feeling I was bracing for...
• Posted Soul of a Holiday: A Christmas Carol at A.C.T. to Culture/Entertainment
  There are those who decry contemporary Christmas for losing touch with its religious roots and reforming itself in the name of consumerism instead. They...
• Posted Mesmerizing from Every Angle: The White Snake at Berkeley Rep to Culture/Entertainment
  It's the holiday season. Your family is in town, and now that you've seen Lincoln, you're seeking something more spiritually fulfilling than the silver...
• Posted The Human Condition in Four One-Acts: Wilder Times at Aurora Theatre to Culture/Entertainment
  Thornton Wilder found a liberating potential in quick, one-act plays. Not beholden to the rounding out of full narrative arcs, they offer just glimpses...
• Posted Vengeance Dies Hard: Elektra at A.C.T. to Culture/Entertainment
  Greek tragedies are not the sort of play you come out of, quoting lines. The words all but recede into crashing tidal waves of...
• Posted Ugly Text, Beautiful Show: The Lion King at SHN to Culture/Entertainment
  Break out the leopard prints, ladies; The Lion King is in town. I'll start by saying that reviewing this play is pointless; as with...
• Posted A Real Screamer: The Normal Heart at A.C.T. to Culture/Entertainment
  Contagion. Specifically, HIV/AIDS, but the very early days of the outbreak - the days of patient zero, when deaths were beginning to mount in...
• Posted Cult Of Cruise: Port Out, Starboard Home At Z Space to Culture/Entertainment
  Cruise fanatics, in particular younger ones, are no doubt a weird bunch. It bespeaks a certain personality (or, pathology) to serially indulge in this...
• Posted Big on Slam but Light on Body: The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity at Aurora Theatre Co. to Culture/Entertainment
  In spite of the dramatic art form's possibilities, theater goers - a population that tends to fall few standard deviations above the 18 -...
• Posted Beloved, But Not Brave: War Horse At The Curran to Culture/Entertainment
  After seeing War Horse at the Curran Theatre, I walked down the street to a speakeasy-themed bar, where I sat for a while and...
• Posted Small but Sharp: Ray of Light Theatre's Sweeney Todd to Culture/Entertainment
  Since Stephen Sondheim elevated him to Broadway in 1979, Victorian anti-hero Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, has been nicking victims on...
• Posted Going Strong After 25 Years: Les Miserables to Culture/Entertainment
  Les Miserables is a play that I have been aware of for what feels like my entire life without knowing a thing about it....
• Posted Modern Minstrelsy: Scottsboro Boys at A.C.T. to Culture/Entertainment
  The Scottsboro Boys, written by David Thompson with music and lyrics by Broadway titans John Kander and Fred ebb (Cabaret, Chicago), opened two years...
• Posted Reclaiming Intensity for Women: Emotional Creature at Berkeley Rep to Culture/Entertainment
  "Everything is intense to me," sings one of the girls in Eve Ensler's Emotional Creature. Her tone is not one of frustration or shame,...
• Posted Theaters of War: Salomania at the Aurora Theatre to Culture/Entertainment
  The word "theater" has a curious place in the vocabulary of war, where it means something like "arena" (WWII was split between the Pacific...
• Posted On the Road: Japandroids, How to Dress Well, The Jesus and Mary Chain to Culture/Entertainment
  Pruning next month's concert calendar for the not-to-be-missed Japandroids (6/14 at The Independent · Tickets) Japandroids' Celebration Rock begins and ends with fireworks, though...
• Posted On the Road: Destroyer w/ Sandro Perri, Tycho, Mogwai to Culture/Entertainment
  Pruning next month's concert calendar for the not-to-be-missed Destroyer w/ Sandro Perri (6/5 at The Fillmore · Tickets) Sandro Perri has come a long...
• Posted A Dim Conclusion: Play and Endgame at A.C.T. to Culture/Entertainment
  Samuel Beckett's Endgame is a play about the end; whether of all humanity or merely one individual consciousness, critics continue to debate, and a...
• Posted Voices from the Center Cut: Tenderloin at Cutting Ball Theater to Culture/Entertainment
  Tenderloin Trailer from The Cutting Ball Theater on Vimeo. Welcome to the Tenderloin. If spoken by an outsider to the neighborhood, it's likely this...
• Posted Less Than Ekstasis: Julia Holter At The Rickshaw Stop to Culture/Entertainment
  Following up on our own recommendations It felt very much like a school night at the Rickshaw Stop on Sunday. Prior to the headlining...
• Posted English and Erotic: Wild Beasts Rock The Independent to Culture/Entertainment
  Following up on our own recommendations The stage at The Independent, bathed luxuriously in deep blue, purple and turquoise light, was an anemone of...
• Posted Girls' Night Out: Wild Flag and EMA at the Fillmore to Culture/Entertainment
  Following up on our own recommendations Wild Flag's riot grrrl tunes, rollicking electric pop with punk-flare, may not occupy quite the same sphere as...
• Posted Freudian Philandering: Anatol at Aurora Theatre Company to Culture/Entertainment
  What is a sitcom, but a series of episodes making light of life's little tests -- frequently sex-related ones? By this definition, the typically...
• Posted Not Dead Yet: Spamalot at the Orpheum Theatre to Culture/Entertainment
  Spamalot, Eric Idle's loving Broadway adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), has received almost uniform praise from the critics and theatergoers...