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2 weeks ago | 
broadwayworld.com | Steve Murray
A true story of unspeakable injustice is beautifully realized in Parade, deservedly winner of the 2023 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical. Like its dramatic courtroom cousins Inherit then Wind and To Kill a Mockingbird, Parade brings humanity to a tragedy, faces to the pictures projected on a huge backdrop screen, and a heightened emotional realism through Jason Robert Browns’ Tony winning score.
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2 weeks ago | 
broadwayworld.com | Steve Murray
JC Lee’s 2022 To My Girls continues the tradition of a group of gay guys getting together to trade snarky barbs, renew friendships and uncover hidden grudges. First seen in 1968’s Boy in the Band with its often-dark depiction of gay life, through 1989’s heartbreaking Longtime Companian, to 2000’s Broken Hearts Club, To My Girls is the millennial’s version replacing pot and AIDS with blender drinks and drag lip synching.
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3 weeks ago | 
broadwayworld.com | Steve Murray
Andrew Bergh’s The Radicalization of Rolfe, winner of a 2016 FringeNYC Overall Excellence Award, might have had its germination by observing the naïve American white males joining the MAGA movement of our current president. Young, impressionable males willing to forsake reason and civility for demagoguery and authoritarianism.
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4 weeks ago | 
broadwayworld.com | Steve Murray
San Francisco Producing Director and co-founder Susi Damilano has done a remarkable job of imagining the world of fifteen-year-old mathematics genius Christopher who just happens to be autistic. With stunning choreography by movement director Bridgette Loriaux, this production of Mark Haddon’s novel, winner of seven Olivier and five Tony awards, is a thrill for the senses and a rollercoaster for the emotions.
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1 month ago | 
broadwayworld.com | Steve Murray
The San Francisco Mime Troupe, founded in 1959, started with movement "Events" with visual art elements and music, segued to commedia dell’arte, and now presents fully fledged outdoor political musical theatre with a decidedly “left” bent.
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1 month ago | 
broadwayworld.com | Steve Murray
Jiehae Park’s World Premiere of her memory play the aves is gorgeously presented with a remarkable scenic design by visual artist Marsha Ginsberg. That the setting, and some fanciful avian puppetry by Erik Sanko becomes the focal point of the play is problematic. The story, set in a number of vignettes, involves two elders (Bill Buell, Mia Katigbak), apparently partners for fifty years, sitting on a park bench having a mundane conversation about pigeons and the weather.
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1 month ago | 
broadwayworld.com | Steve Murray
It’s hard not to be swept up in the Mamma Mia juggernaut. Since its Broadway premiere in 2001, it’s grossed over $4.5 billion, been seen by 70 million people, turned into two record-breaking movies with productions in 16 different languages. It has a perfect confluence of jukebox musical components – a sweet romcom story and the timeless music of ABBA, no slouches in the music business being one of the best-selling music acts in the history of popular music.
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1 month ago | 
broadwayworld.com | Steve Murray
A sensational rape trial with high profile participants, the female accuser’s reputation besmirched, the alleged rapists’ pals piling on the dirt - a he said, she said scenario being played out in the male dominated courts. Is this Weinstein, Epstein, Cosby, Clinton, Thomas, or Trump? In Billy Barrett and Ellice Stevens’ gripping courtroom drama, the victim is Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, and the time is 1612.
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1 month ago | 
broadwayworld.com | Steve Murray
Two Trains Running is the seventh work in two-time Pulitzer winning author August Wilsons Pittsburg Cycle and continued his chronicling of the Black experience post migration to the North. Set in Pittsburgh’s once prosperous Hill District, the play focuses on diner owner Memphis Lee, facing the pressures of economic decline caused by segregation, industrial restructuring, and suburbanization in the 1960s.
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2 months ago | 
broadwayworld.com | Steve Murray
The apocalypse just wouldn’t be any fun without the rapier wit ruminations of actor/comic/performance artists David Mills, here in San Francisco for two shows as part of his ‘four-show national tour.’ After decades in London, Mills is back in NYC and his acclimation isn’t as joyous as you’d think. With his silver-tongued signature and very droll manner, he launches into a nightmarish description of a stroll uptown replete with rats, feces, homeless drug addicts and children selling Chicklets.
