press coverage

praise for past productions

 

season 06/07

about great men of genius

  • NPR review by Nate Johnson (1.9MB mp3)
  • TheaterMania feature by Mike Daisey
  • KPFA interview by C.S. Soong (21MB mp3)
  • “comic, poignant and thought-provoking…entertaining and impressive…a monologue of pugnaciously revelatory satire…Daisey charges into the material with energizingly pugnacious bravado, satiric glee and investigative skill…told with wit and panache, Daisey punctuating his words with sharp gestures as his flexible voice assumes different characters and rises from intimate confidences to manic bellows…The result isn’t just highly entertaining. It’s also bracingly honest and affecting.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Watching a Mike Daisey show is a lot like staying up all night listening to the maniacal rantings of the smartest kid in your dorm holding forth on science, art, showmanship, megalomania and, of course, Star Trek…Comic timing is Daisey’s secret weapon…I laughed so hard I cried…Great Men is big-time brain candy that takes a while to digest. It’s a colossally gutsy project that takes the whole medium-is-the-message thing seriously as Daisey slaps the convention of the short and tight solo genre upside the head…seeing these shows as stand-alone solos would be cheating yourself of one of the cheekiest theatrical adventures in recent memory…it was like having Daisey teach a full-on Western Civ survey class.”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “Just once, it’d be nice to see Mike Daisey and Garrison Keillor trade places, not so much to hear Keillor’s nostalgically mellow take on Daisey’s world, but to see Daisey rip the lid off Lake Wobegon and expose its wicked underbelly. Daisey is a Keillor for the seriously perverse…He blends the lives of Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nikola Tesla and L. Ron Hubbard with snapshots from his own life to present four compelling, strange and wildly hilarious solo theatrical pieces that can be enjoyed either individually or in a mind-expanding Sunday-long marathon…He is a mesmerizing performer who spins words into comic and emotional gold, revealing as much about himself as the subjects he is discussing…The pieces are all hugely entertaining.”—Contra Costa Times
  • “In the first few minutes, Daisey had us in the palm of his meaty hand, tickling our bellies. (Our scribbled notes in the darkness say this: "Fucking HILARIOUS.")…He paints for us not only pictures of who these men were, but also of himself, and, by association, how the productivity and madness of genius can be expressed in our own lives. And did we say he’s funny? Daisey is freaking funny. And smart…He is a cross between Louis Black and Andy Richter, or the love child of Spalding Gray and Micheal McShane…The ultimate result is a vivid and detailed portrait of the nature of megalomania and success…the five-hour plus journey was brilliantly executed. We say, stock up on trail mix, coffee, chocolate, and get tickets for one of the remaining Sunday marathons before this unique theatrical experience sells out.”—SFist

about oliver twist

  • KCBS interview with Michael Wartella (1.6MB mp3)
  • Broadway World feature by Eugene Lovendusky
  • San Leandro Times feature on Jennifer Ikeda
  • “engagingly grungy and entertaining…delightfully theatrical…Bartlett and his brilliant set and costume designer Rae Smith stage Oliver’s episodic saga—from his birth in a pauper’s workhouse through Fagin’s den of child thieves to safety in the arms of opportune benefactors—within the grimy, distressed four walls of a wonderfully theatrical box set, starkly lit with bare bulbs and full of hidden trapdoors, cranks, levers and other fetchingly low-tech devices. Gerard McBurney’s buoyantly sly score infuses the action with bumptious, sentimental and ominous tunes…a cross between the Royal Shakespeare Company’s classic, epic, modified story-theater Nicholas Nickleby and the in-your-face penny-dreadful glee of Shockheaded Peter…a striking, even captivating production…true to Dickens’ social-reform concerns and satiric humor”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “wildly innovative and thoroughly engaging…The Neil Bartlett adaptation, which ran in London and New York before opening here, is such a wild and rollicking production, stylized to give the feel of a Victorian English music hall potboiler, that it encourages a playful approach from its audience…The characters mug outrageously and gesture large enough to be seen from high points all around the Bay Area…In the end, the production is a faithful retelling of the Oliver Twist story, but the unique and colorful style makes it a fresh and exciting experience.”—Contra Costa Times
  • “Beautiful…keen acting, clever writing and lurid music hall atmosphere…Bartlett has stayed true to the tone of Dickens’ novel while rigorously parsing it down to little more than two hours…Certainly, there could not be a more perfect Oliver than Michael Wartella. With a small frame dominated by silently pleading eyes, the actor helps give the production some emotional potency as our little lost tyke makes his way amid the thugs, avarice and filth of 19th-century London.”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “Closing its season with an astounding coup de grace, Berkeley Repertory Theatre is presenting Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, adapted and brilliantly directed by Neil Bartlett. This production wowed ‘em in London, Boston and New York, and the final stop of its U.S. Tour is here in Berkeley where it certainly wowed me—and I’m sure it will you too! The fabulous, ensemble cast of 13, playing multiple roles, presents an old-fashioned dramatization of the Dickens’ classic. And, it’s performed in no way that you’ve ever seen done before. The characters thrillingly come to life, and there’s plenty of humor and pathos performed on their own old-fashioned British stage. They’ve really saved this season’s best for last as you’ll positively be mesmerized by this theatrical surprise epic.”—KGO radio
  • “Dickens is at his rabble-rousing, hyperbolic best…The Twist that opened Wednesday at Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre is a spin on Victorian melodrama complete with footlights, bare-bones theatricality and overblown acting that wouldn’t be out of place in a silent film…In the realm of Dickens’ thick darkness, director Bartlett does well…and occasionally, he creeps us out with actors playing a screechy violin, a disconcerting hurdy-gurdy and a serpent-shaped horn that blows no good…Everything in Oliver Twist is so dark, so mean and so biting, it’s funny—by design. For all the grimness, there’s abundant humor…Amid all the inventive direction and diverting theatrics, we hear Dickens loud and clear: There’s goodness in the world, and most of us are squelching or ignoring it.”—Inside Bay Area
  • “Intoxicating…as gaudy and menacing as a carousel in a disused fairground…Like a trip to San Francisco’s Musée Mecanique, the play transports us to another time and place of magical contraptions and sideshow freaks…this dirty finger-nailed firecracker of a production creates something both dramatically vivid and politically engaging out of its source material…The story generally careens along, devouring Dickens’ words at the same dreamlike pace that the mercurial Carson Elrod’s Artful Dodger leads Michael Wartella’s waifish Oliver through the streets of London. Every now and again, though, the action abruptly switches gear…a zany theatrical conceit which brilliantly mimics the physical sensation of turning the pages of a novel…Please, sir, I want some more.”—SF Weekly

about blue door

  • KPFA interview with Delroy Lindo (9MB mp3)
  • KCBS interview with Delroy Lindo (1.8MB mp3)
  • San Francisco Magazine interview with Delroy Lindo (PDF)
  • American Theatre interview with Tanya Barfield (PDF)
  • San Francisco Chronicle feature on Delroy Lindo
  • SF Bay Guardian interview with Delroy Lindo
  • “It’s an impressive local debut for all four major players…Delroy Lindo’s production is as expertly staged as it is performed…Barfield’s dialogue, with its curiously muscular lyricism, is full of unexpected rewards—sly turns of phrase, choice metaphors and well-chosen bits of African and African American lore.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Director Delroy Lindo has done a masterful job…this unusual story places questions of race, heritage and responsibility on a very personal level…It is a powerful evening, deftly presented by the two men, who are almost consumed by the characters they play, managing to give each specific and effective traits that make them painfully realistic and delightfully human. It is a remarkable acting job…a memorable, eloquent play that will be recalled as much for its clarity as it is for its message.”—Contra Costa Times
  • “cuts close to the bone…Barfield’s play is not a simple timeline of the impact of slavery on the black experience. Instead she finds ways to let the history flash from the moments in Lewis’ life, drawing the parallels between past and present that he always has been desperate to erase…Each moment seems full and ripe with an idiosyncratic sense of truth…Delroy Lindo, a noted actor making just his second directorial effort, has orchestrated this 90-minute piece with nimble precision.”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “Director Lindo guides his two actors through a handsome production…the performances are striking…when Barfield conjures the past through of Simon and Jesse, the play surges with passion, courage and lyrical beauty in the face of horror.”—Oakland Tribune
  • “Magnificent…what starts out to be a mild comedy, turns into an intense, dramatic experience. Absolutely brilliant performances are turned in by its two-man cast—stage and screen actors David Fonteno and Teagle F. Bougere. And it is powerfully directed by prominent actor Delroy Lindo, making his Berkeley Rep directorial debut a huge success…This is must-see theatre.”—KGO radio

about to the lighthouse

  • NPR’s Artery looks inside the Lighthouse (2.9MB mp3)
  • San Jose Mercury News feature on Les Waters (4.7MB PDF)
  • San Francisco Chronicle feature on Paul Dresher
  • “Les Waters’ brilliantly orchestrated staging of Adele Edling Shank’s canny adaptation of one of the greatest chapters in 20th century literature lights up Berkeley Repertory’s Roda Theatre…The entire dinner scene is, as one guest internally exclaims of the main dish, “A triumph!”…lovingly prepared and served to perfection by all…it’s a dish to be savored for years to come.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s fascinating world premiere adaptation echoes the radicalism of Woolf’s style. Director Les Waters, a master of the oblique, pushes his technique to its extremes, plunging us into a roiling sea of madly genre-bending juxtapositions that alternately startle and beguile us…Like the novel, the play has an essentially experimental soul. It takes thrillingly big risks that push the act of viewing into a new realm…this Lighthouse is shot through with flashes of genius that feel strangely intimate…a multimedia concert that encompasses text, music and video but is bounded by none of them.”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “breathtakingly wonderful…A true multimedia show, the play pushes the rules of theater in various new directions by blending dialogue, sound, scene, music and even silence into a captivating evening…To the Lighthouse unfolds languidly, taking its own sweet time to poke into the darkest corners of family life revealing secrets that often surprise even those who are keeping them…not only an evocative piece of storytelling, but a unique piece of art.”—Contra Costa Times
  • “Bright, beautiful, severe…Berkeley Rep’s Lighthouse shines in vivid, captivating adaptation…Playwright Adele Edling Shank, director Les Waters and composer Paul Dresher have risen to the challenge and done well by Woolf and her admirers…Waters’ command of multimedia combined with the adept efforts of his cast—headed by a radiant Monique Fowler as Mrs. Ramsay—create an invigorating, captivating theater experience.”—Oakland Tribune
  • “A delightful play…The acting by Monique Fowler as Mrs. Ramsay is worth the price of admission alone.”—KGO radio

about the pillowman

  • KCBS interview with actor Matt Maher (4.8MB mp3)
  • San Francisco Chronicle feature by Sam Hurwitt
  • San Francisco Chronicle feature by Steven Winn
  • “ASTONISHING…Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman is a fairy tale wrapped in a nightmare told with uncommon mastery…a whodunit that keeps spinning outrageously out of control…with McDonagh’s trademark blend of outrageous violence and humor…Masterfully staged by Les Waters and brilliantly performed, the intricate tale resonates with questions about the art, reliablity and responsibility of storytelling…a remarkable script made riveting in the Berkeley Repertory Theatre production”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “STUNNING…The Pillowman gives an entirely new spin to the notion of theatrical magic…McDonagh is a masterful teller of tales, with all the skills and tricks of a pub raconteur…If you see it, just be prepared for a breathtaking theatrical experience that, in an emotional sense, is not unlike mixing it up with a gaggle of pro wrestlers for a few hours…like listening to Jiffy Pop on a hot stove…you find yourself laughing insanely”—Contra Costa Times
  • “ELECTRIFYING…Abandon all hope of a good night’s sleep if you dare enter the macabre world of Martin McDonagh. You’ll be howling from start to finish—partly in laughter, partly in terror, usually both…There is not a false breath as the pitch-perfect ensemble channels the demons of modern society…Director Les Waters has transported the sick and twisted genius of playwright Martin McDonagh into the realm of the sublime…the only thing that may stop us from giving a standing ovation is that we can’t quite find our legs.”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “FASCINATING…Shockingly good…Macabre, perverse and compelling…here is a drama full of shocking details that carefully and quite skillfully navigates the division between exploitation, tragedy and dark comedy”—Oakland Tribune
  • “THRILLING, engrossing, hilarious theater…perplexing, outrageous, very, very funny, and more than a little scary…a fascinating who-done-it with Stoppard-class sparkling wit…Grimm Brothers on steroids…you’ll be well rewarded, find it impossible to skip the second act, and be marinated in mirth and suspense…a splendid production, directed by Les Waters, and featuring a fine cast.”—San Francisco Examiner
  • “FASCINATING…You’re going to gasp. You’re going to scream. You’re going to holler…The cast is fantastic…It should be in for a long run.”—KGO radio

about all wear bowlers

  • San Francisco Chronicle feature by Sam Hurwitt
  • “deftly executed classic comic shtick…Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford emerge from what looks like a silent film comedy version of Waiting for Godot into an updated Laurel and Hardy world onstage in their poignant slapstick romp on the edge of the existential void…their duet packs a considerable amount of pleasure into a beguiling 75 minutes.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Hats off to bowlers, Berkeley Rep’s hilarious new comedy…a wildly innovative and funny treat…insanely wonderful—heartwarming in all the right ways, elegantly performed and leaving you breathlessly in awe…a safari into silliness that everyone wants to take”—Contra Costa Times
  • “Existential terror takes us quite unawares amid the spit-up funny slapstick and dippy pratfalls in this 80-minute tour de chuckles…Bowlers tickles the brain (like a silent film homage) and the funny bone (like a fourth-grader at recess)…Frankly, its all rather odd and definitely kind of random, but ultimately it’s irresistible.”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “an extraordinary bit of staging…as astonishing as it is amusing…Clowning is often derided as kids’ stuff, but as Sobelle and Lyford demonstrate in all wear bowlers, there’s an art to making grown-ups ponder mortality while making them laugh like 10-year-olds…Imagine Beckett’s Waiting for Godot crossed with a Laurel and Hardy short and you have the essence of bowlers, a 75-minute excursion into absurdity of the highest order…avant garde, but in a completely accessible, often hilarious way.”—Oakland Tribune
  • “a fabulously comic romp…elegant and surprisingly deep. See it because it’s funny, because the performers are brilliant…these guys do all their own stunts, and it’s beautiful to watch…Eggs, newspaper, power tools, an especially rickety-looking ladder—all get used and abused to maximum comic effect…75 minutes whip by too fast in a blur of helpless, teary laughter.”—East Bay Express

about passing strange

  • NPR’s California Report with Colin Berry (9MB mp3)
  • San Francisco Chronicle feature by Sam Hurwitt
  • “an engaging coming-of-age story, told with the energy of an art-rock concert…clever, tuneful songs keep its pulse racing, in comic and unexpectedly affecting passages…It’s a portrait of the artist as a young bohemian whose spiritual awakening [is] a musical epiphany…As a song cycle, it’s technically impressive…As a play, it’s an entertaining travelogue…With the band cooking—on every form from gospel and blues to punk, cabaret, soul, minstrel, calypso and performance art—Stew sings in a powerful, flexible voice as comfortably capacious on a tender ballad as it is energizing in a down and dirty blues growl.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Stew rocks, yo! Musically, the singer/songwriter serves up one hot dish with Passing Strange…It’s the archetypal hipster-coming-of-age tale…the score is smokin’. Full of funkadelic feel-good anthems, it slides from punk to rock to blues like a good party mix…There is no end to the smart-aleck wit in this play”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “It took nearly 40 years, but we finally have the first coming-of-age-in-the-‘60s play that truly gets it right, with all the sex, drugs, radical politics and angst intact…Passing Strange expands the possibility of what musical theater can be…Stew leads a five-piece band, circling the stage through a score that defies you to remain motionless in your seat…a sparkling, engaging and highly entertaining show.”—Contra Costa Times
  • “Make no mistake, this is a terrific show…a musical in the guise of a concert…pulsates with the sounds of pop, rock, funk, punk, gospel, folk and New Wave…Stew and Rodewald create music that feels authentic—a rarity in this world of shiny, corporate musical theater.”—Oakland Tribune
  • “These days, Stew is in transition from rocker to theatre star and from the Bay Area to the Big Apple…This rocker in the midst of actors is creating a new kind of theatre, a spontaneous performance genre with few precedents outside of Hedwig and Hair…Tickets for the play are a hot commodity in the Bay Area, and if sales are any indication, this musical hybrid may prove this songwriter’s ticket out of obscurity.”—NPR’s California Report
  • “it looks as though everyone is still trying to figure out a category for it—rock musical? Performance art? Afro-Baroque cabaret? I have no idea what it is, but whatever it is, it’s terrific entertainment.”—KQED
  • “Stop reading right now and buy tickets to Passing Strange before it heads to New York…If more new musicals looked like this, we might yet see a revitalization of Broadway.”—SFist
  • “A pleasingly wayward young man’s odyssey…Strange is a lot like a live concept album…a vital, imaginative production [that’s] full of hilarious set-pieces, catchy songs, witty lyrics and dialogue…choreographer Karole Armitage contributes pop-culture riffs to a show that rarely sits still.”—Variety
  • “sometimes an artist’s reviews are so hyperbolically positive because there’s some fire under all that smoke. Take Stew, for example, who has created a piece of musical theater titled Passing Strange that paints an alternately uproarious and heartbreaking picture of the black experience from suburbia to bohemia…if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get your butt to Berkeley, plant it in a seat, and be wowed by one of this generation’s greatest talents.”—SF Bay Guardian

about mother courage

  • “Mother Courage is every bit as timely now as when Brecht wrote it…not only timely but prophetic…Tough, confrontational and uncompromisingly intelligent, it’s a vigorous concoction of brilliant acting, incisive prose, trenchant music and densely layered presentation in service of the greatest anti-war drama of the 20th century…Ivonne Coll’s tough, magnetically unenlightened Courage and a wondrously sardonic, slatternly Katie Barrett lead a very strong cast…The play tells the story but, just as Brecht intended, the songs make its import unforgettable.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Mother Courage isn’t just a great play. Right now, it may be the great play. With the conflict in Iraq raging on, and the anniversary of Sept. 11 fresh in our minds, this epic indictment of war and greed, and the hypocrisy that often cloaks both, could not be more timely.”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “darkly funny…timely, relevant and keenly observed…Coll’s Mother Courage has charm and presence…[she’s] a disarming singer and an expert at grief…Patrick Kerr as a temporarily defrocked chaplain, Jarion Monroe as a feisty cook and Katie Barrett as a snarly prostitute nearly steal the show.”—Oakland Tribune
  • “the show has a dazzling look [and] a stunning and effective new score by Gina Leishman…the play is filled with delightful musical numbers”—Contra Costa Times
  • “a resounding smash hit…The extremely talented cast of 12 is highlighted by a superb performance from Ivonne Coll in the title role.”—KGO radio

 

season 05/06

about the miser

  • “just a glorious show, a wonder, the kind of theater that makes you keep going to theater on the off chance that you might see something this good.”—Jon Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Outrageously funny…Hilarity bares its teeth in Theatre de la Jeune Lune’s magnificent version of Molière’s The Miser. It also bares its buttocks, stands on its head, climbs the walls, falls through the unreliable floor and lolls its tongue with obscenely funny, more than lascivious, greed. As adapted by David Ball, the Miser that opened at Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre is classic comedy with penetrating contemporary bite…Ball, director Dominique Serrand and the excellent cast succeed not only in revealing the satiric edge that made the 17th century French establishment consider Molière so dangerous but also in applying that edge to our own dark times.”—Rob Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle
  • “theatrical exuberance…This lush, ornately realized production is an unconventional blend of slapstick, physical comedy, commedia dell’arte, wordplay and avant-garde staging…From Ball’s smart, contemporary adaptation to the cast’s stellar performances, it is a vivid, gut-busting goosing of avarice…The Tony-winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune spreads the theatrical wealth [and] makes classic satire timeless…In so many ways, they’ve translated this play into a contemporary piece. Nearly 340 years after its debut, The Miser resonates”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “hugely funny…explodes like a crazed circus train on the Roda Theatre stage…this is not your father’s Miser. David Ball, who adapted the play for the company, created a theatrical piece for contemporary audiences, guided by the idea that Moliere’s work was charged with a sense of immediacy when he wrote it, and that today’s audiences should somehow be given the same experience…the laughs teeter dangerously at the edge of tragedy”—Contra Costa Times
  • “seriously funny…a joy to watch. Adept physical comedians with an equally impressive facility for verbal tricks and pathos, this ensemble can put you in a headlock, give you a righteous noogie and make you think you’re having the time of your life…Full of laughs, Berkeley Rep’s Miser gives until it hurts”—Oakland Tribune
  • “a fabulous production with a magnificent cast…absolutely brilliantly performed and not to be missed.”—KGO Radio

about the glass menagerie

  • “Rita Moreno charms, smothers, and guilt-trips her thin-blooded children in this splendid revival of Tennessee Williams’ classic…Erik Lochtefeld’s witty, overtly gay, sympathetic Tom bridges the gap between modern audiences and this 1944 gem. EW Pick! Grade: A.”—Entertainment Weekly
  • “Stunningly designed and expertly performed, Williams’ 2 3/4-hour memory play bristles with life...it’s a Menagerie clearly conceived as if it were a new play…Rita Moreno stars as Amanda Wingfield, in a beautifully nuanced portrait that becomes the throbbing, awful but inescapably empathetic heart of Les Waters’ engrossing revival.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “lustrous…extraordinary…Director Les Waters creates a Glass that is jagged and refracts pain and love and hostility and desperation with the kind of clarity and confusion that would likely thrill Williams himself…Waters has a great actress on the job: Rita Moreno…giving one hell of a heartbreaking performance.”—Oakland Tribune
  • “stunning…strikingly innovative…Rita Moreno, Berkeley Rep deliver devastating new Glass Menagerie…a wonderful new look at an old friend”—Contra Costa Times
  • “One of the most powerful performances you’ll ever witness…This is theatre at its absolute best!”—KGO Radio

about culture clash’s zorro in hell

To hear a story about Culture Clash’s Zorro in Hell that aired on 35 NPR stations across California, click here.

  • “comic perfection…The performers are fast, inventive and versatile…Beneath all its high and low humor, though, there’s a serious edge to this Zorro’s blade”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Culture Clash has a slash hit with Zorro…the funniest show the Bay Area comedy troupe has ever written…a devastatingly hilarious satire of just about everything Californians hold dear”—Contra Costa Times
  • “Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza are brandishing satire like a sword…It’s a rabble-rousing call to arms…a multiculti pastiche, pumped up on pop steroids…Sharon Lockwood is a hoot and a half”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “crunchy and delicious…Culture Clash mines Zorro for all he’s worth…there are laughs to be had at the expense of everyone from NPR listeners to the Bush administration.”—Oakland Tribune
  • “a comedic whirlwind…The jokes and gags tumble over one another, and there are no sacred cows.”—Sacramento Bee
  • “madcap mayhem…outstanding performances…an evening of wild, slapstick, clever comedy…pure fun, fun, fun”—KGO Radio

about 9 parts of desire

  • “Poignant…provocative…played with striking assurance and flexibility by Mozhan Marnò”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “A towering performance…nothing short of stunning”—Contra Costa Times
  • “9 Parts of Desire is a bridge to the Iraq we don’t see on TV, and there’s a hunger for these stories…Marnò skillfully inhabits the lives of Raffo’s diverse women.”—Oakland Tribune
  • “Speaks the quiet truth of those whose voices have been silenced too long”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “A heartrending performance…Don’t miss it!”—KGO radio

about brundibar / comedy on the bridge

To hear a story about Brundibar that aired on 35 NPR stations across California, click here (5.4MB mp3).

  • “The sets and costumes are fantastical, the music delightful. Innocence triumphs.”—National Public Radio
  • ”captivating…touches the heart…The glorious stage design by famed illustrator Maurice Sendak (with Kris Stone) evokes the world of childhood, an anthropomorphic terrain of immense charm and limitless possibilities.”—London’s Financial Times
  • “A dream-like comic world…A first-rate production with a superb adult cast to supplement the sheer charm of the large children’s chorus…Maurice Sendak’s designs are almost reason enough to rush to Berkeley Rep.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Berkeley Repertory Theatre has a great big holiday present for its audiences: a children’s opera…There’s a 29-member children’s chorus full of sweet-voiced local singers, and Krasa’s melodies are enchanting. Conductor and music director Valerie Gebert, working with 13 members of the Berkeley Symphony, provides a full, gorgeous sound. Kushner’s adapted lyrics are full of wonderfully whimsical rhymes, while Sendak’s sets and costumes (realized with the aid of Kris Stone and Robin I. Shane) have all the color, personality and intrigue of his best illustrations.”—Oakland Tribune
  • “its fantastical sets by Maurice Sendak and witty libretto by Tony Kushner…turn the stage into a picture book…buoyed by a bright score (not to mention the scene-stealing sweetness of little kids in the casts) and directed with a lively hand by Tony Taccone.”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “charmingly absurd…a show parents and children can enjoy together…moments after the show begins, you feel a sense of joy, a happiness over the indomitable power of the human spirit…The singers in the piece are incredible.”—Contra Costa Times
  • “superbly performed with magnificent sets and special effects…designed for the whole family and perfect for the holiday season…Brundibar is vunderbar!”—KGO Radio

about finn in the underworld

  • “riveting…hypnotic…brilliantly staged…the entire audience is holding its collective breath…Waters, who bowled over audiences with the inventive riches of his staging of Sarah Ruhl’s haunting Eurydice a year ago, surpasses even that effort in making every design element an active part of the ghostly tale.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “deliciously creepy…diabolically designed…a time-bending little thriller [that] moves like quicksilver.”—Contra Costa Times
  • “truly creepy…Clifton Guterman is quirky and fascinating, especially when he’s grappling with the compelling and enigmatic Reed Birney…Finn features an extraordinary set by David Korins that becomes a virtual character in the play.”—Oakland Tribune
  • “A hip little ghost story from a hot new playwright…laces chills with an undercurrent of erotic thrills…Guterman shines as the cocky Finn…Birney has a genius for the mysterious, showing us only enough of Carver’s true self to fill the stage with ominous portents.”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “remarkably written…its outstanding cast of four provides an evening of theatrical chills and thrills…expect a new dimension in ghost stories”—KGO Radio

about our town

  • “Director Jonathan Moscone sensitively orchestrates the action to bring out its gentle humor, sentiment and more somber undercurrents…The cast is remarkable, an exceptional 14-person ensemble delivering a gallery of beautifully nuanced performances.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Life, death, brilliance…Berkeley Rep breathes new life into American classic.”—Oakland Tribune
  • “a breathtaking revelation…a stunning journey…a clever, touching production that would make the Berkeley boy who wrote it quite proud.”—Contra Costa Times
  • “aching emotional honesty…the show burns brightly moment by moment…we walk out of the theater facing ourselves, our fleeting hold on this world and the tragicomic cycle of life.“—San Jose Mercury News
  • “An excellent cast…Extremely well directed by Jonathan Moscone, it’s a wonderful and wholesome experience.”—KGO Radio

 

season 04/05

about the ugly american

  • “a magnetic monologuist…His voice, face and body are remarkably animated for someone just sitting behind a table. His comic timing is impeccable, building in tempo to astonishingly rapid, roared or whispered climaxes. His facial contortions and vocal mimicry are almost worth the price of admission alone.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Daisey’s a doozy…a funny guy and a commanding storyteller”—Oakland Tribune
  • “a darkly hilarious journey”—Contra Costa Times

about honour

  • “Startled laughter and gasps of recognition were plentiful at the opening of the last show of the Rep’s current season, and tears flowed freely in turn…[Honour] is fresh, funny and often penetrating. It’s also bracingly honest and deeply moving as performed by Kathleen Chalfant and the rest of the excellent cast in Tony Taccone’s insightful staging.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Superb…Berkeley Repertory Theatre concludes its 2004/05 Season on an amazing high. The company has two theaters and two of the best shows going in the Bay Area…The fact that Murray-Smith’s writing is so powerful and director Tony Taccone’s production is so captivating only makes it that much more difficult to look away…watching it feels so good and hurts so much”—Oakland Tribune
  • “brilliant…Making this all come together is director Tony Taccone, who keeps the show on a relentless pace…Chalfant, particularly, brings an astounding range to her performance”—Contra Costa Times
  • “dramatic, emotional, gripping…truly a theatrical masterpiece”—KGO Radio

about the people’s temple

about for better or worse

  • “expertly timed verbal and physical comedy…performed to perfection by Lockwood and Hoyle.” —San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Geoff Hoyle is a comic genius…a slapstick, perfectly timed production that kept me laughing the whole time.” —KGO

about fêtes de la nuit

  • “engagingly sensual…[an] impishly iconoclastic comedy, Fêtes is funny, provocative, wildly inventive and exceptionally well performed…remarkably entertaining.“—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “ooh-la-la…a decadent little valentine…The City of Lights becomes a canvas on which Mee madly layers brushstrokes of music, poetry and dance in a wildly inventive impressionistic collage.…he toys with language, flirts with music from classical to hip-hop, and revels in his ability to titillate an audience with the unexpected.”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “Party on! …a lovely and lively bouquet of fragrant Parisian scenes…surprises and delights, right up through its pink feather-filled finale…a scene called, appropriately, ‘Ecstasy.’”—Oakland Tribune

about bridge & tunnel

  • “a one-woman tour de force on race and culture in post-Sept. 11 America…Jones is a lithe multiethnic actress/playwright who can shed her skin on a dime. [She] has the anthropological eye of Anna Deveare Smith, the comic punch of Whoopi Goldberg and the live hip-hop vibe of Danny Hoch, a killer combination of talents.”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “The opening-night audience had been unceasingly supportive and appreciative.…Those who weren’t already fans were won over as soon as Jones began making her trademark instantaneous transitions from one indelibly drawn character to another.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Because Sarah Jones’ Bridge & Tunnel at Berkeley Repertory Theatre is a workshop production, there will be no reviews (although if there were, you can bet they’d be raves).…Bridge & Tunnel is heading for Broadway where, with any luck, the world at large will finally see what we’ve known for years: Sarah Jones is a genius.”—Oakland Tribune
  • “It is impossible to imagine Bridge & Tunnel getting any more polished before its Broadway debut. Already the one-woman show being workshopped at Berkeley Rep by writer/performer Sarah Jones is one of the funniest and most pointed theatrical pieces in the Bay Area.”—Contra Costa Times

about polk county

  • To listen to Cathy Madison and Kevin Jackson on KPFA’s Against the Grain, click here and scroll down to November 29, 2004.
  • “searing, uplifting, heartbreaking, sexy, joyful…Polk County is all that and more.…the audience is literally on its feet.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “a blues score that rattles the soul so hard you can feel it in the bones.”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “remarkable…If this is any indication of the material it can find, Berkeley Rep ought to consider doing more musicals.”—Contra Costa Times
  • “You don’t want to mess with Big Sweet. But you do want to spend 2 1/2 hours in her company.”—Oakland Tribune
  • “a holiday show, one which makes you proud to be African.”—San Francisco Bay View

about eurydice

  • To listen to Paula Vogel speak about Eurydice on NPR’s Morning Edition, click here.
  • “visually astonishing…Waters’ sumptuously staged and musically paced production mirrors the script’s playfulness at every turn…brought to life by a terrific cast.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “a fresh pearl of a play…a madly quirky score and a ravishing cast.”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “incredibly beautiful…The actors are fantastic.”—Oakland Tribune

about the secret in the wings

  • “pure theatrical gold…Captivatingly simple, disturbingly evocative and richly transgressive, Secret is a journey into fantasy and nightmares.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “a haunting tapestry of images and words that seduces the eye and ear…Zimmerman has taken choreography to the realm of poetry.”—San Jose Mercury News
  • “a breathless delight from beginning to end…”—Contra Costa Times

 

season 03/04

about 21 dog years: doing time @ amazon.com

  • “Irresistibly well performed… 90 minutes of almost nonstop hilarity”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “Comic delivery so sharp it draws blood… a must-see confessional for the recovering dot-commers among us.”—San Jose Mercury News

about master class

  • “Moreno masters her role”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “…it takes a legend to play a legend. Moreno hits all the right notes.”—San Jose Mercury News

about the mystery of irma vep

  • “a highly entertaining romp…”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “There’s no mystery here: ‘Irma Vep’ is a lot of fun”—Contra Costa Times
  • “Vampires and werewolves and drag queens, oh my. This camp masterpiece gets a very amusing, if not outright hysterical production.”—San Jose Mercury News

about ghosts

  • “A stunning, immediate and unforgettable masterpiece… Quite simply a triumph.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “The play crackles with theatrical excitement.”—Contra Costa Times

about yellowman

  • To read a feature story in the San Francisco Chronicle about the play, click here.
  • To read a feature story about playwright Dael Orlandersmith, click here.
  • “Yellowman gets under the skin…” —San Francisco Chronicle
  • “the audience is left nearly breathless…” —Contra Costa Times

about continental divide

  • coverage of the show on KQED’s Spark
  • a feature in the San Francisco Chronicle
  • “The project is impressive in its ambition, scope and veritable avalanche of provocative insights. It’s strikingly staged and exceptionally well performed. It’s never less than an intriguing exploration of democracy American-style by one of England’s foremost political playwrights.”—San Francisco Chronicle
  • “One of the most ambitious dramatic works of the new decade.”—San Jose Mercury News

about the notebooks of leonardo da vinci

  • “Mary Zimmerman’s The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci…is richly imagined, luminously staged and intellectually exhilarating. For sheer beauty and inventiveness, it’s as exciting a piece of theater as her Metamorphoses was here and on broadway.”—San Francisco Chronicle

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American Theatre cover

 

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