The clunky staging in SF Opera’s season-opener Roméo et Juliette made me physically angry; here are the 5 most questionable directorial choices.
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On cockamamie paternal advice, accepting my first software engineering job, and the mysterious ways in which things fall into place.
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Reviews of the final “Glamourist Histories” by Mary Robinette Kowal, an increasingly ambitious fantasy series with a refreshing perspective on magic.
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I was a big fan of the Magic Theatre’s world premiere of Oedipus el Rey in 2010 and its revival this year showed that it is still a powerful play.
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I’m developing an app to find linguistic anachronisms in historical fiction & read some Regency romances for important scientific reasons. Nice work if you can get it!
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Reckoning with the damage to a building at the heart of the world’s most beloved city.
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A celebration of Stephen Sondheim’s 89th birthday, and some thoughts about a recent quote of his that makes him sound like, well, a very old man.
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Bay Area Musicals’ production of Violet is nicely cast, staged, and sung, but I never got pulled in emotionally to this story of a Southern girl with a scarred face.
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Glen Berger’s memoir of writing the libretto to the Spider-Man musical is the most page-turning, jaw-dropping, perversely fascinating book I’ve read in ages.
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My traditional round-up of the plays, musicals, & staged readings I saw in the past year. New for 2018: opera & live music lists as well!
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My traditional round-up of the books and plays that I read in the past year.
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Reviews of the first 3 books in the Parasol Protectorate series. The final 2 are on my reading list for 2019!
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Reviews of some plays I read in 2018… featuring robots, rock ‘n’ roll, and multiple murders.
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I read only two books in 2018 that I truly disliked, but, oddly, both of them were about women in classic Hollywood.
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Last week, I left my law-firm job of 8 years in order to make room in my life for new plans and goals.
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After reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, I’m an Anne Brontë partisan; so is my friend Samantha Ellis, author of the unconventional Anne biography Take Courage.
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In honor of the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, my thoughts on the canonical World War I drama Heartbreak House.
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In 2018, I learned to waltz and regularly took afternoon tea; why shouldn’t it also be the year I acquainted myself with Gail Carriger’s steampunk-Victorian fiction?
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Having just seen Timon of Athens for the first time, I calculate how close I am to being a Shakespeare completist.
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Having just seen Sondheim rarity Saturday Night, I had to calculate how close I am to being a Sondheim completist.
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