Review: THE MONSTERS at Berkeley Rep
by Steve Murray - April 03, 2026
Berkely Rep’s co-production with La Jolla Playhouse of Ngozi Anywanu’s The Monsters is a joyous, heartwarming story of the bond between sister and brother that will want to make you hug your sibling. Both emotionally devastating and rewarding, The Monsters is brilliantly written, superbly acted ...
Review: FLEX at SF Playhouse
by Steve Murray - April 02, 2026
For Starra Jones, a baller from rural Plainnole, Arkansas, fulfilling her mother’s dream of basketball glory is her prime motivation. Playing a style of ‘dirty’ ball, her braggadocio will lead her to a foul play in Candrice Jones’ Flex, making its West Coast premiere at SF Playhouse....
Review: OUR CLASS at Z Space
by Steve Murray - March 30, 2026
There are many types of great theatre- light, cheerful, romantic, uplifting, silly, classic. Z Spaces’ co-production of Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s Our Class is unflinchingly dark, emotionally devastating and a tough watch – but it is great theatre, a timely cautionary tale of evil startingly conce...
Review: ASSASSINS at Oakland Theatre Project
by Steve Murray - March 23, 2026
I admit I’ve never seen Stephen Sondhiem’s Assassins, nor ever heard the score or read the synopsis. A flop in 1990, the 2004 revival won five Tony awards, and it’s been in theatre rotations since, often causing controversy for its raw language and unsavory content. A play from the perspective...
Review: TOTALLY '80S : SAN FRANCISCO GAY MEN'S CHORUS at Curran Theatre
by Steve Murray - March 23, 2026
The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, the world's first openly gay chorus, continues it’s forty-eighth season with a concert both cheerful and deeply emotional celebrating the music and events of the 1980’s. For the LGBT community, the 80’s was the apocalypse incarnate - a community devastate...
Review: ||: GIRLS :||: CHANCE :||: MUSIC :|| at A.C.T. Strand
by Steve Murray - March 19, 2026
There is plenty of interesting ideas in Eisa Davis’ into the lives of four women, students in a summer music program. The need for arts education drives these girls, partly for parity in a male dominated world of music and secondly as a respite from the dramas of their individual lives....