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As I See It

May 24 2026
Love2

Mamma Mia

By Joseph Cillo

Mamma Mia cast


A Greek island, three possible fathers, a wedding, and enough ABBA songs to remind us why these melodies never left.

MAMMA MIA! arrives with one built-in advantage: most of us already know the music. Before the lights even dim, people are smiling, recognizing songs they’ve carried around for years.

But the show works because it offers more than nostalgia.

Beneath the dancing, romance, and comic confusion is a warm story about family, friendship, and finding where we belong.


Families can be complicated. Especially when three men show up and any one of them might be Dad.

The Story

Sophie is preparing for her wedding on a beautiful Greek island, but she has one unanswered question before walking down the aisle: Who is her father?

After discovering her mother Donna’s old diary, Sophie secretly invites three men from Donna’s past, hoping one of them will finally provide the answer.

Instead, she creates a joyful collision of old relationships, unexpected reunions, awkward moments, and discoveries that become less about biology and more about understanding the people we love.

Joy becomes contagious

Director Lisa Morse understands exactly what makes MAMMA MIA! work: energy, heart, and fun.

Marilyn Izdebski’s outstanding choreography keeps the stage moving with energy and personality. The dance numbers feel vibrant and playful, creating the kind of energy that naturally spills into the audience.

Nick Brown’s musical direction gives the familiar songs warmth and momentum.

What keeps the production from becoming simply a concert of ABBA hits is the emotional heart beneath the music. Donna and Sophie’s relationship grounds the comedy and spectacle in emotions we instantly recognize.


Lauren Sutton-Beattie, Julianne Bretan, Jane Harrington



Lauren Sutton-Beattie, Julianne Bretan, Jane Harrington
Photo credit: Jere Torkelsen


Outstanding choreography doesn’t simply fill a stage. It turns music into movement and joy into something we can feel.

A feel-good experience

Some productions challenge audiences.

Some leave us emotionally drained.

MAMMA MIA! does something simpler.

It sends us home smiling.

The music, humor, and emotional moments combine into the kind of evening where audiences are still humming songs on the drive home.


You don’t leave MAMMA MIA! quietly.

What it adds up to

MAMMA MIA! reminds us that life rarely unfolds according to plan.

Families form in unexpected ways.

Love arrives unexpectedly.

And sometimes happiness appears where we least expect it.

Sometimes theater doesn’t need to change our lives.

Sometimes it simply reminds us how good it feels to laugh, sing along, and enjoy the ride.

How to see it / Get tickets

Novato Theater Company
5420 Nave Drive
Novato, CA 94949

May 15 – June 7, 2026

Showtimes
Fridays — 7:30 p.m.
Saturdays May 16, 23 & June 6 — 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, May 30 — 2:00 p.m.
Sundays — 2:00 p.m.

Tickets: NovatoTheaterCompany.org
Box Office: Tickets@NovatoTheaterCompany.org

May 21 2026
Love2

Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really

By Joseph Cillo




A seduction built on performance — and the danger of mistaking charm for truth.

Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really moves between gothic satire and theatrical provocation, pulling dark comedy and social critique into the mix along the way. The evening rarely settles into a single identity for very long.

One moment it feels playful and theatrical. The next, confrontational, seductive, absurd, or unexpectedly sharp. That instability becomes part of the experience itself, and honestly, it often feels like different sections of the audience are watching entirely different plays.


Not every audience member experiences the same Dracula tonight.

Kate Hamill’s adaptation has no interest in preserving the seductive mythology surrounding Dracula. This version strips away romance almost immediately. Dracula is not tragic; he is practiced — socially fluent and charming in the way dangerous people often are before anyone decides to call them dangerous.

That idea hangs over nearly every scene. A charismatic outsider enters a rigid Victorian world. Desire follows almost immediately. Attention shifts. Power reorganizes itself around attraction, manipulation, and social performance. What begins as gothic fantasy gradually evolves into something more contemporary — a story about influence, complicity, and who society chooses to protect.

What unfolds becomes less about vampires and more about the stories people tell themselves — the identities they project and the narratives they desperately want confirmed. Seduction rarely announces itself as danger. It arrives looking confident. Desired. Invited.

Fascinating dynamic

Johnny Moreno plays Dracula with enough effortless charisma to explain why everyone keeps allowing him space inside the story. Moreno avoids exaggerated villainy and instead leans into something more recognizable: confidence weaponized as charm. His performance works best in stillness. A glance lingers slightly too long. A smile settles carefully into place. Even moments of apparent ease carry traces of calculation underneath them.

Across from him, Susi Damilano grounds the evening as Van Helsing — not merely as Dracula’s opponent, but as a relentless adversary who refuses intimidation, refuses seduction, and ultimately succeeds by seeing the monster clearly long before others do. Her restraint gives the show stability whenever things threaten to spiral too far into chaos.

Meanwhile, Stacy Ross pushes Renfield toward something delightfully unstable, matching the constantly shifting tone. Together, these performances anchor the evening.


Danger rarely arrives looking dangerous.

Mesmerizing experience

Director Bill English stages the evening with constant physical momentum. Bodies circle Dracula cautiously before drifting back toward him again as if pulled by gravity. Conversations feel choreographed around shifting control rather than realism.

At times, the show almost slips into dance. Movements repeat rhythmically. Characters advance and retreat with choreographed precision. Seduction, confrontation, and fear are expressed physically long before dialogue confirms them. Entire scenes unfold with a flowing, dance-like quality that gives the staging much of its tension and beauty.

The choreography becomes emotional architecture. Smoke drifts through scenes almost like a living presence. Lighting abruptly shifts from seductive warmth to nightmare intensity. Illusions appear unexpectedly. Blood effects punctuate scenes with sudden shock, while sound and movement continuously reshape the emotional temperature of the room.

At times, the experience feels less like realism and more like an elaborate theatrical séance unfolding in front of the audience.


You can feel the audience negotiating with the play in real time.

Visually, the staging creates striking stage pictures. Red arches frame scenes almost like warning signs. Blood appears suddenly against white fabric. Lighting stretches moments into something halfway between nightmare and satire.

At one point, it becomes obvious the room is laughing for completely different reasons. Some viewers seem energized by the show’s certainty. Others appear less comfortable with how directly it pushes its themes. That tension becomes impossible to ignore — and honestly, far more interesting than if everyone simply agreed with each other.

What it adds up to

What lingers afterward is not whether every scene works perfectly. It’s that the evening refuses neutrality.

The play can be experienced several ways at once: as sharp feminist reclamation, as theatrical provocation, or as a deliberately messy cultural argument staged through vampire mythology. Depending on the moment, all three interpretations feel valid.

It begins feeling like a vampire story and ends feeling like something much closer to home.

You leave carrying more than plot. You leave thinking about how easily persuasion works — and how willingly people surrender to narratives that flatter them while they are inside them.

By the end, Dracula no longer feels supernatural.

That may be what makes him unsettling.

How to see it / Get tickets

San Francisco Playhouse
450 Post Street, San Francisco

May 14 – June 27

Tickets: $52–$145


sfplayhouse.org

415-677-9596

Includes intermission

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May 16 2026
Love2

Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson, Apt. 2B

By Joseph Cillo


Smart, Funny, Surprisingly Moving

Kate Hamill’s wildly inventive reimagining of Sherlock Holmes tosses the deerstalker hat aside and replaces it with modern anxieties, emotional baggage, sharp feminist humor, and enough rapid-fire dialogue to keep us fully engaged from curtain to curtain. Under the lively direction of Mary Ann Rodgers, the production moves with confidence and comic precision while still making room for genuine emotional connection.

From the moment Adrian Deane storms onto the stage as the brilliant but emotionally unraveling Sherlock Holmes, there’s electricity in the room. Deane doesn’t simply play eccentricity for laughs — although there are plenty of them — but reveals the loneliness and vulnerability underneath Holmes’ chaotic brilliance. Jennifer Le Blanc’s Watson becomes the perfect counterbalance: grounded, compassionate, quietly wounded, and endlessly relatable. Together, the pair create the kind of chemistry that keeps us leaning forward, eager for every exchange.

 

Jennifer Le Blanc as Dr. Joan Watson, Adrian Deane as Sherlock Holmes – photo credit Robin Jackson

The laughs come quickly and often, but what sneaks up on you is the emotional honesty underneath all the cleverness.

Story Line / Plot

The familiar world of Sherlock Holmes flips into a wildly contemporary, emotionally layered comedy-mystery centered on two damaged but brilliant women trying to survive life, loneliness, and each other in a cramped apartment.

Sherlock Holmes is no elegant Victorian detective here. She’s impulsive, obsessive, socially volatile, and often emotionally unraveling — a woman whose staggering intelligence is matched only by her inability to connect with people in ordinary ways.

Watson arrives carrying wounds of her own. Recently separated and searching for stability, she becomes Holmes’ reluctant roommate and eventual emotional anchor. Watson’s practicality and compassion constantly collide with Holmes’ chaos, creating a friendship that becomes the true heart of the story.

As Holmes and Watson settle uneasily into life together, increasingly strange encounters begin circling their apartment — including the arrival of Irene Adler and the dangerously magnetic Moriarty. What begins as an eccentric detective comedy gradually spirals into a tangled psychological mystery involving manipulation, hidden identities, emotional trauma, shifting loyalties, and emotional dependency.

The plot twists through deception, emotional revelations, detective-story misdirection, and rapid tonal shifts. Hamill intentionally keeps audiences slightly off-balance, blending screwball comedy with darker themes involving trust, abandonment, obsession, and human connection.

Hamill’s script occasionally becomes so clever for its own good, asking the audience to keep pace with whirlwind plotting and rapid tonal shifts. The denouement may leave some sorting through its many twists rather than arriving at a perfectly tidy resolution. Still, Rodgers’ confident direction and the cast’s wonderfully grounded performances carry us through the complexity with charm, humor, and emotional honesty to spare.

Sarah McKereghan’s Irene Adler arrives with confidence and intrigue, while Moriarty’s appearance shifts the evening into darker and more psychologically charged territory. Steve Price’s Inspector Lestrade provides several wonderfully timed comedic moments that drew some of the evening’s biggest laughs.

Visually, the production makes excellent use of The Barn Theatre’s intimate setting. Mikiko Uesugi’s set design supports the fast-moving action beautifully, while Valera Coble’s costumes help establish the production’s playful contemporary tone. Lighting by Frank Sarubbi and sound design by Billie Cox add polish and atmosphere throughout the evening.

Ross Valley Players finds the sweet spot here: a comedy that entertains wholeheartedly while still providing something meaningful to hold onto afterward.

Especially refreshing is how naturally the comedy lands. Nothing feels forced. Rodgers trusts both the material and her cast, allowing humor to emerge organically from character rather than gimmickry. The result is lively, contemporary, deeply human.

Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson – Apt. 2B is funny, fast-paced, smartly staged, and unexpectedly touching. Exactly the kind of show we love discovering: entertaining enough for a fun night out, but thoughtful enough to stay with you afterward.

Tickets Available Now

Ross Valley Players
Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson – Apt. 2B
May 15 – June 14
The Barn Theatre, Marin Art & Garden Center
30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, CA

Performances:
Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30 p.m.
Sundays at 2:00 p.m.

Tickets: rossvalleyplayers.com

(707) 523-4185

Includes intermission

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May 14 2026
Love2

Pictures from Home

By Joseph Cillo
Some families preserve memories. Others quietly perform them.

Sharr White’s Pictures from Home, now receiving its West Coast premiere at Marin Theatre, becomes something far more intimate than a conventional family drama. Adapted from Marin photographer Larry Sultan’s celebrated photo memoir, the production explores the uneasy overlap between photography, family mythology, and the fragile stories people quietly construct around the people they love.

Directed with warmth and emotional precision by Jonathan Moscone, the play unfolds less like a traditional narrative and more like an ongoing emotional excavation. Conversations drift naturally between affection, irritation, humor, and regret as Larry Sultan attempts to understand not only his parents, but also the emotional mythology his family has built around itself over decades.

Story Line

Photographer Larry Sultan repeatedly returns to his parents’ San Fernando Valley home, using interviews and carefully staged photographs to better understand both his family and himself.

As the years pass, the line between observation and performance slowly begins to blur. What emerges is not simply a portrait of aging parents, but of a son searching for meaning inside family stories that continue evolving long after facts begin to soften.

What makes Pictures from Home so compelling is its refusal to simplify its characters. Irving Sultan is proud, stubborn, charming, occasionally exasperating, yet deeply vulnerable beneath the surface. Jean quietly steadies the emotional rhythms of the household while often understanding far more than she openly reveals. Larry himself becomes both loving son and relentless observer, simultaneously participating in and documenting family life.

Daniel Cantor gives Larry a thoughtful emotional intelligence that allows the audience to see both the artist’s curiosity and his uncertainty. Victor Talmadge delivers a beautifully layered performance as Irving, balancing humor, pride, resistance, and sadness without ever reducing the character to caricature. Susan Koozin brings warmth and emotional steadiness to Jean, grounding many of the production’s most affecting moments.

Beneath the production’s quiet naturalism lies remarkably disciplined technical work. The cast manages an unusually heavy line load while maintaining precise movement choreography tied closely to Larry Sultan’s projected photography. Some of the evening’s most effective moments occur when the actors break the fourth wall, addressing both the audience and the unseen projectionist, allowing memory, performance, and documentation to collide in real time.


Pictures from Home projection staging

Susan Koozin as Jean, Victor Talmadge as Irving, and Daniel Cantor as Larry in Marin Theatre’s Pictures from Home. Photo credit: David Allen.

One of the evening’s strongest scenes arrives almost quietly: Irving resists yet another staged family photograph, joking defensively while revealing, beneath the humor, a growing discomfort with aging and being observed. Moscone allows the silence surrounding the exchange to linger. The moment says more about the family dynamic than pages of exposition ever could.

Photography freezes a moment. Families keep rewriting it.

Moscone’s direction trusts stillness and conversation rather than theatrical excess. The production moves with an almost reflective rhythm, allowing emotional truths to emerge gradually through pauses, disagreements, small observations, and moments of reluctant honesty.

The staging becomes especially effective through the use of Larry Sultan’s projected photographs, which hover above the action like fragmented pieces of memory suspended in time. These images remind the audience that the play is not simply inspired by family history — it is actively wrestling with the meaning of preserving it.

What begins as an artist documenting his parents slowly evolves into something much more personal: a son confronting the impossibility of ever fully understanding the people who shaped him.

When Art Meets Memory

Larry Sultan’s original Pictures from Home photography series became one of the defining explorations of American domestic life, blending documentary realism with carefully staged imagery. The play embraces that same ambiguity, asking whether photographs reveal truth — or quietly reshape it.

Rather than offering clear answers, the production gently suggests that family history itself is constantly edited, revised, softened, and emotionally reframed over time.

What lingers most after the final scene is not nostalgia, but recognition. Nearly everyone understands the complicated experience of looking back at parents and realizing how much remains unresolved — how much affection exists alongside misunderstanding, silence, disappointment, and reinvention.

Pictures from Home succeeds because it approaches those questions with intelligence, compassion, humor, and emotional honesty. It is thoughtful theatre that earns its emotional impact quietly, allowing the audience to discover its depth gradually rather than forcing sentimentality.


The past doesn’t disappear. It waits patiently inside the stories we keep telling.

Final Thoughts

Warm, reflective, and deeply human, Pictures from Home transforms a personal artistic journey into something universally recognizable. Marin Theatre’s production captures both the intimacy of family life and the larger questions surrounding identity, observation, and emotional inheritance.

Like Sultan’s photographs themselves, the production captures people trying to hold onto moments already beginning to fade. The result is a quietly powerful evening of theatre that lingers long after the final image disappears.

Info & Tickets

Pictures from Home
Marin Theatre
397 Miller Avenue, Mill Valley, CA
Through May 31, 2026

Tickets: MarinTheatre.org
Box Office: 415-388-5208

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Apr 25 2026
Love2

The Light in the Piazza

By Joseph Cillo


A sunlit Italian romance deepens into a tender, quietly powerful, almost operatic musical about how—and when—we let go of the people we love.

What starts as a chance meeting in an Italian piazza gradually reveals itself as something more layered—a story about a mother’s fear, a daughter’s awakening, and the fragile persistence of love.

At first, everything feels easy. Clara falls quickly, completely, and without hesitation for Fabrizio. But beneath that openness lies a complication her mother Margaret understands all too well. Clara’s past—an accident that altered her development—casts a long shadow, shaping how Margaret sees the world and how tightly she holds on.

As the relationship deepens, the real question emerges: not whether love exists, but whether it will be trusted.

Set in 1950s Italy, The Light in the Piazza follows Margaret Johnson and her daughter Clara as they travel abroad. When Clara falls in love with Fabrizio, a young Italian, Margaret must confront the limits she has quietly placed on her daughter’s future.

The story unfolds gently, guided more by emotional shifts than by action. Margaret’s internal struggle—between protection and release—becomes the engine of the piece.

Around them, the Naccarelli family brings warmth, humor, and a sense of lived-in reality that keeps the story grounded even as emotions rise.

The Score Lifts the Story
The music by Adam Guettel is lush, expressive, and closer to opera than traditional musical theater.

Rather than pushing the story forward in obvious ways, the score reveals what the characters cannot easily say. Emotions rise and resolve in waves, sometimes demanding patience, but often delivering moments of striking beauty.

More a continuous emotional current than a collection of songs.

A Notable Choice
A significant portion of the dialogue and lyrics is delivered in Italian, reflecting the cultural setting and enhancing authenticity—a mixed blessing.

For many of us in the audience, meaning must often be inferred through context and performance. Unlike opera, where surtitles guide understanding, the Italian here is left untranslated—requiring us to rely on tone, gesture, and staging to follow the meaning.

At its best, this deepens immersion; at times, it creates distance.

Performances
The production is anchored by a strong emotional core.

Clara (Emma Sutherland) is portrayed with openness and sincerity, capturing both innocence and resolve, while Margaret (Daniela Innocenti Beem) carries the greater dramatic weight, navigating the difficult space between love and control with credibility and restraint.

The cast is uniformly excellent, with rich voices and a striking combination of physicality and expressiveness.

Fabrizio (Malcolm March) brings warmth and conviction to the romantic center, while the Naccarelli family adds energy and texture, providing both humor and contrast to the more introspective moments.

Uniformly excellent—vocally assured, physically engaged, and fully expressive. 

Direction & Design
Sonoma Arts Live keeps the staging intimate and suggestive rather than elaborate. The design leans on atmosphere—lighting, costumes, and carefully chosen scenic elements—to evoke Italy without overwhelming the story.

The approach works. Nothing feels overdone, and the focus remains where it belongs—on the relationships.

Final Thoughts
The Light in the Piazza is not a conventional musical. It moves at its own pace, asking the audience to lean in rather than sit back.

In return, it offers something quieter but more lasting: a story about trust, vulnerability, and the difficult grace of letting go.

A quiet, lingering story about the courage it takes to let go.

How to See

The Light in the Piazza
Sonoma Arts Live
Andrews Hall Theatre, Sonoma Community Center
276 E Napa St, Sonoma, CA

April 24 – May 10

  • Thu–Sat at 7:30 PM
  • Sun at 2:00 PM
  • approximately 2 hours — one intermission

Tickets

  • $42 (Riser / Opening Night)
  • $37 (Floor)
  • $25 (Balcony / select performances)

Info & Tickets
sonomaartslive.org | 707-204-9990

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Mar 28 2026
Love2

Value Over Replacement

By Joseph Cillo


performance + consequence—and the stories we tell to justify both

Quiet, sharp observeations about ambition, ethics, and the uneasy realization that effort alone may not be enough.

Imagine a career spent just outside the spotlight—close enough to feel it, never close enough to own it. Now imagine the slow temptation to close that gap, not through persistence, but by bending the rules that define the game.

That’s the entry point. But this moves quickly past scandal into something more unsettling and equivocal: how we construct stories that allow us to live with our choices.

Story Line

Edward “Chip” Fuller is a former professional baseball player who never quite made it. Now a drive-time host on KSFP Sports Radio, he lives in the long shadow of what might have been.

When he learns his name will appear on a list of players linked to performance-enhancing drugs, the fallout doesn’t explode—it seeps in. Conversations with colleagues, listeners, and family begin to reshape the narrative.

As Chip revisits his past, the question shifts. It’s no longer just what happened, but how he explains it. Each version edges slightly closer to justification.

What emerges is not a confession, but a reckoning—one that stops short of resolution.

What’s in a Title?
Value over Replacement comes from a baseball metric: how much better a player is than a replaceable substitute. It’s a cold calculation—and that’s the point.
(Value Over Replacement Player is a complex baseball statistic that measures a player’s performance relative to an imagined “replacement player,” who is an average fielder and slightly below average hitter.)

Here, the idea lands beyond the field. Chip’s struggle isn’t just about performance; it’s about relevance. To fall short is to risk becoming interchangeable.

In that light, the temptation to enhance performance isn’t just about winning. It’s about proving you matter.

The Radio Booth: Performance as Identity
Particularly effective is Chip’s role on KSFP Sports Radio.

On-air, he is decisive, controlled, authoritative. The voice is confident because it has to be. Sports media doesn’t reward hesitation. Off-air, that certainty unravels.

Woody Harper as Chip Fuller makes that divide unmistakable. Behind the mic, his delivery is tight and assured; away from it, small fractures appear—hesitations, recalibrations, moments where the narrative slips. It’s a precise, controlled performance that reveals how much of Chip’s identity is constructed.

Across from him, David Kudler as Dan Drake anchors the world of the station. Practical, composed, and unshaken, he embodies the expectation of certainty. His steadiness sharpens the contrast as Chip begins to lose control of his own story.

The KSFP studio becomes a stage within the stage—where truth is shaped, repeated, and made to sound convincing. Until it isn’t.

Ambition rarely announces itself as compromise—it arrives as justification..

Ensemble Performances
This production is carried by a disciplined, well-balanced ensemble, led by a performance that understands the power of restraint.

Woody Harper as Chip Fuller anchors the play with quiet precision. Rather than pushing emotion outward, he lets it surface in fragments—pauses, hesitations, subtle shifts in tone. Confidence and doubt coexist, never fully resolving.

David Kudler as Dan Drake provides the essential counterweight. Grounded and direct, his presence gives the radio scenes their structure and tension.

Production photos from Value Over Replacement

The supporting ensemble adds depth and clarification.
Rachel Ka’iulani Kennealy (Emily Fuller) brings emotional clarity and restraint, while Amelia Stafford (Alex Fuller) introduces a generational perspective that raises the stakes without overstating them.

Meanwhile, Eric Forst, David Schiller, and Jennifer Reimer move fluidly between roles, including younger counterparts that echo and reframe Chip’s story. These transitions reinforce the idea that identity is not fixed—it is revised over time.

Direction
Director Ken Sonkin keeps the production focused and controlled.

The staging is clean, pacing deliberate. Nothing is forced — sometimes almost to a fault, as a few moments feel like they’re waiting to crest but never quite do.

Unsettling Final Thoughts
Value Over Replacement doesn’t offer easy answers, and it’s stronger for it.

Instead, it shows how compromise rarely arrives as a single decision. It builds slowly, through small adjustments, reasonable explanations, and the quiet need to make sense of ourselves.

What lingers is not judgment, but awareness of how complex life choices can be. And the heretical conclusion that sometimes the contract with the devil is worth it.

Tickets Available Now
Ross Valley Players
The Barn Theatre, Ross

March 27 – April 12

Tickets: rossvalleyplayers.com

(707) 523-4185

Includes intermission

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Mar 14 2026
Love2

Marjorie Prime

By Joseph Cillo


Art Imitating Life — or Life Imitating Art?

A beautifully acted and quietly haunting play about memory, love, and the emerging reality of technology shaping and preserving the stories of our lives.

Imagine a near future in which an elderly woman struggling with memory loss is introduced to a “Prime” — a digital recreation of her late husband, programmed with stories from their life together.

The premise sounds like science fiction. Yet Marjorie Prime quickly reveals itself to be something quieter and far more personal. Watching the play, I couldn’t help thinking how near that future suddenly feels.

Early on, I noticed how closely everyone was listening. The play unfolds through gentle conversation rather than dramatic action, yet the shifting memories held the room completely.

At its heart, the play explores how memory changes over time, how families remember events differently, and how love often survives through the versions of the past we choose to keep. At the same time, the story reflects something increasingly real: technology is beginning to preserve our memories alongside us.

In this thoughtful production, those ideas emerge through conversation and performance rather than spectacle.

Illusion doesn’t announce itself. It arrives dressed as comfort.

Story Told Through Conversation
The play centers on 4 characters:
   Marjorie — an 85-year-old woman beginning to lose her memory
   Walter Prime — a digital recreation of her late husband
   Tess — their daughter
   Jon — Tess’s husband

Everything unfolds through conversation. A story about a family dog changes slightly each time it is told. A vacation memory shifts depending on who remembers it. Some details quietly disappear. Gradually we see how easily memory reshapes the stories we believe about our lives.

Memory doesn’t simply fade. It quietly rewrites itself.

Ensemble Performances
The strength of this production rests squarely on its cast.

Laura Jorgensen, as Marjorie, delivers a warm and deeply affecting performance. She captures the uneven rhythm of fading memory — moments of sharp clarity followed by sudden uncertainty that leaves everyone searching for the right words.
Amir Ghazi Moradi, as Walter Prime, brings calm attentiveness to the role. Rather than emphasizing the artificial nature of the character, he presents Walter as reassuringly familiar — perhaps even a little too perfect.
Bronwen Shears, as Tess, provides the emotional tension of the play. Her performance reflects the complicated mix of love, protectiveness, and frustration that often accompanies caring for an aging parent.
Marty Pistone, as Jon, serves as the steady observer, frequently voicing the questions many of us are already thinking.

The actors handle Harrison’s conversational writing with precision and confidence. Much of the play’s emotional power emerges from pauses, corrections, and subtle shifts in tone.

Direction
Director John Browning keeps staging clean and naturalistic. The play unfolds in Marjorie’s living room. The familiar domestic setting allows conversations — and the shifting memories within them — to take center stage.

The production trusts the writing and the performances to carry the story. And they do.

Why the Play Resonates
What makes Marjorie Prime so compelling is how recognizable it feels.

We all have experienced family stories that change slightly each time they are told. Details soften. Some things are forgotten. Others take on a life of their own. The play simply asks what happens when those evolving memories are preserved by technology.

It’s a question that feels less like science fiction with each passing year.

When Art Meets Reality

A recent story highlights how closely the world of Marjorie Prime mirrors real life.

In 2023, Jan Worrell, an 85-year-old woman living alone on Washington State’s Long Beach Peninsula, received a device called ElliQ — an AI companion designed to help older adults stay socially engaged. Created by the company Intuition Robotics, the system speaks with users, reminds them about daily routines, encourages conversation, and even helps them record personal memories and stories.

According to reporting by journalist Eli Saslow in The New York Times, Worrell began speaking with the device regularly — sharing memories about her family, her life, and the experiences that shaped her. The goal was not simply assistance, but companionship.

While ElliQ is not a holographic recreation like the “Prime” in the play, the idea behind it feels strikingly familiar: technology helping preserve the stories of a life.

Seeing Marjorie Prime today, it’s hard not to recognize how quickly imagination and reality are beginning to meet.

Final Thoughts
This production succeeds because it unfolds patiently, letting characters and their memories reveal themselves piece by piece.

By evening-end, the theater grew noticeably quiet — the kind of silence that comes when we are still thinking about what we’ve just seen. Anyone who appreciates thoughtful, character-driven theater should make time to see this production.

And leaving the theater, it’s hard not to return to the question that began the evening:
Is art imitating life — or life beginning to imitate art?

How to see it / Get tickets
6th Street Playhouse
52 W 6th Street, Santa Rosa, CA

March 13 – 29

Tickets: 6thstreetplayhouse.com

Box Office: (707) 523-4185

Approximately 90 minutes (no intermission)

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Mar 08 2026
Love2

After Happy

By Joseph Cillo



In storm-battered Louisiana, a surprise visit turns a family reunion into a suspenseful standoff.

What begins as a quiet early-morning reunion, gradually unfolds into a darkly comic mystery about oil, activism, and family loyalty.

At first the situation feels purely familial — a relative returning home after years away. But as the conversation deepens, something larger begins to surface beneath the humor: a carefully constructed puzzle about trust, motives, and how far someone might go to defend what they believe.

Playwright Patricia Milton builds tension patiently, allowing the story to reveal itself piece by piece as family affection collides with environmental conviction.

Story Line

Lake Charles, Louisiana is still recovering from a devastating hurricane named Happy. Many residents still live beneath blue-tarp roofs, yet the town’s beloved Pirate Festival — sponsored by the family-owned Noble Oil company — is determined to go on.

Brenda Barrow, the company’s controlling owner, suddenly faces a festival crisis when the scheduled Pirate Queen drops out at the last minute.

Before dawn one morning, another surprise arrives: Brenda’s estranged niece Katherine “Kat” Freeport appears unannounced at the door. As a member of the family behind Noble Oil, Kat is tied to the very company she now openly opposes.

Now a climate activist, Kat seems to have returned home with more than an apology. When her associate Steph arrives carrying a mysterious green bag, the uneasy reunion turns into a tense confrontation involving family loyalty, corporate reputation, and Noble Oil’s controversial plan to purchase forest land in Liberia — a deal presented as environmental protection but viewed by Kat as corporate greenwashing.

As the morning unfolds, Brenda begins to suspect that Kat’s visit may be part of a carefully planned mission — one that could disrupt far more than the Pirate Festival.

Historical Context: The Real Stakes Beneath the Story
After Happy taps into tensions now shaping many communities tied to fossil-fuel industries.

For families whose livelihoods depend on oil and gas production, climate activism can feel like a direct challenge to economic survival and identity.

By framing global environmental debates inside a single family relationship, Patricia Milton explores how generational change, political belief, and personal loyalty intersect.

The hurricane may be fictional — the conflict surrounding it is not.

Fascinating Dynamic
Jan Zvaifler delivers a vividly entertaining performance as Brenda Barrow. Her character carries herself with the confidence of someone accustomed to running both a family business and a community festival. Zvaifler fills the role with animated gestures, sharp timing, and a wonderfully colorful Louisiana drawl.

Brenda’s dialogue is laced with memorable Southern expressions such as:
Plain as a beetle bug in a sugar bowl.
Obnoxious as a fart in an elevator.
Butter my butt and sell me as a biscuit.

Hearing these delivered with Zvaifler’s perfect timing drew some of the evening’s biggest laughs.

Lauren Dunagan’s Katherine provides the emotional counterweight. Her Kat arrives nervous and determined, clearly pursuing a plan that she reveals only gradually. Dunagan allows flashes of vulnerability beneath the character’s activist resolve, suggesting that family ties remain more complicated than Kat might like to admit.

Watching the two circle each other — part affection, part suspicion — becomes one of the play’s compelling dynamics.

A family reunion slowly transforms into a suspense story about climate activism, corporate power, and divided loyalties.

Desire Shapes Perception — and Perception Reshapes Truth
Director Gary Graves uses the intimacy of Central Works’ stage to great advantage.

The play unfolds almost like a chamber mystery. Small details begin to accumulate significance — a bag placed in the corner, a hurried phone call, a detail that doesn’t quite add up.

Rezan Asfaw enters as Steph, Katherine’s collaborator, bringing a tightly wound intensity that increases the sense of urgency.

At that point we all lean forward, sensing that the morning visit might not end as simply as it began.

Milton structures the play like a mystery — the tension lies in discovering what might happen next.

Scenes move easily between humor and suspense.

Arguments about pirate costumes, family history, environmental responsibility, and corporate reputation swirl through the room while we try to piece together the visitors’ real intentions.

Milton carefully releases information, allowing us to assemble the puzzle gradually.

By the final moments, the pieces fall together in a resolution that feels both surprising and inevitable.

We laugh often, but the questions beneath the humor grow steadily sharper.

When Tradition Meets Activism, the Real Conflict Becomes the Future
Central Works has built its reputation on producing thoughtful new plays that engage contemporary issues.

After Happy continues that tradition by exploring the uneasy intersection between family loyalty, environmental politics, and economic survival.

Milton’s script avoids easy answers. Instead, she places three characters inside a moral crossroads where every choice carries consequences.

As I left, I found myself thinking less about who had “won” the argument and more about how complicated the questions really are.

That lingering uncertainty is part of what makes this world premiere so engaging.

Central Works once again proves how compelling new theater can be when strong writing meets strong performances.

How to See

After Happy
Central Works
Berkeley City Club
2315 Durant Ave., Berkeley

February 26 – March 29

Runtime: 70 minutes — no intermission

Tickets: $35–$45
centralworks.org

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Feb 21 2026
Love2

Once

By Joseph Cillo



A guitar. A glance. A pub ceiling lit by hanging whiskey bottles.

When I walked into Berkeley Playhouse, I looked up before I looked at the stage.

Whiskey bottles hung from the ceiling, catching the light like amber constellations. Below them, musicians were already in place — tuning, testing, beginning. The room didn’t feel like it was about to start. It felt like it had already begun.

Then a guitar line slipped into the air. I felt myself lean forward.

Guy repairs vacuum cleaners by day and sings on Dublin streets by night. His songs carry the echo of a recent heartbreak. He performs them as though he’s still deciding how much of himself to reveal.

Then Girl hears him. She doesn’t applaud politely — she listens.

She sits at the piano and complements his melody — completing phrases he leaves suspended, filling emotional spaces he hasn’t quite dared to name. I could feel the shift the moment her notes joined his.

In Once, music isn’t background. It’s oxygen.

What begins as encouragement becomes collaboration.

They rehearse. A violin joins. A drum answers. One musician becomes several. A band forms right in front of us. Together they prepare for a recording session in London — an opportunity that feels both exciting and fragile.

As the music deepens, so does their connection — layered, restrained, unmistakable.

Both carry responsibilities. Both sense possibility.

That tension hums beneath every harmony.

Midway through a duet, I stopped observing and simply listened. The theater felt suspended — two voices aligning, two lives quietly pivoting.

No spectacle. Just something true.

From Indie Film to Stage

This story began as the 2007 film written and directed by John Carney, starring musicians Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová. The song “Falling Slowly” went on to win the Academy Award.

The stage adaptation, with a book by Enda Walsh, carried that intimacy to Broadway and won 8 Tony Awards, including Best Musical.

What remains constant is the heartbeat: music as turning point.

Why This Production Works

Director Josh Marx lets the story breathe. Music Director Michael Patrick Wiles keeps the sound alive and immediate. Choreographer Erin Rose Solorio shapes movement that feels discovered rather than arranged.

What struck me particularly was the ensemble.

This is a large cast of musician-actors — and they are uniformly strong at both. They don’t switch between “acting” and “playing.” They live in both simultaneously. A character delivers a line and flows directly into a fiddle phrase. Someone crosses the stage and becomes percussion. Storytelling and musicianship move as one.

That dual fluency elevates the evening. Energy circulates constantly. Transitions feel organic, almost inevitable.

Sitting beneath those hanging whiskey bottles, I felt surrounded by collaboration — not theatrical display, but shared creation.

Some connections arrive quietly — and rearrange everything.

By the final moments, I wasn’t watching a romance conclude. I was watching two people step into clarity — shaped by the music they created together.

I walked out feeling as though I’d been allowed to witness something private.

A song can open a door. What you do next is the story..

How to See It / Get Tickets

Julia Morgan Theater
2640 College Ave
Berkeley, CA

February 20 – March 15
Approx. 2 hours 30 minutes (including intermission)

Tickets: $19–$66
Box Office: (510) 845-8542
berkeleyplayhouse.org

Reserve early for immersive seating and weekend performances.

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Authorship & Creative Statement

Each review is created through my proprietary FocusLens℠ method—an original editorial process shaped by firsthand experience, critical insight, and structured narrative design. Original photography, graphics, director quotes, and animated elements are incorporated to enhance reader engagement and visual impact. State-of-the-art scaffolding systems support organization and phrasing, but every sentence and decision reflects my own voice and judgment. These are not AI-generated reviews—they are authored, shaped, and published by me.

Feb 13 2026
Love2

MButterfly

By Joseph Cillo


A seduction built on illusion — and the cost of believing it.

M. Butterfly at San Francisco Playhouse begins with elegance and ends somewhere far more exposed.

A French diplomat in Beijing meets a Chinese opera singer of striking poise. The early encounters feel refined, almost ceremonial. Words are measured. Gestures restrained. Desire moves politely at first.

Then something deeper takes hold.

What unfolds becomes a meditation on longing — on the stories we construct about who we are and how powerfully we want them confirmed.

Love, illusion, politics, self-mythology — the play absorbs all of it and reshapes it for the stage.

 

Illusion doesn’t announce itself. It arrives dressed as destiny.

Historical Context: The Real Case Behind The Play

The drama draws from the real-life relationship between French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and Beijing opera performer Shi Pei Pu.
Their decades-long affair and later espionage trial revealed layers of deception, belief, and identity performance that stunned international observers.

Fascinating dynamic
Dean Linnard portrays Rene Gallimard with finely calibrated restraint. His transformation happens gradually. Shoulders square. Confidence grows. The character’s romantic self-image expands with each encounter. Linnard allows us to see a man quietly rehearsing his own importance.

Opposite him, Edric Young gives Song Liling a composed, watchful elegance. The performance feels deliberate and controlled without ever feeling distant. A glance lingers just long enough. A phrase lands softly, then settles. Young sustains a layered presence — alluring, intelligent, and fully aware — that keeps tension alive even in stillness.

Their dynamic anchors the evening.

Desire shapes perception — and perception reshapes truth.

Mesmerizing experience
Directed by Bridgette Loriaux, the production leans into physical storytelling. Movement and proximity carry meaning. The choreography of intimacy feels intentional, reflecting Loriaux’s movement background and steady hand.

This is grown-up theater.

Two nude scenes unfold with composure and dramatic clarity. They underscore vulnerability rather than provoke reaction. Illusion gives way to exposure — literal and emotional. The staging treats these moments with gravity and discipline, reinforcing the play’s central inquiry into identity and belief.

Scenes breathe. Silence carries weight. Political tension and personal longing weave tightly together. By the final revelation, the room grows quiet in a way that feels earned.

 

When illusion falls away, what remains is the story we chose to believe.

Involving production
San Francisco Playhouse delivers a disciplined staging centered on performance. Lighting and scenic design frame intimacy and interrogation with clarity. The ensemble supports the central arc with tonal balance, moving fluidly between romantic suggestion and political reckoning.

The pacing builds deliberately, almost imperceptibly at first, until the emotional stakes stand fully revealed.

What it adds up to
M. Butterfly explores ego, desire, and belief with unsettling precision. Its power lies in watching how a cherished narrative gathers strength — how repetition becomes conviction, how conviction becomes identity.

This production leans into that progression. It draws you in gently, almost courteously, and then begins removing layers. By the end, what remains feels stark and human.

You leave carrying more than plot. You carry the recognition that illusion rarely feels false while you’re inside it. It feels persuasive. It feels flattering. It feels like love.

Illusion persuades. Belief commits. Reality waits.

How to see it / Get tickets
San Francisco Playhouse
450 Post Street, San Francisco

February 5 – March 14

Tickets: $52–$145
sfplayhouse.org
415-677-9596

Approximately 2 hours, 35 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission

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Authorship & Creative Statement

Each review is created through my proprietary FocusLens℠ method—an original editorial process shaped by firsthand experience, critical insight, and structured narrative design. Original photography, graphics, director quotes, and animated elements are incorporated to enhance reader engagement and visual impact. State-of-the-art scaffolding systems support organization and phrasing, but every sentence and decision reflects my own voice and judgment. These are not AI-generated reviews—they are authored, shaped, and published by me.