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Press coverage

our shows hit it big in new york and beyond

“Suddenly the Rep is one of the Bay Area’s leading export companies,” exclaimed the San Francisco Chronicle in a recent story that celebrated how our shows have been traveling to cities nationwide. Here are the rave reviews for shows that you saw locally before they were reborn abroad…

2007: berkeley rep double parks off broadway

Passing Strange rocks Manhattan

When Berkeley Rep presented the world premiere of Passing Strange in 2006, no one had seen anything like it. Then this wild rock musical transferred to an off-Broadway run at The Public Theater. Thanks to rave reviews—like these in The New Yorker and the New York Times (PDFs)—the show was extended for four weeks. The show won two Obie Awards, three Drama Desk Awards, four Audelco Awards, two Theatre World Awards and the Drama Desk Award for Best Musical.

“fresh, exuberant and bitingly funny…full of heart…this bracingly inventive show introduces an exciting new voice to contemporary musical theater, a witty wordsmith, composer and performer who goes by the single name Stew…Stew’s gift for smart comic wordplay would be the envy of many a rapper, but the more lyrical passages in Passing Strange are carefully sculptured, considered and reflective…Professor Stew can also play a mean guitar, and when necessary, he strides the stage like an evangelical preacher, or a preening rocker, to whip the audience into a froth.”—New York Times
“Propulsive…Passing Strange is a brilliant work about migration—a geographical migration but also its hero’s migration beyond the tenets of ‘blackness’ and toward selfhood…the Narrator, a short, stocky charmer, with a shaved head, yellow-tinted glasses, and a cotton-candy goatee, wins us over almost at once. Given the rock-and-roll element of the show, we are somewhat jadedly expecting a more colored version of Rent, with a bit of Hedwig and the Angry Inch thrown in. Instead, the Narrator establishes himself as an ironist with a comfortable, middle-class pedigree…Stew and the show’s exceptionally gifted director, Annie Dorsen, skewer the scene in which the Youth leaves his long-suffering mother by making it look and sound like an Antonioni movie. What the Narrator calls the Youth’s ‘search for the real’ begins here. And we marvel at his bravery…With Passing Strange, Stew, Rodewald, and Dorsen have created a work of such singularity that it prompts comparisons less to traditional theatre than to the eccentric iconoclasm of the producer Prince Paul, who, in works like his 1999 hip-hop opera, A Prince Among Thieves, ushered in the sound of the New Negro. Whether he knows it or not, Stew has picked up the baton…such a finely crafted, ethnic-minded American musical.”—The New Yorker (June 11, 2007)
“sharp and effective, both as visceral entertainment and an intellectual statement on race and performance…the songs are honest-to-god rock ‘n’ roll, boiling with energy whether they’re sung by characters or by Stew himself, who often leaves his narrator’s perch to work the crowd…The achievement is even more exciting because its creators are essentially novices…Stew and Rodewald had no experience as dramatists. No matter. The first time is the charm.”—Variety
“A savvy rock memoir by the singer-songwriter Stew, who presides over a musical retelling of his prodigal youth…Loud and smart and lit by neon, Stew’s stylish creation playfully flouts the conventions of the Künstlerroman, setting folly and wisdom alike to a heady beat.”—The New Yorker (May 28, 2007)
“deeply theatrical…Stew and his crew deftly work the English language into a jokey, charged, poetic frenzy of clever lyrics and cool-sounding dialogue. Beyond mere cleverness, though, Stew’s knife-edge racial commentary is both upsetting and unexpectedly funny…This guy doesn’t just sing his songs, he tears into each one as if he can’t wait to taste it…The result of all this rock and roll and painstaking craftsmanship is a musical of individual discovery that belongs on the shelf next to standards such as John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”—Newsday
“soulful and entertaining…The book and lyrics of Passing Strange are infused with a rhythmic and poetic sense of style…His writing brings to mind the sardonic lyricism of Randy Newman. His singing style echoes the wry conviction of Cat Stevens. His songs are composed with a playful irreverence reminiscent of Frank Zappa…The strength of Passing Strange lies in its original songs, funky band and talented cast.”—Associated Press
“a new musical that—amazing!—actually feels relevant…Stew and director Annie Dorsen convey the easy pleasure of a show that doesn’t feel the need to explain itself…They play straight-ahead rock when it suits them, or traipse off into some other style, like Baptist revival (when the Youth discovers music in church) or punk (when he starts a garage band) or psychedelia (in Amsterdam, obviously)…It’s yet another sign that smart theater composers are edging out of the sonic museum and into the world of 21st-century pop, discovering the joys of bright lights and loud music.”—New York Magazine
“Stew, the eye of the freewheeling sonic hurricane that is Passing Strange, spends much of this strange and satisfying musical knocking various chips off his own shoulder and replacing them with new ones…Stew’s whipsmart lyrics graft the nimble virtuosity of spoken-word poetry onto a dense indie-soul score that incorporates everyone from Joe Jackson to John Legend to Jimi Hendrix…He tweaks the received wisdom of racial identity as cannily and wittily as any playwright since George C. Wolfe when he unleashed The Colored Museum in 1986.”—New York Sun
“Funky…the music is first-rate…its propulsive score and witty lyrics demonstrate a prodigious musical talent…The performers, particularly Breaker as Stew’s alter-ego, do terrific work, and the creator/narrator is a highly engaging presence.”—New York Post
“fine and funky…a new show with a downtown rock ‘n’ roll sensibility…Stew tells this tale making no concessions to musical theater expectations…his journey takes him through the whirlwind of cutting-edge American and European musical styles that begins with gospel and travels through punk, blues, jazz, and rock…Stew weaves his tale with wit and withering self-examination.”—Theatermania
“Ingenious…Passing Strange is smart, funny, noisy, and eclectic, and like Spring Awakening it trades in an essential currency of youth and rock: the urge to find out who you are…Passing Strange is further reinvigorating the rock musical…with artists like Sheik and Stew turning their attention to the stage, theater music—for the first time in half a century—is plugged into the sound of popular music. Of course part of the credit goes to those shows’ innovative young directors, Michael Mayer and Annie Dorsen, who are helping to fashion a fresh set of values for the rock musical.”—Boston Globe

Eurydice in NYC

Clearly, the mythic Eurydice made the wrong choice when she wed Orpheus: if there’s one man who could reliably bring her back to life, it’s Associate Artistic Director Les Waters. The Obie Award-winning director first staged Eurydice, the stunning script from MacArthur genius Sarah Ruhl, at Berkeley Rep in 2004; then he brought it back to life at Yale Repertory Theatre in 2006. In 2007, Waters once again revived Eurydice in New York City. The off-Broadway production at Second Stage Theatre ranked amongst the Top 10 plays of 2007 in Time Magazine.

“Weird and wonderful…Gifted young writer Sarah Ruhl has adapted this mournful legend with a fresh eye…in a rhapsodically beautiful production directed by Les Waters…Mr. Waters and his design collaborators have framed Ms. Ruhl’s play with uncommon sensitivity and stylistic sympathy. (In a less felicitous production, I can imagine the play cloying into preciousness.) Scott Bradley’s tilted vision of the underworld as a slightly dilapidated spa, wallpapered in letters written from the dead to the living, perfectly matches the writing’s off-kilter tone. The shimmery, dank lighting by Russell H. Champa echoes the quicksilver changes in tenor. And the selection of music likewise parallels the emotional currents without overwhelming the breezy playfulness of the dialogue…To be moved by Eurydice, you just need to tune in to the play’s insistent heartbeat, the rhythmic threnody woven by its language, its subterranean feeling and its strangely potent imagery. Ms. Ruhl sees her plays as much as she hears them—a rare gift among playwrights—and some of the most striking moments in the play are wordless ones…I staggered out of the theater in the same state of sad-happy disorientation that I recall from my initial viewing…its hallucinatory imagery and emotional allure have remained with me.”—New York Times
“Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice (at the Second Stage, under the direction of Les Waters), a luminous retelling of the Orpheus myth from his beloved wife’s point of view, is exhilarating because it frees the stage from the habitual. Watching it, we enter a singular, surreal world, as lush and limpid as a dream—an anxiety dream of love and loss—where both author and audience swim in the magical, sometimes menacing, and always thrilling flow of the unconscious…Somehow, this subtle production works the trick of imagining the unimaginable. When, at the finale, Orpheus is in the underworld and can no longer hear the music of the spheres, that small moment of silence is spectacular, full of both woe and wonder.”—The New Yorker
“Visually refreshing…heartbreakingly real…A generosity of spirit permeates Eurydice, Sarah Ruhl’s odd yet often imaginative reworking of an ancient love story marked by abrupt loss…What Ruhl does in her play, which opened Monday at off-Broadway’s Second Stage Theatre, is to tell this classic myth from the woman’s point of view. Fortunately, abetted by director Les Waters and a willing ensemble cast, she lifts it out of its innate moroseness by artfully dwelling, at least most of the time, on the joys of remembering. Don’t look for straightforward storytelling, though. The playwright, whose equally fanciful The Clean House was seen at Lincoln Center last season, fractures time space and narrative. And the language is distinctly modern.”—Associated Press
“Sarah Ruhl clearly has talent to burn…Ms. Ruhl displays a knack for well-turned aphorisms and a welcome eagerness to expand mainstream theater’s visual parameters.”—New York Sun
“As splashy as it is memorable…It speaks poetically yet simply about love, loss and memory…The production, directed by Les Waters, looks and sounds incredibly sumptuous.”—Daily News
“Visually amazing…Eurydice showcases Ruhl’s gift for marrying realism with fantasy, straightforward dialogue with poetic flights of fancy…The accolades this Eurydice collected during its premiere productions at the Berkeley and Yale Repertory theaters, and likely to increase during its Second Stage run, are due in large part to director Les Waters fluid staging (no pun intended) and the wizardry of the design team…A mix of quirky comedy and tragedy [using] realism, humor and unabashedly emotion-pushing poetry. It’s all wonderfully accessible, thanks to the actors who have no doubt been fine tuning their parts since their premiere performances.”—Curtain Up

Taccone rides south with Zorro in Hell

In 2006, Tony Taccone directed the world premiere of Culture Clash’s Zorro in Hell at Berkeley Rep, and the show received rave reviews. Then our heroes headed south to La Jolla Playhouse, where they once again left audiences rolling in the aisles.

“REFUSES TO PULL PUNCHES…There’s no denying that the trio of performers who make up Culture Clash know how to seduce an audience with clownish everyman charm…The punch lines are delivered with crack timing, and many are quite daring in their sentiments…La Jolla residents can sleep easier now that Zorro has landed on their shores.”—Los Angeles Times
“EXUBERANT…hellzapoppin’…hilarious (and expertly performed)…Zorro in Hell is one wily, ambitious, sometimes hectic, yet savagely entertaining piece of agit-prop…Sharon Lockwood is one-of-a-kind—with technique and intelligence for any kind of role but the principled spirit to shape a career in socially conscious theater that melts cynicism into admiration.”—San Diego Union Tribune
“A GUILTY PLEASURE…Zorro in Hell is an exhilarating return to what Culture Clash does best…some of the funniest, smartest satire you’ll see on a California stage this year…Director Tony Taccone keeps the pace at light speed…Just remember to leave your sensitivities and political leanings at home, because whatever they are they’ll be mocked, lustily and cheerfully.”—Orange County Register
“ENORMOUS FUN…a milestone…a swaggering, outrageous, name-dropping banquet of pranky chauvinism that leaves no stereotype untweaked…a spectacle with no expense seemingly spared…I’m convinced. I’m aboard. I’m considering going back to laugh some more.”—San Diego Arts

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