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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…

2008: one show hits broadway and two go on tour

Passing Strange rocks Broadway

What can we say except “WOW!” In 2008, Berkeley Rep celebrated the Broadway run of Passing Strange—and the only thing that rocked harder than this show was the rave reviews! After pulling in a raft of awards for its extended off-Broadway engagement, Passing Strange also earned the Tony Award for Best Book and ranked among the top shows of the year in the New York Times, New York Magazine and USA Today.

In addition to the fantastic reviews below, check out this huge feature story on Berkeley Rep in the New York Times (PDF).

“EXUBERANT…Please don’t call it a Broadway musical. You could scare away too many people who might actually enjoy it. Call it a rock concert with a story to tell, trimmed with a lot of great jokes. Or call it a sprawling work of performance art, complete with angry rants and scary drag queens. Call it whatever you want, really. I’ll just call it wonderful, and a welcome anomaly on Broadway, which can use all the vigorous new artistic blood it can get.”—New York Times
“ILLICITLY ENTERTAINING…wicked and often wonderful…It’s a witty, boisterous, often heretical dissection of racial identity in all its modern-day fluidity. It’s also a hell of a good time.”—New York Sun
“PLAYFUL, PASSIONATE…Passing Strange is Broadway at its best! It uses impeccably crafted, decidedly contemporary pop songs to propel a compelling story…Let’s hope that it helps inspire more musical-theater artists—and producers—to dare to be different.”—USA Today
“PROPULSIVE and viscerally exciting…Passing Strange breaks the mold with electrifying inventiveness…a magical mystery tour that fuses aspects of concert, concept album, cabaret and revivalist meeting…It’s boldly atypical Broadway fare that pulses with a new kind of vitality…In a sector often criticized for its aversion to risk, the producing team deserves kudos for allowing this bracingly original work a broader platform on which to blossom.”—Variety
“FULL OF PUNCH…they rock harder than anything else on Broadway…The best part about Passing Strange is the book, which shows us a side of black life in America that rarely gets talked about…and my guess is that it is headed for a long, profitable and influential run.”—Wall Street Journal
“EXCELLENT…Passing Strange is a mesmerizing experience that probes what it means to be gloriously, sometimes painfully, alive…This genre-busting musical pulses with the energy of a rock concert.”—Entertainment Weekly
“AUTHENTIC…Tuesday night I saw a musical called Passing Strange (that’s right, my hipster colleagues, I said ‘musical’), and, listen up: It’s fantastic. Hardly your typical theater piece, Passing Strange is an autobiographical story told through rock ‘n’ roll—and real rock ‘n’ roll, too, not some derivative imitation you merely tolerate…And because this piece was written by and is fronted by an authentic, soulful musician, this theater actually rocks. You’ll be happy, you’ll be sad, and you’ll rock along with Stew. (If you’re the affable older couple next to me, you may cover your ears for all of Act Two, but still never stop smiling.)”—MTV’s You R Here
“ELECTRIC…positively ballsy…marrying cunning lyrics with sharp hooks and power chords, [Stew] sends shockwaves with his brash musicianship…groundbreaking terrain in the portrayal of the black experience on the American stage.”—Backstage
“RAUCOUS…Let’s not get too distracted figuring out how to categorize Passing Strange, the stranger-in-a-strange-land original passing for a Broadway musical at the Belasco Theatre. What’s important is that the thing—part indie-rock concert, part boho-art project, part coming-of-age black-identity crisis, part hipster travelogue—is all smart and all enjoyable and all very good for the theater.”—Newsday
“GUTSY…Passing Strange smashes Broadway clichés with an electric guitar…there’s a rebuke to the corny, fusty excesses of most musicals in every noisy second…The show attains true pop transcendence.”—New York Magazine
“EUPHORIC…the most exciting show to hit Broadway in recent memory, and it’s not to be missed. The blistering onstage band [delivers] an irresistible, cross-genre score, warm hearted humor, inspired staging and a brilliant ensemble. Go see it!”—Gothamist (March 2, 2008)
“EXUBERANT…Theatergoers will marvel at it…What makes the show fresh is the music, which Stew wrote with Heidi Rodewald. Its rhythms and sounds go from hard-thumping rock and groovy blues to funk, punk and gospel.”—Daily News
“VERY WITTY and very smart…Stew’s amped-up Passing Strange is the newest, mostly likable entry on a growing slate of new, rock-oriented musicals looking either to test the limits of what constitutes a Broadway musical or (if you prefer more revolutionary rhetoric) crash through the prior rules of engagement.”—Chicago Tribune
“FRESH…A roly-poly guy with distinctive eyeglasses and wearing a suit and sneakers, Stew is unlike anyone else on Broadway. The result is a wonderful show that is more rock ‘n’ roll performance art than Broadway musical.”—Chicago Sun-Times
“EMINENTLY THEATRICAL…a mock bohemian story with knowing, sharply observant humour and a buoyant, hard-driving score…Broadway is a surprisingly comfortable fit for Passing Strange, a testament to the universality of its appeal and the genial personality of its rockin’ ringmaster”—Associated Press
“THE REAL DEAL: funky, electric, thumping, progressive, exhilarating…a phenomenal experience that deserves a run ten times longer than Cats and Phantom combined…Passing Strange is an ingeniously staged tour through the disorienting funhouse of African American identity. And what a fun, strange trip it is—one you’ll probably want to take more than once, Broadway be damned.”—Gothamist (March 4, 2008)
“FREEWHEELING…Passing Strange looks and sounds more like a rock concert than a conventional Broadway attraction. But the offbeat show soon proves to be one smart and extremely hip musical…The talented, sexy ensemble easily morphs into characters ranging from schoolkids to German high-brows. And the band really rocks.”—Newark Star Ledger
“FINE AND FUNKY…Stew weaves his tale with wit and withering self-examination…Passing Strange is as much the portrait of a musical artist as a young man as it is a self-conscious redefinition of the musical theater art form…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.”—Theatermania

If you’d been at the post-show party—as many people were who worked on its world premiere at Berkeley Rep—you would’ve heard legendary actress Marian Seldes deliver a delicious dramatic reading of the Times review in its entirety. We’re not sure which was better—her passionate delivery or Charles Isherwood’s wonderful words! Other folks spotted at opening night included Debbie Harry, Edward Albee, Spike Lee, Martha Plimpton, Bobby Cannavale, James Snyder, Michael Ealy, Cheryl “Salt” James, Julie Halston, Jerry Stiller, and Anne Meara—who exclaimed to one of our staff, “I loved it. That’s the best thing I ever saw!”

Drinking across the nation

During its extended run at Berkeley Rep in 2008, Wishful Drinking set box office records, won critical acclaim and delighted theatregoers night after night. Then audiences across America got Carried away when Berkeley Rep launched a six-city national tour that brought this outrageous solo show to sold-out houses in Boston, Hartford, San Jose, Santa Fe, Seattle and Washington, DC. With reviews like these, it’s no surprise that the next stop for Carrie Fisher and Tony Taccone was Broadway:

“Carrie Fisher sure can dish it. And we’re only too happy to take it. Her blissfully gossipy one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, acerbically, uproariously and, yes, even affectionately mines the rich veins of a life lived to a conveniently lampoonable degree in the public eye…It would take a very long review to catalogue all the funny lines…We get the dirt, but we get it with a refreshing textual stylishness. For Fisher is a writer through and through, and ingrained in her wit is a Wildean panache, an ability to sew a snappy hem on a robe of desperation. She assumes we’re smart, too, a strategy that propels us all the more eagerly into her circle, to gaze out at the absurd excesses of a Hollywood upbringing…What her show reaffirms is that Fisher’s gift all along was to translate into words the crazy events in her memory banks and funny synapses of her nervous system. For Wishful Drinking manages to make splendid sense of a turbulent existence that sometimes didn’t.”—Washington Post
“Hilarious…It would be hugely entertaining, if more than a little lazy, to review Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking simply by quoting one funny line after another. Fortunately for my professional self-esteem, however, I can’t take the easy way out, because a lot of her funniest lines are simply not quotable in a family newspaper…Every once in a while, while gasping for air after a laughing fit, I’d find myself wondering if this is truly a useful way of dealing with tragedy, illness, and death. [Yet] it’s hard to think of anyone more entitled to keep away from the dark side…While Fisher’s fame as Princess Leia may be what draws some audience members to her show, it’s only a small part of what will keep them laughing once they’re there.”—Boston Globe
“It is a riot. I loved it. Carrie is hilarious and her life is the epitome of tragicomedy but don’t let that fool you. She brings delicious, biting satire to every anecdote.”—Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Carrie Fisher is the kind of friend you dream of having—someone you can talk with about the New Yorker, someone quick with a withering witticism or a warm hug. You can bask in this fantasy for two hours, courtesy of Miss Fisher’s winning one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, part Hollywood confessional and part astute, wry observations about a life roaringly spent…It’s a treat to listen to Miss Fisher; her erudition and palpable love of words and language are expressed in husky, clipped cadences. It’s also a treat to hear her sing ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ in a voice that poignantly reminds you of Judy Garland.”—Washington Times
“There seems to be no resisting Carrie Fisher. The force is with her…She’s as funny as Dame Edna Everage and as screwed-up as Britney Spears crossed with Sylvia Plath. In her one-woman show Wishful Drinking, this scion of Hollywood royalty lets her pimpled personal history hang out, from a childhood caught in the winds of scandal to an adolescence as a Star Wars icon in hairmuffs to an adulthood spent in the lusty embrace of drugs, alcohol, manic depression, and Paul Simon. Lumpy, candid, and caustic at 52, the artist formerly known as Princess Leia sprinkles wry humor like heavy pixie dust across her cautionary tale…The events and relationships revisited in Wishful Drinking may be twisted, but Fisher’s ironic celebration of the success-studded train wreck of her life will keep you doubled over for two hours.”—Boston Phoenix
“Carrie Fisher has issues. And that makes for great theater…Fisher’s script is hilarious. Her delivery is superb. And her timing is flawless…It’s a revealing evening, and the laughs don’t stop. As she did in Postcards from the Edge, Fisher turns her life into fodder for a great story.”—Hartford Courant
“Carrie Fisher is out to prove she’s had a life more bizarre than yours. And with the help of a flow chart, a glitter gun and a super-size supply of zinging quips, she makes her case in her solo show Wishful Drinking…Part E! celebrity bio, part 12 Step meeting and part irony-drenched stand-up comedy act, Wishful Drinking rustles up plenty of laughs. Fisher knows how to warm up a crowd, and get you in her court—instantly.”—Seattle Times
“Carrie Fisher is an accomplished performer with impeccable comic timing and an old-fashioned willingness to directly engage the audience, but in the end Wishful Drinking isn’t just a comic bit, it’s the story of a survivor, and a sincere one at that, even if the painful, earnest bits are offset by sarcasm and humor.”—Seattlest
“Laughter from the edge: Carrie Fisher turns the painful times in her life into Wishful Drinking—a funny one-woman show…Fisher’s forays into the audience make the 1,600-seat venue feel practically cozy…During the show, the audience laughs hard so frequently that it’s only in retrospect it realizes many events have a tragic undercurrent.”—Baltimore Sun
“For an evening in a 1,200-seat house, headlined by an actress whose face is instantly recognizable across the inhabited continents, it all feels surprisingly cozy, like you’ve dropped in for a visit with the slightly mad neighbor…Her unrepentantly wicked solo show, Wishful Drinking, set the Lincoln Theater rocking with delighted laughter.”—Washington City Paper
“If laughter is the best medicine, Wishful Drinking is the best kind of overdose…Fisher is performing her twisted and gut-wrenchingly funny one-woman autobiographical show, Wishful Drinking, and rest assured this hilarious public exorcism of her personal and professional demons is not to be missed…Fisher is a saber-toothed hoot. She uses her pungent and at times acid insights to expose the fractured fairytale of hype and celebrity, never hesitating to put herself in the crosshairs of her own rapier wit…She transforms her outrageous tale into part stand-up comedy and part theatrical group therapy. Hiding between the lines of her tremendously funny, if understandably warped, view on life is a poignant message of strength and hope—and resilience of the human spirit. Fisher’s singularly intelligent and unsparing repartee surprises and delights at every turn.”—Broadway World

Taking Over New York

Danny Hoch’s Taking Over had its world premiere at Berkeley Rep in January 2008 and hit it big in Montreal that July. Then, as part of the Hip Hop Theatre Festival, the show traveled to New York that fall. The All City Tour featured free performances in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, culminating in an extended off-Broadway run at The Public Theater in Manhattan. People from every borough embraced this New York story:

“A sustained tour de force…Mr. Hoch is a specialist in placing invisible people in the line of vision of folks who might otherwise never see them. Marion has too much pride to yell, ‘Look at me!,’ but her creator is happy to raise his voice—loudly and raucously—on her behalf, by bringing her and her spiritual kin into being. The extravagantly talented Mr. Hoch has been channeling the restless souls of the dispossessed and the marginalized since the early 1990s, becoming a boiling one-man melting pot in shows like Some People and Jails, Hospitals and Hip-Hop. Now he is insisting that attention be paid to the endangered species to which Marion belongs. That’s the hard-core group of New Yorkers in Williamsburg, of varying ethnicity and slender means, who have come under siege from a growing army of upper-middle-class invaders.”—New York Times
“Hilarious and compelling…as scathingly unapologetic as it is brilliantly funny and tragic…Throughout his career as a writer, actor and director, Hoch has been a champion against the commercialization of hip-hop culture and has vigorously condemned the cultural and political entrapments of mainstream America. In his latest work, the native New Yorker directs his rage at a threat that is more close-to-home—gentrification in traditionally poor and working-class areas. Hoch takes us on a thoroughly entertaining tour of his ethnically diverse Brooklyn neighborhood through a series of comical sketches about the people who live there.”—Associated Press
“Hoch takes no prisoners…Directed with fast-paced visual imagery by Tony Taccone, the solo artist transforms into a community of characters who juggle their passionate contradictions with a light touch…In 90 snide and wonderful minutes, this master of New York ethnicities creates a sharp-edged picture of the people pushed aside by the condos and the brunch cafes.”—Newsday
“It’s been ten years since Danny Hoch debuted a new solo show, and while his hometown has changed a lot, his obsessions remain the same: racial, social and class conflict. Set in his native Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Taking Over explores the rapid gentrification of the neighborhood via Hoch’s uncanny impersonations [with] energy and anger pulsating through its unsentimental portrayals. Hoch may not like what has happened in his backyard, but he isn’t exactly nostalgic either…To his credit, Hoch avoids answers, easy or otherwise. All his characters want the same thing, to get along—not with each other, just in life.”—Time Out New York
“In Taking Over, the godfather of hip-hop theater addresses his considerable theatrical gifts to the problem of gentrification, which the fourth-generation New Yorker takes very personally. Hoch’s solo show is deliberately, unapologetically unfair and has already earned him plenty of criticism (at one point the performer reads his hate mail aloud). But there’s no way Taking Over could spark so much outrage if it weren’t both engaging and at least partially accurate…This sort of greed disguised as philanthropy is a New York real estate specialty, and it deserves a few choice whacks with the theater ax.”—Variety
“Solo performer Danny Hoch is fighting back…Hoch, who burst onto the theater scene in the early ‘90s with pitch-perfect urban characters who leapt across race, age and gender barriers, surveys the rapid and profound changes that have redefined the painfully hip Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg…In each of these finely wrought and complex snapshots, Hoch—a strong writer and dazzling performer—finds a sharp angle on the problems of gentrification…Whether you like the changing face of New York or find it dismaying, you will be surprised by the way Danny Hoch flips the typical arguments.”—NY1
“In what is perhaps his angriest solo show to date, Danny Hoch launches a pointed critique of the gentrification of his Williamsburg, Brooklyn neighborhood…Director Tony Taccone has no doubt aided Hoch in giving such a wonderful chameleon-like performance as he hops from character to character with minimal costume and set changes…Through his multiple characters, Hoch addresses many of the complexities surrounding the issue of gentrification. He balances the nostalgia that some of the characters feel with accounts of how the neighborhood used to be the locus of violent crimes and rampant drug use…Perhaps one of the best things that can come out of seeing Taking Over is that it will make many audience members uncomfortable, and cause them to question their own roles in the gentrification process.”—TheaterMania
“Timely, smart, funny, and very entertaining…Hoch’s work as both writer and actor here is superb: he gives us characters whose authenticity is unassailable, and he frames them within a show that never fails to entertain as it edifies and prods and pokes us…showing us the perspectives of these varied New Yorkers with razor-sharp insight, wit, and compassion. Under the direction of Tony Taccone, the show flies.”—NY Theatre
“Danny Hoch’s one-man extravaganza, Taking Over, gives a good name to theatre with a social conscious, using scathing humor to make the audience howl and squirm while skewering urban gentrification…Reminiscent of Sarah Jones’ Bridge & Tunnel—also directed by Tony Taccone—Taking Over channels a series of Brooklyn characters, ranging from a real estate mogul and a Midwestern transplant to long-time residents being displaced…The authenticity of Hoch’s connection to the material he wrote and performs is never in question.”—Flavorpill
“Hoch, 37, is a gifted performer with the same sort of ear for the rhythms of language as Anna Deavere Smith and Sarah Jones, who have both brought multicharacter shows to Broadway. But he has the intuitive intelligence of a street fighter, and he takes no prisoners…Taking Over, his crackling one-man, nine-character show about the changes that gentrifying newcomers have wrought in his own neighbourhood [is] a plea for authenticity and history and memory, for the gritty immigrant essence of New York to not get swamped in the monoculture that has washed over too much of America and the rest of the world already.”—Toronto Globe & Mail
“In the funny and fierce Taking Over, Hoch uncorks his anger and confusion about how the march of the real estate agents has turned his beloved Brooklyn into a kind of suburb of Minneapolis, complete with luxury apartments, chic boutiques, and $4 almond croissants. In doing so, he channels his rage into the mouths of a broad array of characters on both sides of the new urban conflict…Hoch is in rare form, detonating laughs with the force of grenades even as he poses uncomfortable questions about the city’s so-called progress and our complicity in it…Indeed, Hoch has rarely seemed this devastatingly on the money, and I’m guessing that the director, Tony Taccone, has something to do with that…It all adds up to an evening that packs a sting in every smile.”—Lighting & Sound America

Taking Over Canada

When Artistic Director Tony Taccone directed the world premiere of Danny Hoch’s Taking Over at Berkeley Rep in 2008, it became a hit and extended its run. Then they took the show on the road. The first stop was Montreal, where they delighted audiences and critics at the Just for Laughs Festival:

“HILARIOUS…The sheer energy of his performance is astounding. The best thing about Hoch is that he’s so unpredictable. Just when you think you know where he’s heading, he segues into something else…It’s a slick international, multi-lingual show, complete with backdrop images of Brooklyn (new and old), hip urban music and super-titles…On opening night, the cheers were deafening.”—Montreal Gazette
“BRILLIANT…Danny Hoch is superb at moving from the skin of one character to another. Hoch’s transformation takes place with simple clothing props and a chameleon like skill for changing his physical attitude on stage…hilarious as much as it is thought provoking.”—Serious Comedy
“POIGNANT, provocative and flat-out funny, Danny Hoch’s Taking Over is groundbreaking comedy from an exceptionally talented performer.”—CHOM-FM
“AMAZING. His performance is not only funny, it’s insightful, irreverent, and at times almost scary. It’s everything you wanted to know about New York but were afraid to ask.”—CFQR-FM
“TERRIFIC! Hoch’s ability to portray unique characters straight out of America’s trendiest city left me in awe—and hurting from all the laughter. It’s an eye-opening show that has a lot to say but never stops being entertaining.”—The Suburban

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