Victor Cordell
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Recent Articles:
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Tiger Style! Front Page
Walking Challenging Line Between Being Chinese And American
By: - Apr 16th, 2024Raised by Chinese-American tiger parents, adult siblings Albert and Jennifer are stereotypically accomplished and conflict avoiding. But when Albert is passed over for a promotion that goes to a less competent European-American, he reaches wit's end. Neither sibling speaks any Chinese, but they feel that they will be better received in China than at home in the U.S. What could go wrong? What doesn't in this broad but provocative farce?
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Julie Benko in Standby, Me Front Page
Stage Performer Ready To Stand-in For A Principal Unable To Go On
By: - Apr 16th, 2024In an engaging cabaret entertainment, Julie Benko recalled her experience as all manner of stand-in performer with beautifully crafted songs from those shows and witty vignettes. She's also made it to the top, having played Fanny Brice, the lead in "Funny Girl," on Broadway over 180 times.
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The Kite Runner Front Page
Broadway Tour of an Insightful Look into Growing Up Privileged in Afghanistan
By: - Apr 10th, 2024Twelve-year-old Amir comes from wealth and the dominant Pashtun tribe in Afghanistan. His only close friend, the illiterate Hassan, is not only from the deprived minority Hazara tribe but is the son of the servant of Amir's father. Hassan's kite running skills allow Amir to compete at the highest level in this important activity, but Amir will betray the trust of friendship, and the consequences reverberate.
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Birds and Balls Front Page
Two Lively One-Act Operas From Innovative Opera Parallèle
By: - Apr 07th, 2024Imagine one opera about the heralded 1973 "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match and another about an obscure Belgian bird singing competition. How would they be packaged in a program? Of course, by framing them as broadcasts from ABC's Wide World of Sports, with Howard Cosell at the mic. Innovative production techniques lift these already interesting little gems.
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Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord Front Page
ACT Presents an Award Winning Autobiographical Pandemic Experience
By: - Apr 05th, 2024When Kristina Wong's performing career was shut down by Covid, she turned to a skill that many Asian women learn from their mothers - sewing. Using social media and meeting technology, she organized a brigade of "aunties" who produced many thousands of cloth masks when masks were in short supply. In a high energy performance, she frames this personal experience in the context of the political world of 2020-21.
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Pal Joey Front Page
Rodgers and Hart's Greatest Cad
By: - Apr 01st, 2024Nightclub entertainer Joey Evans attracts a patroness, Vera, who stakes him to a club of his own. But she is older, domineering, married, and hot for him. He's a footloose schemer with the morals of an alley cat. What could possibly go wrong? Happily, the clashes of nightclub life are revealed with liberal doses of the beautiful tune "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered."
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Queen Front Page
TheatreWorks Fine Production About Bees and People
By: - Mar 26th, 2024In 2017, the world's bee population has plummeted, putting the food supply at risk. Two research assistants at University of California Santa Cruz have produced research that identifies the source of the die off, but then one last data collection undermines the previous results even though their paper is about to be published. The play confronts the dilemmas that researchers deal with.
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King Liz Front Page
Breaking Down Barriers in City Lights' Smashing Production
By: - Mar 25th, 2024Overcoming odds, Liz Rico has become a highly successful basketball agent. She now must represent a first-round draft pick who lacks college experience and maturity. Further, he has a police record that the media could pick up on. In this dramedy, she must determine how to handle the conflicts of managing the relationship with the client and the broader community.
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Pipeline Front Page
The Dangers of Growing Up Black in America
By: - Mar 18th, 2024In response to provocation, Black private-school-student Omari has crossed a line with his White teacher. The boy's mother, Nya, who is a teacher, is conflicted, as she values the rules that serve to protect society, but she understands that her son is a good boy with a future now in peril. Dominique Morisseau's riveting play explores numerous issues of race and relationships, and African-American Shakespeare's production does the play justice.
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The Far Country Front Page
Berkeley Rep's Fine Version of a Drama Set in Nearby Environs
By: - Mar 15th, 2024Gee, a Chinese immigrant living in San Francisco, wishes to visit China but needs documentation that will ensure his return. To obtain that, he must undergo interrogation at the notorious Angel Island detention center. Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, immigration officials are loathe to facilitate entry and re-entry into the U.S. by Asians, who are crafty in developing strategies to overcome the resistance.
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Corpus Evita Front Page
West Bay Opera Performs 2006 Grammy Nominee
By: - Feb 17th, 2024The composer and librettist both grew up in Argentina during Juan Peron's return to power and his third wife Isabel's ascension to the presidency on his death. Employing magical realism, the ghost of Evita, Juan's second wife beloved by the people, looms over Isabel, who fails to capture a similar relationship, despite the machinations of her advisor, Ministro. Lush neo-romantic music and Argentina's dramatic political events in the last half of the 20th century drive this beautifully produced rendition.
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Rigoletto Front Page
Opera San Jose's Powerful Production of Verdi Masterpiece
By: - Feb 15th, 2024The jester Rigoletto's life is dedicated to the care and safety of his daughter, Gilda. When she is kidnapped and compromised by his employer, the Duke of Mantua, he plans revenge but is also cursed by the father of another victim of the Duke's lechery. His plans backfire catastrophically. The glorious opera receives a powerful treatment.
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My Home on the Moon Front Page
SF Playhouse Dramedy About Soup and Artificial Intelligence
By: - Feb 06th, 2024A Vietnamese soup shop verges on closure when it "wins a grant" from a mysterious company that offers to pay to implement a new marketing strategy to revive the business. A consultant's program includes an unlikely and unseemly advertising campaign, but it works. Or does it?
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Cult of Love at Berkeley Rep Front Page
Awesome Treatment of Leslye Headland's Seventh Deadly Sin - Pride
By: - Feb 02nd, 2024The Dahls raised their children in the "Christian way," and Christmas homecoming celebrated by food and song is a great family tradition. But as adults the four offspring have deviated from the parents' hopes - among them a lesbian, a pathological believer, a recovering addict, and a lost sheep. When singing together, they seem the idyllic family, but when the music stops, the fractures appear. Despite the holiday setting, this is not a Christmas play.
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Kimberly Akimbo Front Page
A Teenage Girl With a Terminal Disease is Adult in the Room
By: - Jan 28th, 2024Doomed by progeria, a condition that ages the carrier at 4 1/2 times the normal rate, Kimberly turns 16. Her chronological age corresponds to age 72 given this condition, meaning that she probably has little time left in her life. Nonetheless, she attends to daily activities like any other school kid. But her working class parents are loose cannons, and a grifter aunt who insinuates herself into the household develops a get-rich-quick scheme that is anything but normal.
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Miriam and Esther Go To The Diamond District Front Page
A Mother's Death Brings Two Sisters Together
By: - Jan 21st, 2024Foraging through the belongings of their recently deceased mother, two middle-aged, somewhat estranged sisters learn more about their birth father and stepfather from a trove of letters and other documents. They also learn more about each other as they clash and bond over historical events that they either did not share or had seen from different perspectives.
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Legally Blonde - The Musical Front Page
Authenticity Overcomes Pampered Privilege
By: - Jan 15th, 2024Elle, a shallow but genuine and smart fashionista obsessed with the color pink, is dumped by her status seeking boyfriend who is off to Harvard Law School. Surprisingly (and true, except the law school was Stanford in real life), Elle insinuates an acceptance as well. Her presence provides humorous contrast to the staid environment.
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Einstein at Princeton Front Page
Opera Seen Through Domestic Prism
By: - Dec 08th, 2023In a compact manner, the libretto demonstrates the idealism of Einstein contrasted with the pragmatism of the women around him, while the story line covers political and social commentary; God and existence; the enormity of the creation of the atomic bomb; and more. Light touches and excerpts from other composers brighten the proceedings.
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The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Front Page
A Lighthearted Look at the Obsessiveness of Middle School Geeks
By: - Dec 04th, 2023We meet a diverse group of young teens bound by a common skill – spelling - and a common goal – winning. Spelling excellence is a grinding and lonely pursuit. All who compete in this Bee are nerds, but each in their own way, and each is motivated by a different set of circumstances. The audience will recall kids they’ve known and enjoy a light-hearted and entertaining look at growing up.
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Dragon Lady Front Page
Enrapturing Tales About a Philippine Family Unlike Yours
By: - Nov 30th, 2023Who would have thought that a solo performance about a family on the seedy edge of society as told by one of its descendants would captivate a theater audience? Sara Porkalob writes, tells, and sings stories of surviving entertainingly and with consummate magnetism and conviction.
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Guys and Dolls Front Page
World of Damon Runyon, Music and Lyrics of Frank Loesser
By: - Nov 25th, 2023The musical gives a peek into the marginalized world of gamblers and performers around Broadway during the Depression. While running floating craps games as a profession, Nathan Detroit has eluded marriage to nightclub singer, Adelaide, for 14 years. Out-of-towner Sky Masterson is an occasional participant in Nathan's games. Needing $1,000, Nathan bets the bet-on-anything Sky that he can't induce a certain woman to go to Havana (Cuba!) with him for dinner. That woman happens to be Sarah, a uniformed member of the Times Square Save-a-Soul Mission, so Nathan feels comfortable with his bet. Well.....
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The Elixir of Love Front Page
Donizetti's Frothy Comedy at San Francisco Opera
By: - Nov 21st, 2023Poor Nemorino is in love with his employer, Adina, but she has other things in mind. Along comes Dr. Dulcamara, an itinerant snake oil salesman, who has just the love potion that will make Nemorino irresistible to Adina. Of course, it's really red wine. Frivolity ensues and all live happily ever after.
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Omar Front Page
Giddens and Abels' Pulitzer Prize Winning Opera
By: - Nov 17th, 2023In this fact-based story, a Muslim scholar is captured and enslaved in South Carolina. After various travails, he is purchased by a relatively humane master who encourages his writing and religious thinking, even while arguing that he prays to a false God, believing the Muslim Allah to be different from the Christian God.
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Four Plays From Broadway And Beyond Front Page
Premieres and Revivals
By: - Nov 15th, 2023These were seen by the reviewer on a trip to NYC for the American Theatre Critics Association conference. Each of the four is worth seeing with history and music being common threads. Supported by excerpts of period music, "Spies" tells the true story of a 17th century friar who was charged with preventing what would become the 30 Years War. The dark "Watch" uses operatic form and modern dance to tell a story related to the real-life mass murders in a Charleston church with a black congregation and a Pittsburgh synagogue. "Wholesale" is a heavily adapted revival of the 1962 musical that launched Barbra Streisand's career. "Love" tells the story of former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos in sung-through immersive disco fashion!
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Bulrusher Front Page
Relationships and Mysticism in the California Redwoods
By: - Nov 03rd, 2023A black foundling with a gift for reading the future is raised in a seemingly color-blind community. The people relationships that surround her are sometimes complicated and opaque. And when the niece of the only black man in town arrives, the horizons of the now 18-year old, Bulrusher, expand.
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