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KPFA - Bay Area Theater

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Bay Area theatre reviews with KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky,.Older posts include theatre interviews recorded pre-pandemic. LINK TO ASSORTED LOCAL THEATER & BOOK VENUES2026KPFA 312700 Politik & Regierungen
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  • Review: “The Employee Dharma Handbook” at TheatreWorks Palo Alto

    Review: “The Employee Dharma Handbook” at TheatreWorks Palo Alto
    Jul 13 2026
    KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “The Employee Dhama Handbook: a world premiere play by Geetha Reddy at TheatreWorks Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto through August 2, 2026. TEXT OF REVIEW Discrimination comes at you in many ways. Racial bigotry. Religious fanaticism. Gender and disabled bias. Homophobia. Fat-shaming, agism. The list lengthens as you expand to other cultures. There’s the whole tribal thing too. Then there’s the caste system from India. Banned in 1950, it still lives on under the surface.Explaining caste in detail takes too long, but some jobs simply can’t go to members of one caste or another. The Brahmin are on top; Dalits at the bottom. But has the system spread to America, and if it has, how does it manifest? That question, and the relationship of that particular bias to the caste system of corporations lies at the heart of The Employee Dharma Handbook, a new play by Geetha Reddy, at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto through August 2nd. The focus is on a handful of workers at a fictional aerospace company; they’re building a rocket to Jupiter, and if it all works out, the whole crew will become rich. But Leela, a young Indian scientist born in the U.S., has just been passed over by her boss, Khrish, for an important promotion that instead went to another Indian, Baasu, who himself understands it should have gone to Leela. If this isn’t resolved, there is no team. Enter Val, the black HR director, no stranger to bias herself, investigating the matter. Was the problem Leela’s gender? Or something else? Khrish is Brahmin,. So is Baasu. Leela is not. No, no, says Khrish, it’s not like that at all. But maybe it is. The Employee Dharma Handbook often doesn’t know what kind of play it wants to be. Serious critique? Farce? Comedy-drama? The capitalism and caste dichotomy unclear. The comedy not as funny as it needs to be. 

As a world premiere it needs work. But the elements are there. Each character, at one point or other, becomes facilitator, accuser, victim, winner and loser. The cast handles the role switching well, particularly Kathryn Smit-McGlynn as Val and Kunal Dudhecker as Baasu. As the relationships twist and turn, we see a playwright at the top of her game.. There comes a point toward the end where The Employee Dharma Handbook goes off the rails, and in order to make a point, the characters become pawns of the playwright. Still, the play is often a thoughtful, funny, and very original ride with hopefully a bright future. The Employee Dharma Handbook by Geetha Reddy plays at TheatreWorks Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto, and for more information, you can go to theatre works.org. Im Richard Wolinsky on Bay Area theatre for KPFA. The post Review: “The Employee Dharma Handbook” at TheatreWorks Palo Alto appeared first on KPFA.
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    6 Min.
  • Review: “The Lunchbox” at Berkeley Rep Roda Theatre

    Review: “The Lunchbox” at Berkeley Rep Roda Theatre
    Jun 3 2026
    KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “The Lunchbox” at Berkeley Rep‘s Roda Theatre through July 5, 2026. TEXT OF REVIEW The golden age of the Broadway musical died over a half century ago. The post-golden age of Sondheim and the rock opera faded before the new century. Since then, we’ve had corporate movie adaptations, jukebox junk and an increasing number of parody meta-musicals. But good and great shows do slip through the cracks. Hamilton, certainly, but also Fun Home, Next to Normal, Suffs and others. It’s quite possible that another gem eventually to hit New York, is currently at Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre through July 5th, and that’s The Lunchbox, created by the team of Ritesh Batra and The Lazours.

Based on a 2013 film of the same name, The Lunchbox is about one of those one in a million chance meetings that change people and the direction of their lives. Mumbai, or Bombay as it was known, has a complex system in which business people’s hot lunches are delivered from home to workplace in the middle of the day via a phalanx of what are known as dabbawallahs. Despite millions of people and a gigantic metropolis, this system is incredibly accurate with spectacular on-time deliveries.

But there are screwups. One day, a young wife, Ila, sends her lunch canister to her husband’s office — the canisters have multiple smaller bowls — which never arrives. Somehow, it winds up on the desk of Sajaan, an older widower on the verge of retirement.He sends back a note. She responds. He’s decades older, she’s married with a daughter; romance may not be in the cards, but connection is. What makes The Lunch Box work so well is both its familiarity with musical theater tropes and its differences. You can hear a bit of Sondheim in the way music and lyrics meld to further the story, but there’s also the very distinctive sound of South Asian melody, harmony, instruments and rhythm, punctuated by Bollywood style ensemble dances. The result is organic, it feels right. The Lunchbox unites the two art forms into one, with the spectacle never overwhelming the delicacy of the story, songs, or performances, all of which, by the way, are very, very good, as is the gorgeous set design. The show is kind of a miracle, code-switching in a way that feels wholly original, while maintaining the sensibility and sensitivity of its source material. A note of caution: The Lunch Box is a soufflé. Any attempt to fix it, to make it more big ticket-friendly, could kill it. The show is perfect as it is. The Lunchbox plays at Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre through July 5th. For more information you can to go berkeleyrep.org. I’m Richard Wolinsky on Bay Area theatre for KPFA. The post Review: “The Lunchbox” at Berkeley Rep Roda Theatre appeared first on KPFA.
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    6 Min.
  • Review: “Dracula, A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really” at San Francisco Playhouse

    Review: “Dracula, A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really” at San Francisco Playhouse
    May 27 2026
    KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Woinsky reviews “Dracula, A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really: by Kate Hamill at San Francisco Playhouse through June 27, 2026. TEXT OF REVIEW According to Google’s unreliable AI, nobody beats Dracula as the single most portrayed literary character in film history, with over two hundred direct adaptations, parodies and crossover appearances. You can add the hundreds of theatrical versions floating around as well. Due to a screw-up in the 19th Century, Dracula has always been in the public domain in the United States. 

There’s also the whole vampire thing too, Vlad Tepes, Anne Rice, the Lost Boys. In 2020, following a flurry of Jane Austen adaptations, playwright Kate Hamill chose to take a bite out of Bram Stoker, and thus we have Dracula, A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really … yes, that’s the title, which now runs at San Francisco Playhouse through June 27th. This Dracula hews to the beats of the Stoker novel, and at the same time turns it upside down. Dracula is not merely a monster, he’s the archetype of toxic masculinity, particularly as muscularly and scarily performed by Johnny Moreno. Renfield, or rather Mrs. Renfield, the fly-eating comic lunatic, played here in an indelible performance by Stacy Ross, is the night’s most tragic victim, the rejected female child, yearning for daddy to take her back. After a brief prologue the show opens at the doors of Dracula’s castle in Transylvania, where estate agent Jonathan Harker, in a physical performance by James Aaron Oh that runs from torment to slapstick, meets up with the titular vampire, and his vampire wives, who are themselves victims of a misogynist society.

Then we move on to the main story involving Jonathan’s Wife Mina, an engaging Sharon Shao, and her friend Lucy, a feisty Nemma Adeni, she’s a proto-feminist planning to marry for security, certainly not love. And her fiancé, the staid anti-feminist Dr. Seward of the asylum, a deliberately stiff Josh Schell. And then we meet Dr. Van Helsing, in a cowboy hat, played with gusto by Susi Damilano, and all the elements fall in place. It’s to director Bill English’s credit that Dracula stays most of the time on a tightrope between Victorian melodrama, horror and camp. The laughter is uneasy, the pathos over the top, and the violence pretty graphic. This Dracula doesn’t shy away from its bloody roots. While the subject may be fear and the subtext dealing with the evils of traditional masculinity, this is a fearless production with an impeccable cast. If you don’t mind the viscera. Dracula, A Feminist Revenge Fantasy Really by Kate Hamill plays at San Francisco Playhouse through June 27th. For more information, you can go to sfplayhouse.org. I’m Richard Wolinsky on Bay Area theatre for KPFA. The post Review: “Dracula, A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really” at San Francisco Playhouse appeared first on KPFA.
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    6 Min.
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