Performance

Beautiful and intricate

Jacquelyn Scott hit the library to come up with an appropriate body map for Dr. Dulcamara, the traveling quack in Donizetti's "Elixir of Love."

Fest offers creative freedom

The Bay Area Playwrights Festival is where playwrights worry about the content of their work, not the marketability.

Keeping busy

Welcome to Shotgun Player's August, with a new production opening almost every week.

My hero, FDR

Long devoted to left-wing causes, Ed Asner plays one of his heroes in San Jose Repertory Theatre's FDR." Read the review.

She has issues with dad

Jason Harding's play, "Agnes the Barbarian," is not another bad parody of the sword and sorcery genre.

Singing tricks of the trade

Soprano Jane Eaglen still performs, but she likes to balance her schedule with teaching and coaching.

There's laughter in this

Paolo Sambrano's autobiographical one-man show, "Bi-Poseur," is about suicide, mental illness and the death of his mom.

Life is a cabaret for Cumming

Alan Cumming makes his San Francisco debut with his own cabaret act, "I Bought a Blue Car Today," at the Castro Theatre.

Reeling with pain, rubble

"Show and Tell" is a pretty gripping and impressive first outing for the new Symmetry Theatre Company.

A Y2K tale

Sleepwalkers begins an apocalyptic trilogy with "This World Is Good."

Royals lock horns in 'Lion'

Aquitaine is up for grabs in the two opening shows at Shakespeare Santa Cruz.

The Dude in iambic

The Screwheads' "Much Ado About Lebrowski" is a vigorous remix of the Coen brothers' film, mashed up Elizabethan comedy-of-errors style.

Comically probing look

TheatreWorks' "Auctioning the Ainsleys" lacks some enchanting intensity, but it's a buoyant ride.

Benefits from collaboration

Dancers perform in several rooms of the Old Mint in the site-specific tour de force "Traveling Light" by the Joe Goode Performance Group.

Showcasing fancy footwork

The envy of ethnic and dance communities, the S.F. Ethnic Dance Festival features performers from 37 Bay Area companies.

Short and lofty

"Tribes/Dominion" is an engaging collaboration between writer-choreographer Sara Shelton Mann and director-designer David Szlasa.

Safe but soaring

Festival Opera's new production of Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" is theatrically safe but melodically daring.