Arts & Events

FRIDAY, MAY 25 -more-

BERKELEY ARTS FESTIVAL PRESENTS ‘LOVE’ -more-

Think of Japanese cinema and one of two things probably comes to mind: either the robust, action-filled, western-influenced samurai movies of Akira Kurosawa, or the more refined, restrained and elegant films of directors such as Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, or Mikio Naruse. -more-

The night fears and mania of a boy are juxtaposed with two adults’ uncomfortable discoveries of ambiguity, betrayal, abandonment and the unreliability of memory in the brilliant, tortuously overlapping dialogue that powers David Mamet’s semi-autobiographical Cryptogram at the Ashby Stage in a Shotgun Players production. -more-

It’s bug time! The plants in the garden are just starting to thrive and get real leaves; the flowers are midway in their annual sequential display; what was mud is starting to look like future meals. -more-

Woody Allen says “When you're forty, half of you belongs to the past—and when you’re seventy, nearly all of you.” -more-

Bad Advice From PG&E? -more-

FRIDAY, MAY 25 -more-

Due to an edited error, in the May 22 story “Chronicle Newsroom Slashed, East Bay Express Goes Indie” the new ownership of the East Bay Express was incorrectly reported. -more-

TUESDAY, MAY 22 -more-

SONGS AND POEMS OF BERTOLT BRECHT -more-

In a swirl of scenes that quickly alternate between darkness and light, at first very different in what they show, then interpenetrating, Just Theater stages the Bay Area premiere of Berkeley native Anne Washburn’s “text about message,” I Have Loved Strangers, for just three more performances, through Saturday. -more-

It’s been a crappy year for wildflowers, but a great one for roses. When I mistook something for a startling pink tree and then realized it was a ‘Cecile Brunner’ rose climbing fifteen feet up a utility-pole guywire, and then did the same double-take for the same cultivar climbing a tree on Sacramento Avenue, I decided to write about roses this week. -more-

TUESDAY, MAY 22 -more-