Carol Davis

Carol Davis

Carol Davis is a well-known reviewer and theater critic based in San Diego.

Craig Noel Award nominations announced

In February 2020, when we present our annual Craig Noel Awards for Theatrical Excellence, we will be recognizing and honoring all gender identities, giving gender-neutral awards in all performance categories. The 2019 nominees were chosen by a nine-member body of professional critics who write year–round for San Diego newspapers, magazines, online publications and blogs. Winners will be announced at the 18th -annual awards ceremony from 6 to 10 p.m. Feb. 10, 2020, at the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation at 404 Euclid Ave., San Diego.[Carol Davis]

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Winter songs and dance at the Welk

With everything else going on in the world, there’s a nice little respite below the hills in Escondido at the Welk Resort Theatre where co-creator Larry Rabin with co- director Noelle Marion and choreographer and co-creator Cheryl Baxter Ratliff are presenting “Welkome Home For The Holidays” in a two hour sing and dance fest through Dec. 29. Billed as a love letter to “The Rat Pack” TV Holiday Specials of the past, it’s a holiday/variety/ fun filled songfest with a thinly veiled story line. [Carol Davis]

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Carol Davis, Music and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Backyard Renaissance fits ‘American Buffalo’

Director Rosina Reynolds, with only three characters in this black comedy, manages pull off the heist of the year with her excellent cast, perfect timing and gentle nudging to build on Mamet’s language that is oft called ‘Mametspeak.’ She strikes it rich with the solid gold talent pool she has at her center. [Carol Davis]

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

‘Cambodian Rock Band’ at La Jolla Playhouse tells of genocide

The story picks up in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 30 years after the invasion of the Khmer Rouge, and as it unfolds it travels back and forth in time between then and now. Yee’s ‘Band’ story is a father-daughter revelation, about not knowing what daddy did in the war 30 years earlier and the music that drove him to stay in his native homeland. {Carol Davis]

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Cantor Sheldon Foster Merel, z"l, Carol Davis, Eric George Tauber, Eva Trieger, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Play probes war correspondents’ ethics and adrenalin rushes

By Carol Davis SOLANA BEACH, California—I am in constant awe of war correspondent Richard Engle. It seems that wherever there is a skirmish (and I use the word cautiously) anywhere around the world his is the face I see reporting on it. He is the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News and just as recently

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Voices powerful in lagging ‘Samson and Delilah’ production

By Carol Davis SAN DIEGO—The San Diego Opera Company has brought back (by popular demand) Camille Saint-Saëns’ beautiful Samson et Dalila. The last time we were treated to this 19-century French opera was in 2007. No question this tale is of biblical proportions. The sets, rented from the San Francisco Opera, (Douglas Schmidt) are ‘gargantuan’

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Multiple local awards for ‘Iliad,’ ‘Allegiance,” ‘Parade’ and ‘Scottsboro Boys’

By Carol Davis LA JOLLA, California — A total of 22 productions from nine theater companies were honored by the San Diego Theatre Critics at their annual awards ceremony and reception held Feb. 4 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, in La Jolla before an audience of nearly 500 people. Leading the way

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, The Arts

‘Clybourne Park’ studies psychology of housing discrimination

By Carol Davis SAN DIEGO — The Clybourne Park neighborhood in playwright Bruce Norris’s biting comedy is the very same neighborhood that the Younger Family of the late 1950’s, in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, was about ready to move into, in that groundbreaking drama so many moons ago. The Youngers are an

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

‘Educating Rita’ in some ways better than ‘Pygmalion’

By Carol Davis SOLANA BEACH, California—-Some might deem Willy Russell’s 1980’s comedy Educating Rita dated and irrelevant. It is, however, very current and well, quite relevant given the current state of our much maligned public educational system. Russell’s play takes us to a University in the North of England at a time when some major

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast