NYT rave review

“A thinking person's comedy... the West Coast premiere of Tiny Kushner took place on Wednesday at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where so much of the nation’s talked-about dramatic product seems to come from these days, and the double pedigree – playwright and theater – is attention-getting…

“Individually and even collectively, the five entries here are snacks in the Kushner canon. However, that doesn’t make them nonnourishing or the evening unsatisfying; Mr. Kushner’s fierce liberal conscience (he’s Arthur Miller’s heir, in that regard), colossally fanciful imagination and virtuosic gift for composing verbal arias are too much in evidence for that…

“They have been directed with wry precision by Mr. Kushner’s longtime collaborator, Tony Taccone, the Berkeley Rep’s artistic director; the four actors all handle Mr. Kushner’s serious humor with engaging aplomb, but you never lose the sense that it’s the playwright who is performing...

“Tiny Kushner might well find a wide audience. Given Berkeley Rep’s recent history, that wouldn’t be a surprise. Like ballplayers, theaters sometimes get hot, rapping out hits with unlikely regularity, and the Rep, 41 this year, is on fire. Since 2006, seven shows that originated or were revised there have moved to New York (and elsewhere), including Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher’s solo show now on Broadway, and Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), which began Broadway previews on Thursday. American Idiot, the adaptation of Green Day’s wildly popular album, is currently filling Berkeley Rep’s larger house, the Roda Theatre, with sudden teenage converts to musical theater, and it seems inevitably bound for other destinations.”