at Magic Theatre
Extended to New Year's Eve due to great reviews, The Hopper Collection is a world premiere by one of those young up-and-coming writers that makes the rest of us who are over 30 bury our sorrows in Sartre. Playwright Mat Smart not only lands a world premiere at the same theater that launched the likes of Sam Shepard, but also has another theater lined up to snatch The Hopper Collection in the spring. San Francisco Chronicle critic Rob Hurwitt has compared this play to Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Indeed, the story features an embattled older couple and a visiting younger couple who have some secrets of their own. But at the heart of the play hangs the older couple's painting (offstage, of course), a gift from a devoted husband to his wife, who likes nothing more than to tear him to pieces with her forked tongue. With The Hopper Collection, the Magic may be back on track, delivering raw and compelling new plays.
Playing through December 31.