Reviews & Photos
Reviews & Photos
By the Waters of Babylon
“Director Richard Seyd nicely captures the slow-building, intertwined pulls of romantic attraction and danger.”
Paul Hodgins
Orange County Register
A Streetcar Named Desire
“Seyd, Kelley and company have returned, gloriously, to the drama’s deeply humane and radiantly theatrical roots. I’ve never seen an interpretation of the play that is its equal, and doubt I ever will.”
Leo Stutzin
The Sacramento Bee
King Lear
“Two San Franciscians – the towering old actor Sydney Walker and the intelligent director Richard Seyd – are at the heart and soul of this production’s success. Seyd (who has the expressionistic eye for the visual tableaux of the great silent-movie directors) has conceived a “lear” that is much more than the story of a single man.”
Bob Hicks
The Oregonian
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
“Seyd’s production captures what Stoppard’s own misguided 1990 film of the play could not. He keeps the bubbles rising to the surface through the comic gloom.”
Steven Winn
San Francisco Chronicle
Noises Off
“Perhaps the most important contribution, however, comes from real-life director Richard Seyd, who ensures that the pace keeps building until the proceedings are flying along at runaway-train speed.”
Daryl H. Miller
Los Angeles Times
The Learned Ladies
“Seyd stages Ladies as if it belonged to all time, not to any specific century. Seyd keeps the comedy percolating with deft sight gags. It’s a blissful romp through the folly of the wise.”
Robert Hurwitt
San Francisco Examiner
Othello
“Seyd, who’s penetrating productions of Pygmalion and David Mamet’s Oleanna were high points of ACT’s las season, zeros in on the interplay of plots and passions in what is practically a chamber Othello. His pacing is so sharp and psychological interactions so tightly wound that the 95 minutes before the first intermission seem to fly by in a cascade of mounting tensions.”
Robert Hurwitt
San Francisco Examiner
Collected Stories
“Seyd subtly underscores the time element in every aspect of a staging that is as rich in its background details as in its foreground drama.”
Robert Hurwitt
San Francisco Examiner
Present Laughter
“In director Richard Seyd’s deft hands, the play becomes an eccentrically amazing yet graceful gem.”
Jay Reiner
Hollywood Reporter
Cloud Nine
“If there is any other cast or any director any place else is any better, I will eat a copy of the script with marmalade.”
Nancy Scott
San Francisco Examiner
A Midsummer Night's Dream
“Director Richard Seyd doesn’t so much attempt to impose a concept on the play as does play to his own forte: clarifying the relationships between the different parts of the play and between characters. As he’s done in many outings with the Eureka Theater Company and with Berkeley Rep, he’s focused his attention on the overall arc of the action, weighing and developing each of the play’s parts to make a satisfying whole.”
Robert Hurwitt
East Bay Express
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
“Seyd is a meticulously careful, intelligent director with a knack for bringing out the comedy or drama inherent in a particular moment, and, perhaps more importantly, for using each moment to build the overriding frame of a play, qualities he’s demonstrated on numerous occasions, especially with his Eureka Theater version of Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9 and his staging of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off – both of which moved on to successful extended commercial runs in SF, and both of which were noticeably sharper and better thought out than the New York productions had been. He brings the same care to this show, cultivating the vicious humor of George and Martha.”
Robert Hurwitt
East Bay Express
The Matchmaker
“Richard Seyd has applied more spit and polish than might have been thought possible to this semi-creaky farcical jalopy, which emerges here less the expected star vehicle than a superb ensemble showcase. Former associate director Seyd, now based largely in LA, remains among the finest stage helmers in the area. He hasn’t taken on material this frivolous in some time. Judging from the results, a very good time was had by all during rehearsal – and their pleasure is a pure delight to watch.”
Dennis Harvey
Variety