(Robert Hurwitt's article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, March 5.) 

Theater review: 'Strange Devices' a sexy puzzle

Anyone who thinks photographs never lie hasn't closely examined a family album lately. In Naomi Iizuka's scintillating "Concerning Strange Devices From the Distant West," which opened Wednesday at Berkeley Rep's Roda Theatre, every picture tells pieces of a thousand stories.

Some add up. Some don't. Which is part of the point of Iizuka's multifaceted puzzle of a play. The shards of story, vintage and modern photos, lies, surmises, history and tattoos set the mind spinning about topics as varied as the art and commerce of photography, the ways in which humans love and use one another, a century of intercourse between Japan and America and the mutable relationships between appearance and reality.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/05/DDTS1C9A0J.DTL&type=performance#ixzz0hV98GPal

(Naomi Iizuka's work is included in One on One:  The Best Women's Monologues for the 21st Century–from Applause Theatre and Cinema Books.) 

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