BOOGIE WOOGIE BUGLE GIRLS OF THE U.S.O. Deanna Durbin is all but forgotten now, but there was a time when her movie musicals were so popular, they were said to have literally saved Universal…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:50AMJACQUES IN THE BOX I think if I had been alive and living in New York in 1968, I would have been beguiled by Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Eric Blau and Mort Shuman tra…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:00PMMY SHOW, THE NUT Dear Mr. Ted L. Nancy: You are a funny letter writer. In fact, you are the best letter writer who reads his own letters in a show with an actress reading replies to his lett…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:56AMPARALLEL UNIVERSES AND THE PHYSICS OF LOVE I have a brother-in-law who is a mathematician and a brother who’s an astrophysicist. Both have tried to explain to me what they do, with little …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:08PMLOVING YOUR OPPRESSOR The audience is delighted when a character in Alexi Kaye Campbell’s beautifully written play The Pride tells another, “Stop sucking the dick of your oppressor!” I…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:26PMREQUIEM FOR WHITNEY Even if you’ve never seen the 1992 film that gave birth to the musical in 2012 in London’s West End, the story is familiar: A pop superstar falls in love with her bod…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:46PMWOMEN WITH HEARTS OF IRON Before going to see Rogue Machine Theatre’s latest production, Lost Girls, I turned to my companion and asked, “Why is everything that Rogue does so good?” Th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:25PMMID-LIFE MYSTERIES AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS A long-married couple says good-bye to the final guests who leave their house after a party. They are known for their parties; for their happy marri…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:44PMI COULDN’T BARE IT There’s a kind of desperate seriousness about the “rock” musical Bare — more pop than rock — first produced in 2000, now back with updated music and a tele…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:40PMTHE NEVERLAND AFTER DARK This ain’t Mary Martin’s Peter Pan. Or Walt Disney’s. Or Stephen Spielberg’s. With Peter Pan: The Boy Who Hated Mothers, playwright Michael Lluberes’ has h…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:26PMBEWITCHED, BEGUILED AND THRILLED Mark Saltzman is one smart cookie. He approaches his new bio-musical of the legendary Lorenz Hart with a passionate curiosity about the great man’s life an…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:15PMTHE MISCHEVIOUS INDEMNITY OF NOIR You can bring a blanc sensibility to noir, but noir finds a way of seeping in—its luxurious, sweet poison stealing focus when you’re not looking. In Bil…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:59PMWHEN ‘TOMORROW’ ISN’T ANOTHER DAY Anyone who cares about acting or classical theater or Shakespeare (particularly Macbeth) must see Donald Freed’s new play Tomorrow. It has moments o…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:45PMTHE HONESTY OF HYPOCRISY The Motherfucker with the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirgis is a crackling, compelling play that finds genuine comic pathos not only in its characters’ struggles with ad…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:14PMA JOLLY OSMOND HOLIDAY To fans and detractors alike, Donny and Marie represent a cultural and show business ethos so strong, and so specific, that their actual talents sometimes get lost in …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:16AMWHAT THEATRE 40 NEEDS IS A GUIDE TO AN EXCRUCIATINGLY CORRECT PRODUCTION Miss Manners, the alter-ego of writer Judith Martin, is my heroine. Her “Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior�…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:39PMAT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF SILICON VALLEY Build hasn’t started yet, but the minute you walk into the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at the Geffen Playhouse you feel drawn into another world b…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:15PMHIS OWN PRIVATE BOISE We’re in Boise, Idaho, in the break room of an arts and craft chain store called Hobby Lobby. Two men appear on closed circuit television doing a sort of home shoppin…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:58PMJUSTIN IS JUST IN THE MIDDLE The best thing about Justin Love, Celebration Theatre’s 30th season opening production, is the fun of watching the stylish performance of Grant Jordan, who giv…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:03PMTHE ‘TROUBLES’ WITH FAITH Choosing to write about the Irish Troubles comes with baggage—many people have come before you, and many will come after. Like the Holocaust, it can conjure a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:45AMMAID IN HOLLYWOOD The history of people of color on the screen is complicated, to say the least. The great Hattie McDaniel was hurt and bewildered by criticism from some in her own community…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:04AMGODS AND MONSTERS Oedipus gets all the attention, what with his Freudian mixture of patricide and mommy love, but an arguably much more influential character in the Greek pantheon is the dee…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:04AMTHREE DEGREES OF SEPARATION A woman asks for a martini in a highball glass and accuses her husband of peeing in the sink… again. He doesn’t cop to it, but doesn’t deny it. The couple s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:09PMPRACTICAL PERFECTION There is a good natured pragmatism at work in the stage musical version of the film classic Mary Poppins, now back in Los Angeles at the Ahmanson through September 2. It…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:32PMTHE TRUE AMERICAN DREAM: KILL A PRESIDENT The cast is terrific in the Coeurage Theatre Company’s revival of Assassins at the Actors Circle Theatre—and it is their commitment to the mater…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:29PMPOETRY OUT OF MOTION I was quite keen to see Amy Freed’s The Psychic Life of Savages; curious about its fictional take on Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, the dead, messy poet heroines of my …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:57PMDIS HERE’S A DIFF’RENT KIND OF HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL There is something very sweet going on in Eric Dodson’s and Alan Ross Fleishman’s new musical A Ring in Brooklyn. The unusu…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:20PMA VERY COLD WAR BETWEEN THE SEXES I was a huge fan of Peter Lefcourt’s 1999-2001 Showtime series Beggars & Choosers. It was something of a bomb financially but a great favorite of thos…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:21PMTHE GIFT OF SPEECH There is no possibility of love or happiness in Enda Walsh’s play The New Electric Ballroom, produced by Rogue Machine, winner of 2010 and 2011 Ovation and L.A. Drama Cr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:09PMTHE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT A demon-possessed, bleeding-eyed, pyro-maniacal Raggedy Ann doll with pre-cum on her face is the vortex around which Michael John LaChiusa’s new comedy Sukie and Su…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:52PMEXPOSITION, THE MUSICAL SPOILER ALERT in this first paragraph! There are attempts at surprising plot twists in Octavio Solis’ and Adam Gwon’s new musical drama Cloudlands, but this new p…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:27AM