Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Now 80, Dame Edna's alter ego Barry Humphries has decided to bring her theatrical globe-trotting to an end with 'Dame Edna's Glorious Goodbye: The Farewell Tour,' which began two years ago i…
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News at 02:51PMThe delightful British theater troupe Kneehigh keeps finding ways of demonstrating that whimsicality on stage is perfectly compatible with emotional grace.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMThursday, January 29, 2015
Dame Edna, the imperious suburban Melbourne, Australia, hausfrau with the purple wig and lacerating tongue, has never seen any connection between winning friends and influencing people.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:34PMWednesday, January 28, 2015
There's no shortage of acting in the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble revival of Eugene O'Neill's "Anna Christie." Accents are adorned like fake noses, illnesses resemble those found in 19th century…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00PMFriday, January 23, 2015
Theater critic Charles McNulty sits down with Barry Humphries, now launching the American leg of Dame Edna's farewell tour
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:54PMBarry Humphries sat at a table overlooking the pool of his Beverly Hills hotel and blew his nose. He had just arrived from his home in London and was suffering with a common cold — somethi…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:00PMThursday, January 22, 2015
Now that screen technology has overrun our lives, it makes sense that the Wooster Group would take a break from its multimedia revels and turn to the austere Shakers for inspiration.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:50PMTuesday, January 20, 2015
"Silent Witnesses," a modest and compassionate solo work written and performed by Stephanie Satie at the Odyssey Theatre, is based on interviews and conversations with child survivors of the…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:22PMFriday, December 26, 2014
In his most recent book, "The Meaning of Human Existence," Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson challenges the humanities to stop being in effect so darn man-crazy.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:00PMFriday, December 19, 2014
The year isn't exactly ending on a high note. Rage over racial injustice, shocking reports of U.S. torture and the promise of even more governmental gridlock in 2015.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:00PMHere is Charles McNulty's look at the best of 2014 in theater in Southern California and beyond.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:00PMMonday, December 15, 2014
When Angela Lansbury takes the stage as Madame Arcati, the lovably outlandish medium in Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit," a supernatural charge is instantly detectable. This five-time Tony winn…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:55PMFriday, December 12, 2014
The words "political drama" may evoke finger-pointing lectures to some, but the subtlest works of dramatic literature have a political dimension, and the most enduring political dramas have …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 02:00PMWednesday, December 10, 2014
Still wondering what to get your theater-obsessed nearest and dearest? Theater critic Charles McNulty shares his gift ideas for those with the right kind of histrionic nature.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:45AMSaturday, December 6, 2014
A conversation with Dame Angela on her legendary career and return to the stage with "Blithe Spirit"
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:23PMAs gracious and unpretentious as her Brentwood home, Angela Lansbury radiated hospitality as she ushered me into her living room, where her honorary Oscar sits as casually as a figurine plac…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 11:00AMThursday, December 4, 2014
This OSF production may not have the star power of the film coming out at Christmas, but it has the buoyancy & complexity of feeling that turned "Into the Woods" into a modern classic.
SOURCE: touch.latimes.com at 10:20PMThe actors mingle with one another and audience members before the show as if what lies ahead is not an official performance but just another rehearsal. The casually dressed musicians take t…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:21PMWednesday, December 3, 2014
Rebecca Gilman, the talented author of such plays as "Spinning Into Butter," "Boy Gets Girl" and "The Glory of Living," is known for confronting social problems head-on. Racism and white hyp…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:39PMMonday, November 24, 2014
There are no household servants in Joe Orton's "What the Butler Saw," which is appropriately set in a psychiatric clinic. The title, once popular for blue movies, is a British phrase referri…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:28PMThursday, November 20, 2014
The setting for Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance" is "the living room of a large and well-appointed suburban home," and scenic designer Santo Loquasto has conjured the scene so sumptuously…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:20PMWhenever Mike Nichols worked in the theater, it was inevitably an event, the focal point of the season — the show you simply had to get tickets to or be left in the conversational cold.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 02:53PMWednesday, November 19, 2014
When the newly reworked version of Bill Russell and Henry Krieger's "Side Show" opened at the La Jolla Playhouse last year, the production didn't fix all the musical's flaws, but it did reve…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00PMTuesday, November 18, 2014
NEW YORK -- Broadway bid farewell to one of its favorites on Monday at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre in a tribute titled “Everybody, Rise! A Celebration of Elaine Stritch.”
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 05:08PMSunday, November 16, 2014
NEW YORK — If Hugh Jackman decided to headline a musical tribute to the Yellow Pages, Broadway theatergoers would line up around Times Square. But the Tony-winning song-and-dance man/"X-Me…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 11:10PMFriday, November 14, 2014
Taking stock of Center Theatre Group on the occasion of the Music Center's 50th anniversary is a bit like trying to summarize an up-and-down marriage. So many reasons to leave, so many cheri…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:00PMThursday, November 13, 2014
The busy afterlife of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," Victor Hugo's 1831 doorstop novel about a church bell ringer with severe chiropractic difficulties, continues with a musical adaptation t…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:03PMWednesday, November 12, 2014
At the center of Diana Son's drama "Stop Kiss" is a brutal attack on two women locked in an embrace. The scene is reported rather than graphically dramatized, but the violence clarifies so m…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 01:00AMTuesday, November 11, 2014
"Once upon a time," the open sesame of childhood fantasy, worked its magic on adults Sunday at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, where an "Into the Woods" reunion was held with the show's …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:30AMElaine Stritch didn't originate the role of Claire, the alcoholic loose cannon of Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1966 drama "A Delicate Balance." But she did put her corrosively funny…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMThursday, November 6, 2014
"King Lear" is regarded as Shakespeare's pinnacle achievement in tragedy, a masterpiece of vast scope and overwhelming intensity. How big is it? A.C. Bradley, the great Shakespearean scholar…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:17PM 
