Thursday, 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 07:17PMWednesday, November 5, 2014
Suicidal depression is easy to overact. The temptation for an actor is to make clarifying gestures when the character's impulse isn't to explain but to withdraw.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:28PMMonday, October 27, 2014
"Zealot," Theresa Rebeck's new play at South Coast Repertory, is ostensibly set in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, at the start of the Hajj, the annual holy pilgrimage that able adult Muslims are requi…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:50PMSaturday, October 25, 2014
In an age of vacuous celebrity, in which body parts can go viral and a good plastic surgeon can get you a bigger pay day than talent, it is heartening to report that Broadway's leading men s…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:00PMThursday, October 23, 2014
"Pippin," the Tony-winning revival that transformed Roger O. Hirson and Stephen Schwartz's musical into a circus theatrical, has pitched its tent at the Hollywood Pantages, and it has been q…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:35PMTuesday, October 21, 2014
"No one has the opportunity of tormenting one another as thoroughly as a man and woman who love one another (= hate one another)," Swedish playwright August Strindberg observed with his usua…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:50PMMonday, October 13, 2014
Depending on your taste for kink, "Venus in Fur," David Ives' twisty tale about a casting session between a smug playwright and an earthy actress trying out for the role of a well-born 19th …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00AMFriday, October 10, 2014
In late summer rumors began circulating of a potential coup within Los Angeles' thronging and boisterous smaller theater scene.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 02:00PMTuesday, October 7, 2014
The old conundrums about happiness — who's entitled and whether it can be lastingly achieved — are at the heart of Jessica Goldberg's "Better," which is having its world premiere courtes…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:35PMIf the spirit of the theater could be incarnated, it would have looked and sounded very much like Marian Seldes, the Tony Award-winning actress who died Monday after an extended illness. She…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:37PMMonday, September 29, 2014
'Bright Star,' the quaint new musical by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell at the Old Globe in San Diego, has a luscious bluegrass score. Too bad the book is such a floridly melodramatic throwb…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:45PMA transformation happens to the students of Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys whenever they open their mouths to sing. As soon as these feisty adolescents give themselves over to the Negr…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:00AMWednesday, September 24, 2014
Comedy isn't the genre that springs to mind when one thinks of school shootings. But that is the unusual — and not insensitive route — Victor Kaufold, a fledgling 19-year-old playwright,…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:55PMMonday, September 22, 2014
Jordan Harrison explores the fraught subject of memory from a variety of fascinating angles in 'Marjorie Prime' at the Mark Taper Forum. Ultimately, it's more intriguing than dramatically sa…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 11:58PMThursday, September 18, 2014
The one thing you can count on with Gob Squad, the always-surprising European performance collective now at REDCAT, is that the audience won't be excluded from the multimedia act.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:49PMOne day a comprehensive literary biography of Tennessee Williams will be written that won't resemble a psychiatric case study. Until then let's savor John Lahr's "Tennessee Williams: Mad Pil…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 02:30PMWednesday, September 17, 2014
Don’t look now, but a positive trend seems to be developing: A bumper crop of talented American playwrights more interested in artistic expression than commercial validation is being recog…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:00AMFriday, September 12, 2014
The fall season always brings the hope that something new will astonish us. I'm betting that a few old works might fit the bill.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 01:00PMMonday, September 8, 2014
Extravaganza isn't the word that first springs to mind when thinking of Shakespeare, but in the newfangled version of "The Tempest" at South Coast Repertory the goal is clearly to dazzle.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00AMFriday, August 29, 2014
Tarell Alvin McCraney, one of the brightest American playwrights to come along in some time, showed up for our interview at the Geffen Playhouse with the buttoned-up demeanor of someone abou…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 05:00PMMonday, August 18, 2014
"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMThursday, August 14, 2014
In my recent critic’s notebook on the Shakespeare in the Park production of “King Lear” with John Lithgow, I listed the illustrious actors I’ve seen take on this fearsome role in the…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:35PMWednesday, August 13, 2014
Now that baby boomers are reaching their seniority, it's no surprise that there has been a rush on "King Lear." Graying actors of a certain magnitude want their crack at the greatest role le…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:52PMMonday, August 11, 2014
Cate Blanchett is spectacular in Sydney Theatre Company's patchy production of Jean Genet's 'The Maids' in New York. Isabelle Huppert is also fierce, but seemingly at odds with the rest of t…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00AMFriday, August 8, 2014
The tourist shops dotting the streets of downtown Ashland may leave the impression that this picturesque town was designed by Martha Stewart in a chichi Western mood, but a weekend spent her…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:00PMMonday, August 4, 2014
The kitsch factor was high, but "Hair" proved to be a congenial choice for the Hollywood Bowl, where this counterculture classic from the late 1960s breezed in for three performances this pa…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00AMSaturday, August 2, 2014
When last seen in Robert Schenkkan's "All the Way," Lyndon B. Johnson was being serenaded with "Happy Days Are Here Again." After brokering the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with a…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 02:00PMFriday, August 1, 2014
Critics often grouse about James Lapine's script. Some find Stephen Sondheim's music too muted. But a beautifully balanced production in Oregon shows how strongly connected the two parts are…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:25PMFriday, July 18, 2014
At last, a Broadway show that doesn't feel the need to conk its audience over the head with hollow flash and empty dazzle. "Once," the Tony-winning musical based on John Carney's 2006 indie …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:50PMThursday, July 17, 2014
After the lights are dimmed on Broadway in honor of Elaine Stritch, who died Thursday at 89, I'm not sure that they'll ever burn quite as fiercely again.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:23PMTuesday, July 15, 2014
Plays, regardless of when they were written, take place in the eternal present. Updating a classic — for example, resetting Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" in late-1920s Los Angeles, as S…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00PM 
