Thursday, July 18, 2024
Welcome to Watching the Dark, a regular column featuring essays, articles and reviews about horror films. Written by Terry Morgan.
Longlegs in cinemas
This is the third piece of a thr…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 03:48PMSunday, July 14, 2024
The first time I read Jon Robin Baitz’s 1991 play, The Substance of Fire, and later saw the film made from it, I liked it. I wasn’t alone – the success of that play catapulted Baitz in…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 06:32PMWednesday, July 3, 2024
It may be less well known now, but back in the 1960s, the character of surfer girl Gidget was popular and influential, the subject of novels, films and TV series starring the likes of Sandra…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 02:18PMThursday, June 27, 2024
Welcome to Watching the Dark, a regular column featuring essays and articles about horror films. Written by Terry Morgan.
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House from Netflix
Qu…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 10:06PMThursday, May 30, 2024
Welcome to Watching the Dark, a new regular column featuring reviews and articles about horror films. Written by Terry Morgan.
The Blackcoat’s Daughter from A24
The Angels, They Fo…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 08:12PMMonday, May 20, 2024
Musicals can have many different formats, but the two most prevalent structures these days are the traditional and the jukebox. The traditional (incorporating Sondheim, because his changes a…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 01:36PMThursday, May 16, 2024
Welcome to Watching the Dark, a new regular column featuring reviews and articles about horror films. Written by Terry Morgan.
You Can’t Run Forever from Lionsgate
I’ve been a cr…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 04:12PMMonday, April 29, 2024
If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, perhaps the road to freedom is paved with righteous anger? Henrik Ibsen may have thought so when he wrote his proto-feminist play, A Doll�…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 02:18PMTuesday, April 9, 2024
According to the great sages of the internet, Hamlet is the most produced play in world history, and whether or not that claim is true, the indecisive Dane is certainly ubiquitous. And if it…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 04:42PMTuesday, February 20, 2024
Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd is my favorite musical. Its combination of a beautiful score, clever lyrics and unusually gruesome subject matter is sui generis. When it�…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 09:48PMWednesday, February 14, 2024
“A sad tale’s best for winter,” Shakespeare has one of his characters opine in his penultimate work, The Winter’s Tale, an odd duck of a play that’s mostly been overshadowed by his…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 01:32AMFriday, January 26, 2024
I find one-person shows one of the most difficult types of theatre to review, for several reasons. If the quality of the writing or performance isn’t good, there may be nothing but negativ…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 11:18PMThursday, December 21, 2023
Although no year in which the Mark Taper Forum is at least temporarily shuttered and the Kirk Douglas Theatre’s programming is reduced can be said to be an entirely positive year for Los A…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 07:42PMThursday, November 9, 2023
One of the great pleasures of theater is seeing a revival of a classic play not only succeed on its own merits but also be relevant to modern times. Certain works such as The Crucible or Ene…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 12:18AMTuesday, October 24, 2023
Sometimes great actors can save a bad play. The sheer strength of their talent or the brilliance of their star power dazzles us into not noticing or caring that the vehicle they’re in is l…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 05:07PMThursday, October 5, 2023
The first time I encountered Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, I identified strongly with the title character, both with his frustrations and what he thought of as the tragedy of his life. As I got o…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 01:49PMSunday, September 17, 2023
Measure for Measure has been referred to as Shakespeare’s “#MeToo play,” a story in which a man in power uses his clout to try and sexually abuse a woman, except that she stands up to …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 06:03PMThursday, August 31, 2023
In a world in which a repulsive con man can get elected president and turn the entire Republican party into a credulous and insane mob, it’s to be expected that somebody would try to write…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 07:04PMWednesday, August 16, 2023
For better or worse, it’s human nature to find the misfortune of others amusing. YouTube is filled with videos of people making mistakes or getting hit somewhere unpleasant by a stray ball…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 10:13PMThursday, July 20, 2023
When I got to my seat at the Atwater Village Theatre, I saw a note. It informed me that this seat was in “the Crabby Zone,” and that performers in crab costumes with outsized claws would…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 02:49PMWednesday, July 5, 2023
I have seen a fair number of Shakespeare plays altered by directors in my day, from modernizations to setting/era changes, and the main thing is that the alterations have to successfully ill…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 04:19PMTuesday, June 27, 2023
The subject of unlikely friendships is always intriguing (however will this cat and dog get along?), and none seems more unlikely than the friendship between boxing legend Muhammad Ali and e…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 09:19PMThursday, April 27, 2023
Laguna Playhouse, in association with Gare St. Lazare, Ireland and the Rubicon Theatre Company, presents the rolling Southern California premiere of The Realistic Joneses by Will Eno.
Th…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 03:06PMTuesday, April 11, 2023
The reasons that a piece of art works in one format but not so well in another are many and varied. In a time in which seemingly everything is being turned into a musical, and every animated…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 06:36PMFriday, March 24, 2023
The 1992 Los Angeles Uprising, known more colloquially as the “L.A. riots,” happened almost 31 years ago. Anna Deavere Smith’s play about it, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, premiered in …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 10:32PMWednesday, March 22, 2023
Plays concerning the supernatural or people attempting to communicate with the departed have been with us for a while, from Noël Coward’s comical Blithe Spirit to Prince Gomolvilas’ exc…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 12:00PMWednesday, February 22, 2023
Stephen Sondheim revolutionized musical theater. He took his initial mastery of the classic tuner (from shows such as A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, West Side Story and Gyps…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 12:00PMMonday, February 13, 2023
Plays in which family secrets are tragically revealed are nothing new – Oedipus and his mom were shocking audiences back as far as 429 BCE. In the U.S., the 500 lb. gorilla of this genre w…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 12:00PMTuesday, January 31, 2023
The first time I saw a play by Will Eno was about 15 years ago, by Circle X Theatre Company of The Flu Season. It was an excellent production in many ways, but there was one scene in which a…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 12:00PMWednesday, December 14, 2022
Production photos by Jeff Lorch.
Memory plays are a tricky proposition. Hew strictly to the truth and the story may not be dramatic enough; indulge in creative license and literal-minded …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 11:24PMWednesday, November 23, 2022
According to a survey conducted by American Theater magazine, Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s is currently the most produced play in the U.S. It’s not surprising that Nottage’s work is being …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 05:32PM 
