Monday, June 17, 2013
FALLING FOR DONIZETTI'S VALLEY GIRL Opera in Los Angeles seems to be thriving these days. In addition to established companies like LA Opera and Long Beach Opera, there are smaller companies…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:21PM[SHARE]Wednesday, June 12, 2013
OFFENBACH'S REQUIEM Just as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in the middle of writing his famous Requiem so did Jacques Offenbach die composing his fantastical opera Tales of Hoffmann. Both work…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:09AM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 4, 2013
BOTTOM IS TOPS Unlike Shakespeare's tragedies and histories, which are mostly named for their main character, his comedies have rather different kinds of titles. These differing titles alert…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:06PM[SHARE]Monday, April 15, 2013
A MARRIAGE MADE IN HEAVEN Less than a month after its pop-up production of The Barber of Seville, Pacific Opera Project (POP) continues Beaumarchais' trilogy with Mozart's The Marriage of Fi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:13PM[SHARE]Sunday, March 31, 2013
SCHOOLED BY CALLAS If you've ever been to a master class, then Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning play Master Class (1995) will seem very familiar. If you haven't, then you're in for a re…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:05PM[SHARE]Friday, March 22, 2013
A MATCH MADE IN HOLLYWOOD Last year, the Pacific Opera Project (POP) put on a show about a serial killer who also happened to be a barber: Sweeney Todd. This year, they have staged a product…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:11PM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 12, 2013
SALVATION IN A STORM Who is the titular Flying Dutchman? Is he a mythological figure, a type of the wandering Jew bound to traverse the earth in travail until his day of salvation comes? Is …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:57AM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 5, 2013
AÂ RESTRICTED BUTÂ RIVETING ROOM Novelist Ira Levin may be best-known for Rosemary's Baby and Stepford Wives, both made even more popular by their film adaptations, but as a playwright, …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:09PM[SHARE]Monday, February 18, 2013
THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT Race and immigration are popular topics on the LA stage, at least when it comes to more serious theatre. And there is good reason for this. LA is an incredibl…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:48PM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 5, 2013
WHERE’S THE SCANDAL? When I first drove past the Zephyr Theatre looking for parking, I saw what appeared to be anti-pornographic picketers on the sidewalk in front of the building. I w…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:17AM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 29, 2013
GOTH MEETS GIRL During the first five minutes of Lovesick I was beginning to think I had ended up at a school play. The acting was highly exaggerated, the props looked like elementary school…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:08AM[SHARE]Tuesday, October 30, 2012
LESS ADO IS STILL MUCH ADO Shakespeare’s plays tend to be longer than those of contemporary playwrights, typically running 120-150 minutes. This leads many theatre directors to wonder …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:59AM[SHARE]Tuesday, October 9, 2012
DUALITY IN A NOISE WITHIN’S CYMBELINE Are women faithful to the men they love? Or are they so weak-willed and inconstant as to be easily seduced by another? While many writers and dram…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:28PM[SHARE]Tuesday, September 11, 2012
CLASSICAL/CONTEMPORARY MASHUP There are few venues in Los Angeles better suited to productions of ancient Greek plays than the Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater at the Getty Villa. Not…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:36PM[SHARE]Tuesday, August 28, 2012
A NATIONAL LAMPOON While the 2012 presidential election has provided entertainment enough, from Donald Trump’s political posturing to the Sarah Palin bus tour, there’s always roo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:47PM[SHARE]Thursday, August 9, 2012
A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY Productions of William Shakespeare’s plays grace the Los Angeles stage year round, but in the summer they multiply prolifically and fill public spaces. Amon…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:43AM[SHARE]Tuesday, July 31, 2012
IRREVERENT IN TRANSLATION In the same way that many really awful movies are actually good in the sense of being funny to laugh at (rather than laugh with), so the screenplays chosen by the M…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:37PM[SHARE]Wednesday, July 25, 2012
ANTAEUS’ MACBETH ISN’T DREADFUL, BUT IT DIDN’T FILL ME WITH DREAD The Antaeus Company is not known for shying away from difficult material, especially when it comes to clas…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:09AM[SHARE]Wednesday, July 11, 2012
I AM NOT MY COCK When a new Godzilla movie came out in 1998 the marketing pundits urged, "Size does matter." But when it comes to a woman’s sexual satisfaction with her partner’s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:30PM[SHARE]Thursday, June 21, 2012
ROCK ‘N’ ROLL (HIS)TORY People all over the world never seem to tire of Elvis Presley, even if that means watching mediocre impersonators like the "Thai Elvis" at Palm’s Th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:30PM[SHARE]Saturday, June 9, 2012
BLACK BOX BASEBALL Rise Above Theatre Movement has proved once again that it is not afraid of performing difficult material. In the young theatre company’s first show, The Last Days of…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:08PM[SHARE]Thursday, May 24, 2012
THE PERFECT PINOT PAIRING Pinot Noir is presently one of the most popular wine varietals in California thanks to Sideways. First published as a novel by Rex Pickett in 2004 before being made…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:27PM[SHARE]Thursday, May 17, 2012
INTIMATE OPERA Bringing opera to a wider audience is the noble goal of many a musical entrepreneur, but few succeed as well as Josh Shaw and Stephen Karr, founders of the Pacific Opera Proje…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:05PM[SHARE]Saturday, April 28, 2012
THE TRIUMPH OF IRONY When Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (R&G) premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 1966, the critics hated it. While a poor production…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:41AM[SHARE]Monday, April 23, 2012
NEW BEGINNINGS "You are bafu!" is an insult hurled many times throughout Danai Gurira’s new play The Convert. Bafu means traitor; in this context, it is used to describe Africans who c…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:43PM[SHARE]Thursday, April 19, 2012
A YOUNG MAN’S PLAY Would-be writers are often given the advice, "Write what you know." Of the many reasons why writers should write what they know is that it lends authenticity to thei…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:37AM[SHARE]Sunday, April 1, 2012
BORN-AGAIN PORN STAR? Nudity can have a sacred character to it, depending on one’s motives. There are Christian nudist colonies, for example, whose goal is to return humankind to its p…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:13AM[SHARE]Saturday, March 24, 2012
WHAT IS AN AFRICAN AMERICAN? While many plays purport to examine race issues, few tackle them head on. Ensemble Studio Theatre’s production of The Many Mistresses of Martin Luther King…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:36PM[SHARE]Thursday, March 8, 2012
A NEGLECTED CLASSIC GONE AWRY The story of Antony and Cleopatra shares with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet those two indispensable elements of tragedy: love and death. While Romeo and …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:10AM[SHARE]Saturday, March 3, 2012
RISE ABOVE THEATRE MOVEMENT HANDLES THE TRUTH Just three years after Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men (1989) was produced on Broadway, the play’s popularity was eclipsed by the film…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:13AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 22, 2011
A TENNESSEE WILLIAMS CARICATURE A number of theatres in Los Angeles have marked the 100th anniversary of Tennessee Williams’ birth by staging productions of his plays. Following upon t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:31PM[SHARE] 
