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 05:47PMA 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 02:43AMIRREVERENT 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 05:37PMANTAEUS’ 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 02:09AMI 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 partnerR…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:30PMROCK ‘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’…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:30PMBLACK 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 03:08PMTHE 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 03:27PMINTIMATE 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 01:05PMTHE 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 12:41AMNEW 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 w…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:43PMA 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 …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:37AMBORN-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 03:13AMWHAT 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 05:36PMA 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 01:10AMRISE 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 02:13AMA 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 10:31PMA FOOL-IPINO FOR LOVE Just as the “problem” of immigration continues to be debated by our politicians, so does it continue to be presented in our theaters. Earlier this year, in the spri…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:42PMAN ANACHRONISTIC LOOK AT RACE IN AMERICA There’s no doubt that Arthur Miller’s 1947 play All My Sons is an astonishing piece of theatre. Not only is the writing brilliant, but th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:44AMCIRQUE DU CINEMA When Quebec-based artistic troupe Cirque du Soleil creates a new resident production, they typically design the building to fit the show. Not so with Cirque du Soleil’…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:28PMFAUSTIAN PHANTASMAGORIA “There is nothing new under the sun,” said a Jewish writer more than two thousand years ago. While such a sentiment may not have been intended to discourage creat…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:05PM
