Saturday, January 21, 2012
WILL THE REAL MOLLY IVINS PLEASE STAND UP? Molly Ivins was a ballsy Texas-based reporter who became a legend in her own time by calling a spade a spade (or, more succinctly, calling George W…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:21PMSunday, December 18, 2011
SING A SONG OF AFRICA Fela! is a scorcher. On these chilly nights in December and January, everyone (with a vested interest in the continuing power of musical theater) should retreat to the …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:34PMSunday, December 4, 2011
TELL US A STORY, AUNTIE CHARLAYNE If I were a child, I would want Auntie Charlayne to tuck me in and tell me a story. Why? Because Auntie Charlayne – that’s Charlayne Woodard – …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:12AMTWISTED LITTLE PASSIONS IN THE SUBURBS Now that A Noise Within – the Southern California repertory theater company dedicated to the classics – has gotten a snazzy new suburban theater …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:48AMSaturday, November 19, 2011
THE BLIND LEADING THE HALF BLIND “It’s The Devils meets Marat/Sade.” someone said to me. “Yes,” I responded. “As performed by the Marx Brothers!” We…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:20PMFriday, November 18, 2011
SHORT TAKES ON CURRENT LOS ANGELES THEATER AS IT WAS: As Is, written by William M. Hoffman in 1984, when so many of our contemporaries were dying of the AIDS epidemic, still maintains its po…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:37PMSaturday, November 12, 2011
THEATER IN NEW YORK: THE ACTING’S THE THING (BROADWAY) You may go to see Relatively Speaking in the hope of seeing three bright comedies by some of our funniest comic writers – E…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:32PMSaturday, November 5, 2011
AUTUMN THEATER IN NEW YORK: OFF BROADWAY, THE ACTING’S THE THING Acting is the main artery through which most of New York Theater travels. When a new season is announced, one looks f…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:55PMThursday, November 3, 2011
OCCASIONALLY, WHEN WE’RE LUCKY, IT FLIES In Come Fly Away, there are at least four dances – “I’ve Got A Crush On You,” “Body and Soul,” “I Like To Lead When I Dance,” a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:49PMTHE TROUBLE WITH BHUTAN I am not advocating that bad directors should face a firing squad in the town square in full view of the entire community. But I have seen three plays now that were d…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:56PMWednesday, November 2, 2011
WHAT’S COOKING IN HER KITCHEN? In the bracingly intelligent and potentially powerful Hermetically Sealed, playwright Kathryn Graf has set out to explore the ways in which families dece…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:46AMTENNESSEE W’S MASTER CLASS FOR ACTORS The New American Theatre production of Five Beauties (or, as it turned out to be at the performance I attended, Four Beauties) is not like going t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:28AMTuesday, November 1, 2011
DANCE MACABRE The Zombie Joe’s Underground production of The Cask of Amontillado: Although there are only two performances left of this show, this is a piece that should be extended; if it…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:43PMSunday, September 25, 2011
ON ONE’S VERY BEST POOR BEHAVIOR Ian is a monster. Oh, not your fire-eating dragon sort of monster. Quite possibly you’ve met this kind of monster yourself. He’s British; h…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:59AMFriday, September 23, 2011
PROSPERO IS UP TO HIS OLD TRICKS There seems to be a plan afoot at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group to give us The Complete Abridged Works of William Shakespeare, a project that …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:20AMDANSE MACABRE David J’s The Chanteuse and the Devil’s Muse is not so much a play as it is an art installation. But, as an art installation, it has a terrible beauty and some mome…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:51AMFriday, September 16, 2011
THE HAPPIEST CORPSE I’VE EVER SEEN How many reasons do you need to rush out and get tickets for the Reprise revival of Cabaret? Let me offer a few. First of all, this is 2011, and a be…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:13PMHIGH CULTURE UNDER A MALIBU SKY Anne Bogart is not one to shy away from her own directorial eccentricities. As the American Theater’s Queen of Deconstruction, she has had a formidable …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:00PMThursday, September 15, 2011
WHEN YOU USE MACE, USE WITH DISCRETION Playwright Kristoffer Diaz has an ear for unleashing the poetic possibilities in “street-smarts” vernacular; and director Edward Torres has…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:22AMSaturday, August 27, 2011
THE ZOMBIE JOE AESTHETIC With each new production, inch by inch, layer by layer, we get closer and closer to tasting the artichoke heart of Zombie Joe. It is not a question anymore of which …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:36PMSaturday, June 25, 2011
WHAT IS ART ANYWAY? What if you were an alcoholic ex-bartender who lived in a mobile home in a trailer park in Bakersfield that was furnished with junk bought from rummage sales and who foun…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:59AMOUR OWN PRIVATE GRAND GUIGNOL I hesitate to call anyone a genius on the basis of two productions, but if Sotto Voce alerted me to the unique talents of Zombie Joe, then Urban Death, the be…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:57AMFriday, June 17, 2011
TOO MUCH SUGAR ON THE DONUTS If Superior Donuts had come to us as a new American play by an unknown writer, we might have said that, despite a certain soft-headedness and the feeling that it…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:28AMTHE SCHEHERAZADE OF POP CULTURE There are a thousand and one ways to tell a story. In Margo Veil, Len Jenkin, one of our most intriguing and often exasperating playwrights, becomes a modern …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:54AMFLEUR ELISE NOBLE: 2 DIMENSIONAL LIFE OF HER This is to installation art what NEVA is to theater: a sublime illustration of the form. Noble’s collage (of projected images, cut-outs, dr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:34AMThursday, June 16, 2011
When a festival opens on as brilliantly shattering a note as the RADAR L.A. FESTIVAL did on Tuesday night with Neva, expectations for the rest of the festival run very high indeed. From Chil…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:44AMEditor’s note: Brewsie and Willie is currently running as part of the Radar L.A. Theater Festival. This review is reprinted from an earlier production of the show in July 2010. We …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:38AMSunday, June 12, 2011
LEARNING TO FLY WITH BROKEN WINGS “Blackbird singing in the dead of night/Take these broken wings and learn to fly/All your life/You were only waiting for this moment to arise.”�…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:41AMSaturday, June 11, 2011
GOING, GOING…GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN One of the pitfalls of being a theater reviewer in Los Angeles is that it is impossible to see more than the smallest amount of the cascade of plays…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:50PMFriday, June 10, 2011
WE OF LITTLE FAITH Kate Fodor’s 100 Saints You Should Know is a mildly interesting play, given heft by its author’s obviously sincere attempt to deal seriously with the nature of faith, …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:05AMTHE IMPORTANCE OF BEING BRIAN BEDFORD Lady Bracknell (arguably the greatest creation of Oscar Wilde’s surpassingly fertile comic imagination) is the aristocratic and imperious dowager …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:45AM 
