Monday, July 2, 2012
THIS ALMOST GREAT NIGHT Andrew Dolan, a working actor perhaps better known as a writer, had his second completed play produced first, in a Los Angeles world premiere: last season’s kno…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:55PMWednesday, June 20, 2012
THE FRIEND IN THE DARK Did you ever drive alone across a big, flat stretch of country at night? You and your headlights and the asphalt spinning beneath like a long speckled treadmill – …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:27PMFriday, June 1, 2012
A MESS IN BIG POCKETS Imagine yourself not exactly as JFK cheerleader Arthur Schlesinger Jr., but at least a 40ish New Deal Democrat, attending a John F. Kennedy rally in New York City in th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:01PMThursday, May 24, 2012
COMMUNION If the Ahmanson Theater is akin to a cathedral (elevated rules of decorum apply, and a certain dress code, and it’s expensive and showy in such a way as to invite your tithe …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:22PMSunday, May 20, 2012
OF GOOD TURNS AND SCREWINGS All emotional reaction comes filtered through prerequisite knowledge: the sound of a crying baby is annoying, unless it’s your baby, in which case that soun…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:41PMSaturday, May 19, 2012
THE IMPERFECT STORM Over lunch today, I tried to tell someone about Michael Elyanow’s new take on the Medea myth and found myself crying into my tikka masala. The material is horrify…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:33PMTuesday, May 15, 2012
RIGHT UP HALF-BAKED ALLEY Keith Stevenson’s writing in Out There on Fried Meat Ridge Rd. unsteadily walks a line between high and low comedy, veering more often toward sit-comism. Mo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:32PMThursday, May 3, 2012
TAUGHT BY MASTERS William Faulkner might or might not have quipped that Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies he’d ever met. Faulkner definitely did call James both priggish a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:57PMSaturday, April 28, 2012
GRIEG, INTERRUPTED The Pianist of Willesden Lane features world-class piano playing, a moving story, a performer who has mastered the art of the former but not of the latter, and a director …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:53AMThursday, April 26, 2012
REVEALING JUDY HOLLIDAY If you really never cared about Judy Holliday, because you only know her from grating performances in unsophisticated 50’s movies, you’re not alone. (Turns …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:59PMMonday, April 23, 2012
DRINKS ARE QUICK Corey Womack has produced and stage-managed my two favorite Shakespeare shows of the past year, and so to me she is among the most able and important people working in the A…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:08PMFriday, April 20, 2012
LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NATURALISM Much has been written about Eugene O’Neill’s decision to trade first names with his own dead brother Edmund when naming the younger Tyron…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:48AMThursday, April 12, 2012
UNFETTERED AND ALIVE In Paris, Dmitry Krymov’s adaptation of an Ivan Bunin story, traces in words, music, and movement a few moments in the lives of two Russian émigrés (Anna Sinyaki…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:37PMWednesday, April 11, 2012
YOUR OLD-AGE HOME FOR THE CLASSICS Julia Rodriguez-Elliott’s production of Moliere’s The Bungler reminds me of nothing so much as the last two shows I’ve seen at A Noise Wi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:39AMSaturday, April 7, 2012
MUCH ADO TO KNOW ITSELF Sean Branney has been as lauded as a Los Angeles theater director can be, and Theatre Banshee has done some great work recently, so it’s disappointing to report…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:04PMSunday, April 1, 2012
IT’S JUST IT’S JUST SEX Cole Porter wrote sex comedies; Richard Brinsley Sheridan and William Shakespeare wrote them. Michael Frayn wrote them. Georges Feydeau and Arthur Schnitzler …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:39AMThursday, March 29, 2012
ONE VERY, VERY SMALL STEP FOR DAMON CHUA Tony Gatto gets an A for effort, having mounted a colorful if unnecessarily literal production of a Damon Chua script that defies dramaturgy and good…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:13AMWednesday, March 28, 2012
GHOST WRITTEN Henrik Ibsen wrote at a watershed moment in theater history, at the decline of melodrama and the rise of naturalism; some of his best plays reflect a tension between these pole…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:16AMCOMICAL, HISTORICAL, WHIMSICAL, “POP”ICAL If you like Shakespeare: go. If you hate Shakespeare: go. If you love or loathe Peter Cetera: go. If you dislike ecstatic, adorabl…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:47AMSaturday, March 24, 2012
BUT ONLY BY A THREAD During Connected, the 2011 dance piece from Australian company Chunky Move at the Luckman Theater in Los Angeles last week, a strip-club cat-call was heard from the audi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:39PMCOMIC EPHEMERA In Tony Kushner’s adaptation of Pierre Corneille’s 1636 comedy L’Illusion Comique, the modern playwright has abandoned the contextual trappings that make the…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:54AMBLACK AND WHITE AND GOOD ALL OVER A smart play is usually a provocative play, but a provocative play is rarely smart. Many playwrights competent to stir controversy have neither the chops …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:38AMWednesday, March 21, 2012
IMPRISONED BY ART Most literary intellectuals have as much business writing about life behind bars as incarcerated felons have teaching text analysis. In the last few months, Los Angeles h…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:10AMThursday, March 8, 2012
WHY DO WE HAVE WHY WE HAVE A BODY? Every few years a vanity project comes along so appalling that one’s jaw hangs open for its entire running time, saliva connecting the lower lip to t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:41AMSaturday, March 3, 2012
THRILLING HOPELESSNESS Go up into Gilead, and take balm, O virgin, the daughter of Egypt: in vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be cured. – Jeremiah 42:11. In 1964,…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:46PMACTS OF CONSCIENCE All theater is inherently political, in that a story is only as objective as its teller. But some plays go straight to the 24 hour news cycle definition of politics, add…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:36PMFriday, March 2, 2012
FANGS FOR THE MAMMARIES Carson Kreitzer’s 2003 play Slither conforms to a certain category of American text: the women’s empowerment monologue extravaganza. Hallmarks of the ge…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:02AMSunday, February 26, 2012
A LACK OF PHILOSOPHY Elina de Santos’ production of David Ives’ 2008 New Jerusalem, The Interrogation of Baruch De Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, July 27, 1656 …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:39PMSaturday, January 28, 2012
CHEATED OF FEATURE The joy of watching Shakespeare in performance largely depends on the ensemble’s ability to make sense of the language. In this regard, Sacred Fools’ new Ric…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:01PMIF THIS IS THE CIRCUS, WHERE’S MY BREAD? In 1992, Guy Laliberté gentrified the big top with Saltimbanco, offering pure spectacle at Wagnerian prices, and in the process conflating art…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:29PMWednesday, January 18, 2012
WARLIKE FROTTAGE The Porters of Hellsgate’s production of Shakespeare’s Trojan War essay, Troilus and Cressida, begins promisingly. A shifting tableau establishes characters an…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:11PM 
