Sunday, February 8, 2015
These Re-Imagine LA Theatre guys are some of the bravest people in town. I mean it. Stupid is not what they are; foolhardy, yes. Which is a kind of brave. I mean, they did it. In the face of…
SOURCE: Bitter Lemons at 06:47AMSaturday, February 7, 2015
A RIDE YOU WON’T FIND IN ANAHEIM Any neighborhood with the elevated name of Silver Lake should have freshwater dolphins and interesting old hotels and a disfigured serial killer who st…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:17AMTuesday, February 3, 2015
UP THE RABBIT HOLE There’s been a good deal of speculation over the last hundred-and-something years regarding the sexuality of Charles Dodgson, an Oxford professor of mathematics more…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:53AMFriday, January 30, 2015
My imperfect grasp of David Hume’s philosophy excites me on the concept of utility, which determines the value of an idea by asking how useful it is to society. Applying this crite…
SOURCE: Bitter Lemons at 03:14AMMonday, January 26, 2015
SAILING THROUGH FOG The title of Eugene O’Neill’s 1921 drama Anna Christie is the nom de guerre chosen by a hard-knock 18-year-old who decides that if she’s going to get pa…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:37PMFriday, January 23, 2015
For years we ran our kitchen on the beach, where the desert road dies at the coast highway. Characters would hitchhike west out of plays and movies set at lonesome cafes in Arizona or Deat…
SOURCE: Bitter Lemons at 01:51AMWednesday, January 14, 2015
A YEAR OF ECSTATIC MOMENTS Last year, as ever, I missed what I am told was some of the best theater that went up in Southern California. I don’t know what’s Best or Most. I saw s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:29PMTuesday, December 30, 2014
You bought the ticket, or you had had your friend who was in the show leave tickets for you at the booth. The girl in the booth was perhaps too old and certainly too responsible to be called…
SOURCE: Bitter Lemons at 07:33PMTuesday, December 16, 2014
BIRD THOU SURE AIN’T NOW Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. - P.B. Shelle…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:43PMFriday, November 28, 2014
One day last week, Colin Mitchell and I texted plans to meet at the Mark Taper Forum. We hadn’t seen each other in months. Twenty minutes after the text, with all of Los Angeles to att…
SOURCE: Bitter Lemons at 09:51PMWednesday, November 26, 2014
WHAT DIDN’T HE Joe Orton was a loudly subversive English playwright who, before his murder in 1967, helped rip out the loud, inefficient plumbing of kitchen sink social drama and repla…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:37PMSaturday, November 8, 2014
THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS Shotspeare is a comedy punch mulled from liquor, a few conservatory-trained actors and Ringling Brothers clowns, and the brutalization of one of the best plays ever w…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:53PMThursday, November 6, 2014
MORE SINNED AGAINST At one point in act four, the disillusioned and blinded Gloucester refuses help along the road: “I have no way and therefore want no eyes.” It’s a line that Bil…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:39PMSaturday, October 25, 2014
WHAT INDEED The title of María Irene Fornés’ 1989 quartet of one-acts recalls a two-verse Old Testament passage in Isaiah. The wandering Jews cry out from the midst of war, famine, e…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:37PMSunday, October 12, 2014
GODDESS OF LOVE THAT YOU AREN’T David Ives’ two-character adaptation of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 1870 novel Venus in Furs wowed New York in 2010, largely for its star tu…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:31PMMonday, September 29, 2014
She realized in the middle of the final preview – near the top of the second act, when she spent five minutes upstage near the windows – that it wasn’t the flu. She stood quietly w…
SOURCE: Bitter Lemons at 05:16PMSaturday, September 27, 2014
SWEET SONGS UNSUPPORTED Tarell Alvin McCraney’s 2012 Choir Boy is a tantalizing, underdeveloped play-with-music not entirely improved by Trip Cullman’s direction, now at the Geff…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:46PMSaturday, September 20, 2014
YOU’LL GET THIS GOAT Martin is an architect at the top of his profession; he and his wife Stevie and their son Billy live at, or on, the crest of civilization: rich, successful, smart,…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:49PMFriday, September 19, 2014
HEAVENLY DAY Samuel Beckett’s 1960 two-hander Happy Days presents a life in hell: Winnie, a middle-aged lady half-buried in an apocalyptic wasteland, is awakened and put to sleep by a …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:14PMALL YESTERDAY’S PARTIES A projection reads “1,000,000 Years B.C.,” and the countdown (count up?) begins; that’s a lot of numbers to scroll on a stage bare of performers, and …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:35PMTuesday, September 9, 2014
A SORT OF JUDGMENT The Life and Sort of Death of Eric Argyle, Ross Dungan’s 2013 play about fate-after-death, is pleasantly eloquent and several times touching in a comforting way, but…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:42PMMonday, September 8, 2014
UNBURIED RED-HEADED STEPCHILD In the mid-1990s, Sam Shepard rewrote his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1978 play, Buried Child, for a new Steppenwolf production that director Gary Sinise dragged fro…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:49PMMAGICIANS OF THEATRICALITY Aaron Posner is on fire right now. His adaptations, My Name Is Asher Lev and Stupid Fucking Bird, are being produced all over the country, and his version of Shak…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:00PMSaturday, September 6, 2014
FORD INTO PECKINPAH VIA THE CHICKEN HYMN I’m a big fan of John Ford and Howard Hawks; My Darling Clementine and Red River are apex achievements in Hollywood studio storytelling. But Fo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:40PMThursday, September 4, 2014
FIRST PERSIAN PLURAL To see the oldest extant Greek tragedy performed sort-of as it was 2500 years ago, but excluding masks and including Anne Bogart’s affection for fabric and yoga …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:55AMThursday, August 28, 2014
A couple of weeks ago the theater artist David Jette called me “an infamously belligerent dick.” That’s good, accurate reportage, well-phrased, best of all fair. David and I shared…
SOURCE: Bitter Lemons at 09:10AMSunday, August 24, 2014
THE RUBRICS OF FAITH A play as well presented and satisfyingly written as most of Robin Uriel Russin’s new The Face in the Reeds deserves special mention. The Family Holiday Dramedy wi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:02PMWednesday, August 20, 2014
The homeless constitute one of two demographics to whom a toilet cleaned by an indifferent minimum-wage worker looks pretty good. The other is rich people with maids. I am neither, and I d…
SOURCE: Bitter Lemons at 09:19AMFriday, August 8, 2014
STRAWBERRY FIELDS I’m not sure what, but it says something about our young writers and aging audiences that the most durable millennial genre is the coming-of-middle-age medical trauma…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:38PMMonday, August 4, 2014
ONE ACT IS COMPANY, SIX IS A CROWD Here’s the thing: an evening of one-act plays always reminds me of those Night of Scenes showcases back in school. It’s a good chance for wri…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:57AMBROADWAY VIA THE CATSKILLS AND THE ACTORS STUDIO I like plays featuring middle-aged guys who did everything right and still can’t figure anything out. So Ron Sossi and Larry Field…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:55AM 
