Friday, December 9, 2016
LA LA LAND STARTS WITH OOH-LA-LA BUT LANDS HARD In some ways, La La Land promises to be a moving, old-fashioned romantic musical that plays around with old techniques and presents them in…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:51PMThursday, November 14, 2013
LIKING THIS LIKENESS Writer/producer/director Daniel Rover Singer’s A Perfect Likeness imagines a meeting between Charles Dickens and Charles Dodgson–better known by the alias, Lewis…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:40PMMonday, November 11, 2013
SIRRAH, NO Cyrano de Bergerac is the story of a fearless, witty, charismatic romantic whose grotesque nose prevents him from pursuing Roxanne, the woman he loves. Roxanne is smitten by Chris…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:29PMWednesday, September 18, 2013
POSITIVELY PEERLESS PERICLES There’s a certain respect lost among most national leaders today, especially here in America, due to the excessive regard for individuals graduated from northe…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:42AMFriday, September 13, 2013
AH, GOOD THEATER! Ah, Wilderness! is Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning O’Neill’s only comedy, and he describes it as, “a wistful recollection…the kind of childhood I wished I had grow…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:50AMSaturday, August 31, 2013
TOO MUCH OF TOO LITTLE FOR TOO LONG An aged widow and an even more aged married man have a shared, passionate history with each other that ended after during World War II. Now, nearly sevent…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:14PMSunday, July 14, 2013
AND NOW FOR A BRIEF INTERLUDE What’s hip these days? It’s the old tradition of taking idiosyncratic history or historical figures and putting the stories and details to music. Sufjan Ste…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:57AMFriday, May 31, 2013
BRAIN FRIED Retaining a cephalopod’s far-ranging spinelessness and wide-ranging tentacles, Alicia Adams and Justin Zsebe’s vanity work, A Fried Octopus, makes a squishy thud at The Bootl…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:38AMMonday, May 20, 2013
ALL THE WRONG MOVES The musical Chess highlights the tongue-twisting, swift, and pithy lyrics by Tim Rice and the soaring, dazzling music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA fame. …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:20PMFriday, April 26, 2013
THE PETITE POLITIQUE Few playwrights have it as good as Beau Willimon at the moment; he’s a critical and commercial success on all three major platforms—stage, screen, and stream. His pl…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:54PMSunday, April 21, 2013
PASSION OVER PERFECTION wild Up is an electric ensemble of twenty-two twenty-somethings who vigorously perform a maelstrom of eclectic musical works ranging from J.S. Bach to They Might Be G…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:28PMTuesday, April 16, 2013
NO SLIPS HERE After previous productions in Chicago and New York, Daniel Talbott’s first play Slipping touches down in Los Angeles and serves as both the inaugural production of Rattlestic…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:09AMSunday, April 14, 2013
THE GEFFEN PRODUCTION OF AMERICAN BUFFALO PREFERS TO GRAZE RATHER THAN STAMPEDE The script of David Mamet’s assaulting and brutal American Buffalo still packs bite after thirty-eight years…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:27PMSaturday, April 13, 2013
RESTORED RESTORATION Northern Irish playwright George Farqhuar died at the tender age of 30, in 1707. However, he finished writing one last play before his passing, The Beaux’ Stratagem, a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:14PMWednesday, April 3, 2013
A BUTTERFLY THAT’S STILL IN THE COCOON Katherine Noon’s latest ensemble workshop-developed hydra creation, The Bargain and the Butterfly, takes its inspiration from Nathaniel Hawthor…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:11PMFriday, March 29, 2013
MYTH UNDERSTOOD Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice is classical in its mythological origins but forges a modern path with a point of view modification and feministic flair. The original Greek myth of …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:10PMSunday, March 24, 2013
ONE NIGHT WITH PEARL Break out the Southern Comfort and feathered boa, One Night with Janis Joplin is a helluva concert experience presented at the Pasadena Playhouse. Writer-director-creato…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:43PMSaturday, March 23, 2013
HOW TO SUCCEED CHAUVINISTIC INHUMANITY WITHOUT REALLY TRYING We live in a nation where people celebrate socialite Kim Kardashian, who bore a child with a man who’s not her husband. Sexual …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:33AMTuesday, March 12, 2013
WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A BAD MOM? Chalk Repertory Theatre continues presenting non-traditional, site-specific theatre with the world premiere of Dorothy Fortenberry’s newest work, Mommune. �…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:15PMFriday, March 8, 2013
THE PLAY ABOUT A TRIAL ULTIMATELY BECOMES A TRIAL TO WATCH Stephen Adley Guirgis’ The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a courtroom drama set in Purgatory where the guilty or not guilty verdi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:43PMWednesday, February 27, 2013
RIPPED TO RAGS IN A BEAUTIFUL WAY John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize and National Book award-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath operates as both a harrowing portrait of the American struggle f…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:03PMMonday, February 11, 2013
GALATEA COMES TO LIFE Transformation. Evolution. Metamorphosis. These words are often confined to biological definition, abused in a critic’s articulation, and criminally under-applied by …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:15PMThursday, February 7, 2013
CROSS OVER FROM ROUTINE AND VIVE LE VIE Napoleon’s vision to make the world his grand empire of France was stifled by his winter campaign in Russia and his defeat at Waterloo. However, wha…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:48PMMonday, February 4, 2013
TALK ABOUT A LONG AND WINDING ROAD So, this cool cat painter, a blonde Frau, and several Liverpool lads named John, Paul, George, and Pete walk into a bar in Hamburg… While this sounds lik…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:38PMSunday, January 27, 2013
RUSHIN’ RUSSIAN Track 3 at the Bootleg Theater is a peculiar sort. Richard Alger’s adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s classic Three Sisters is better described as a transmogrification of th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:46AMThursday, January 24, 2013
THE SLIPPERY SIGNIFICANCE OF GREAT AND GOOD A person’s true character is revealed in crisis. The road to triumph is filled with battles lost and sacrifices made, but overall it is worth th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:59PMMonday, January 21, 2013
DOSTOEVSKY’S NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre in North Hollywood ought not to surface. This willfully banal production…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:45PMSunday, December 16, 2012
AN IMPERSONAL CHRISTMAS CAROL What has become of Christmas since Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was published in 1843? In spite of the fact that technology has afforded us numerous opportunit…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:59AMSaturday, December 8, 2012
SOME THINGS GO, SOME THINGS DON’T While it is refreshing that Cole Porter is experiencing a revival, it is unfortunate that the timeless brilliance of his music is attached to musicals who…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:24PMWednesday, November 21, 2012
LIKE ADDING MILK TO GREEN TEA, A GREAT PLAY IS SPOILED BY ADDING MUSIC. Post World War II Era in America isn’t a red, white, and blue haven with a backyard and a Buick waiting for everyon…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:40PMTuesday, November 20, 2012
SILK-SCREEN DEEP Even though icon Andy Warhol passed away twenty-five years ago, his legacy remains elastically strong in all its plastic nature; a man very “American” for being of the c…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:39PM 
