Monday, March 6, 2023
As a critic, I’m always looking for a fresh challenge, which is one reason I took up writing about theater: It still has the capacity to scare me. I’ve reviewed nearly 1,700 movies in my…
SOURCE: Variety at 04:30PMFriday, August 5, 2022
If you’ve ever seen Mike Birbiglia before, whether on stage or screen (or a couple months back, filling in for Jimmy Kimmel), then “The Old Man and the Pool” feels like catching up wit…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:19PMTuesday, May 3, 2022
The trick of stage acting comes in playing the same thing every night as if it were happening for the first time, right there in front of the audience’s eyes. But once-controversial Americ…
SOURCE: Variety at 07:00PMWednesday, July 7, 2021
Debuting on opening night of the Cannes Film Festival a full year after it was originally expected to appear, “Annette” arrives on a pedestal from which it’s too easily toppled. This l…
SOURCE: Variety at 07:49AMSaturday, May 29, 2021
Perhaps it’s time for another meeting between officials from Israel and Palestine like the series of off-the-books negotiations that took place in Oslo, Norway, back in 1993. Those session…
SOURCE: Variety at 07:02PMWednesday, April 14, 2021
Even after a year of indoor theaters being shuttered in Los Angeles, it’s hard to imagine a future without the ArcLight Hollywood, the tony 15-screen megaplex that countless Angelenos cons…
SOURCE: Variety at 08:45PMFriday, January 22, 2021
Magic never works the same way in movies that it does in person, which is not to say that it doesn’t work in movies. It just takes a different kind of finesse, typically relying on editing…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:13AMWednesday, January 13, 2021
It started with a hunch. Edith Pretty and her husband bought a house at Sutton Hoo, the estate of which contained several large mounds of earth. For years, there had been theories about what…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:26PMFriday, April 26, 2019
A colleague who teaches recently pointed out a surprising insight into the current generation of university-age students: According to an informal show-of-hands poll she conducted, hardly an…
SOURCE: Variety at 04:44PMSaturday, March 23, 2019
What function do superhero stories play in American society? Are they merely escapist distractions for head-in-the-clouds teens, or could those same formats actually serve a practical functi…
SOURCE: Variety at 12:10PMSunday, February 10, 2019
How much can you change “Cinderella” before it is no longer “Cinderella”? In the case of choreography maestro Matthew Bourne — who, it should be said, first unveiled his spin on th…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:40PMSunday, January 27, 2019
When people say a movie feels like a play, they often mean it as a kind of insult — less showy than talky, self-contained, more concerned with ideas than authenticity — but in the case o…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:49PMFriday, January 4, 2019
Cooper may have achieved movie star status before getting the chance to direct — “luckily, in the end,” he says — but that gave the actor time to find his voice before making “A S…
SOURCE: Variety at 11:20AMFriday, November 30, 2018
Anyone who loves musical theater owes it to themselves to see “Bathtubs Over Broadway,” a delightful deep-dive documentary into one man’s obsession with the obscure world of industrial…
SOURCE: Variety at 07:24PMThursday, November 8, 2018
The question arises every year: When is the right time to toss the fake spider webbing and carved pumpkins in favor of inflatable snowmen and fiberglass reindeer? Must you wait until Thanksg…
SOURCE: Variety at 02:40PMSunday, August 26, 2018
The less you know about the Temptations, the more you’ll get out of “Ain’t Too Proud,” a finger-snapping, hand-clapping new jukebox musical passing through Los Angeles’ Ahmanson Th…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:16PMWednesday, July 18, 2018
It’s a credit to Denzel Washington’s career choices that he’s gone four decades without making a single sequel. That’s not to say that breaking the pattern with “The Equalizer 2”…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:00AMSunday, June 10, 2018
Before “Big,” before “Bachelor Party” — heck, before even “Bosom Buddies” — Tom Hanks studied theater at Chabot College and performed three seasons in the Great Lakes Shakes…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:48PMThursday, November 9, 2017
On Wednesday, director Ridley Scott announced a plan that is virtually unprecedented in the history of Hollywood: With his new film “All the Money in the World” already in the can and le…
SOURCE: Variety at 08:08PMSunday, September 24, 2017
While there are few who would dispute the place Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s “The Red Shoes” holds as the greatest dance film of all time — focusing as it does on the back…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:00AMFriday, September 22, 2017
Where to begin with all that’s wrong with Paul Rudnick’s new play, “Big Night,” which takes place in a swanky Hollywood hotel suite before and after the Academy Awards ceremony where…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:14PMThursday, August 17, 2017
Lin-Manuel Miranda's hip-hop musical finally reaches L.A., celebrating a time when politics was about passion, and everyone was an immigrant.
SOURCE: Variety at 03:16PMSunday, July 23, 2017
Jimmy Fowlie imagines the one-woman Emma Stone performs off-screen in 'La La Land,' nailing the narcissism of a certain kind of actress.
SOURCE: Variety at 12:23PMFriday, June 30, 2017
Randall Arney Artistic Director Geffen Playhouse 10886 Le Conte Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90024 Dear Sir: First, let me just say that I am a great admirer of your institution, the Geffen Playhous…
SOURCE: Variety at 04:45PMTuesday, May 9, 2017
How do you make a comedy about the absurdity of modern terrorism? For bold, outside-the-box American playwright Rajiv Joseph (“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”), you set the satire a cen…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:32PMTuesday, February 14, 2017
Back in style after 40 years, Luis Valdez’s “Zoot Suit” is as custom-tailored a Los Angeles stage experience as they come: Commissioned back in 1977 by Center Theatre Group founding ar…
SOURCE: Variety at 04:44PMFriday, February 10, 2017
Death, heavy as the fog that surrounds the Tyrone family home and somber as the low sea-monster cry of the foghorn echoing across the water, hangs over “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.�…
SOURCE: Variety at 08:43PMThursday, December 29, 2016
In “Singin’ in the Rain,” Debbie Reynolds plays a reluctant ingénue, drawn into “the pictures” after Gene Kelly, playing a silent-era matinee idol trying to escape a mob of autogr…
SOURCE: Variety at 12:51PMMonday, December 19, 2016
The most adorable character in all of French cinema finds her way to the American stage in the new musical adaptation of “Amélie,” and while it’s practically impossible not to love a …
SOURCE: Variety at 06:53PMTuesday, November 22, 2016
It has been just over a decade since Bob Iger engineered the deal that brought Steve Jobs’ Pixar Animation Studios to Disney, negotiating a $7.4 billion stock purchase that raised eyebrows…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:30AMSunday, November 20, 2016
Martin McDonagh’s 1996 play “The Beauty Queen of Lenane” was the first of half a dozen scripts to come pouring out of McDonagh during a particularly prolific period back in the mid…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:24PM 
