Friday, September 9, 2011
Cast members of They Simply Said EnterOn Sept. 9, 2001, I went to the downtown L.A. offices of Cornerstone Theater Company to audition/shop for a project in their Festival of Faith, a five-s…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 09:56AMTuesday, September 6, 2011
A few years back I had the privilege of interviewing Jeremy Lawrence, a fine actor and translator who's made something of a cottage industry of playing Tennessee Williams in a series of solo…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 03:19PMFriday, September 2, 2011
Yelena action shot by Hilton Als
The New Yorker's certifiable No. 2 theater critic strikes again, with a book report review of the recent Aussie-fied Uncle Vanya at Kennedy Center. As Charl…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:44AMThursday, September 1, 2011
Emerging from one deadline valley only to face another, but I still find time to jog about the Intertubes.
Jeremy Barker's extremely helpful "Piss Christ" test.
I get a lot of annoying spam,…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:48AMWednesday, August 31, 2011
St. Vincent's new video "Cruel" is catchy and disturbing in roughly equal measure, but what caught my eye is the fine, understated actor playing her husband. The bearded fellow is Bjørn Joh…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:32AMFriday, August 26, 2011
Readings from around the Intertubes:
French Stewart's tribute to tiny, thankless L.A. theater.
The Garv blows the lid off theater people knowing each other and working together.
The Zinoman …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 06:00AMMonday, August 22, 2011
Photo by Anne Cusack for the Los Angeles Times
The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity continues its nationwide sweep, all the more remarkable because of its exceptional staging demands (real …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 05:42AMWednesday, August 17, 2011
My fellow blogger/dad/theater writer, George Hunka, has a thoughtful and encouraging post about the value of reading plays vs. seeing them staged.That a written drama only comes alive on the…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:25AMTuesday, August 16, 2011
As I mentioned in my recent post about the Sondheim/Porgy and Bess rumble, I knew I'd seen quotes in which he'd spoken frankly about West Side Story's flaws and strengths. I just dug up the …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:54AMMonday, August 15, 2011
Monday morning links with your coffee.Managing the nightly Hair dance party.Critic behaving badly.The case for spoilers: "The sign of something being really good is that it stands up well to…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 07:48AMFriday, August 12, 2011
Here's the thing: Patrick Healy's feature about Diane Paulus and Suzan-Lori Parks' new musical adaptation of Porgy and Bess was a big fat target; I myself read it with very mixed feelings ab…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 06:45AMWednesday, August 10, 2011
The Sondheim classic about faded Broadway dreams returns.
SOURCE: Time Out New York at 12:53PMI don't think the woman can do no wrong, but anyone who wrote both "Jolene" and "Down From Dover" is doing something right, and heartily worth a tip of the margarita at El Chavo. But a fun p…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 12:30PMTuesday, August 9, 2011
The only Sondheim shows I haven't seen are Saturday Night, Anyone Can Whistle, and Follies, and only the last is a canonical work. I have a reasonable excuse in that Follies is pretty infreq…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 01:57PMMonday, August 8, 2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
From around the Webs:Jeremy Barker on why theatres in trouble should take more, not fewer risks.Denise Poirier, one of the best Lady Macbeths I've seen (way, way back in L.A. at Theatre of N…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 09:56AMThursday, August 4, 2011
Years ago, on my first trip to London, I happened to meet the Guardian's eminence grise Michael Billington (is there any living theater critic who's been at it as long as he? Feingold?). We …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 12:28PMSaturday, July 30, 2011
July was a busy month away from the theater district, with a heavy focus on Shakespeare, both imported and locally grown. In addition to the Public Theater's annual Shakespeare in the Park, …
SOURCE: StageGrade at 04:26PMWednesday, July 27, 2011
Fascinating video of my local Dixieland band, the Red Hook Ramblers, making a wax cylinder recording recently at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange, NJ. There are tech…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:44PMMonday, July 25, 2011
The TCG Conference in Los Angeles, now more than a month in the past, was bittersweet for me. I've been back to the city I called home for nearly half my life many times before, but this tim…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 12:17PMWednesday, July 20, 2011
Karina Fernicola Ikezoe in the lead role of Salome; photo courtesy of Black MoonMost of the big dailies' websites allow commenting on their reviews, and most theater reviews receive few comm…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:48AMTuesday, July 19, 2011
Apart from the obligatory Murdoch hatred, what's striking about this clip from Dennis Potter's final interview is how well his critique of ultra-monetized media applies to dilemmas that have…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 12:00PMTuesday, July 12, 2011
Some things that caught my eye while I should be doing 10 million other things:Elizabeth Swados' Runaways gets another listen.Haven't seen the play, but the spin--that a play about a woman w…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:30AMFriday, July 8, 2011
Kitten on the keys:A sign of hope for new musicals.Shades of the Pigiron kerfluffle: L.A.'s Poor Dogs get called out by a Fox affiliate for spending city tax dollars abroad. The LAT comment …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:23AMThursday, July 7, 2011
For the terminally curious, here's the (almost) complete video of Julie Taymor's talk with Roger Copeland at the recent TCG conference, about which I've only commented on Isaac's blog. For m…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 04:28PMThursday, June 30, 2011
The first big piece I wrote for American Theatre after I started full-time here was an in-depth profile of L.A.'s Celebration Theatre and its artistic director Michael Shepperd. There was no…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:31AMWednesday, June 29, 2011
Good Person of Szechuan by Bertolt BrechtThe Glass Menagerie by Tennessee WilliamsUnforgettable Elephants PBS Nature Series“Whistler’s Mother” Season 1 Episode 20 Arrested Development …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 05:37PM“Regardless of the medium, rewriting and more rewriting is still necessary. No one gets anything right the first time, and since I don't write with a hammer and chisel, it's relatively …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 03:35PMThe Ohio Theatre's untimely departure from Soho last year was bad news, but this summer brings great news upon already good news. The Ohio's annual Ice Factory new-works festival is now up a…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:44PMMonday, June 27, 2011
photo by I.C. RapoportSo Lydia Diamond's much-lauded family comedy/drama Stick Fly will hit Broadway later this year. That's great news for Diamond, and great news for a play that's been gat…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 05:41PMSunday, June 26, 2011
The summer months after the Tonys may once have been relatively slow, but that's not the case any more in the city that never sleeps: Myriad new-play festivals downtown (Clubbed Thumb Summer…
SOURCE: StageGrade at 04:47PM 
