Monday, March 25, 2013
HAVING ISSUES WITH ISSUES Ken LaZebnik’s On the Spectrum, which opened last week at the Fountain Theatre, belongs to a genre known as Theatre of Identity, aka Social Issues Theatre; the id…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:50AMFriday, March 22, 2013
NOT WORTH THE WEIGHT The title of Samuel D. Hunter’s The Whale refers to three things. The first is Charlie, a homebound, 600-pound tutor who instructs online classes in expository writing…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:08PMTuesday, March 12, 2013
L. A. THEATER RISES FROM THE DEAD With an assemblage of the bravest actors in Los Angeles, Zombie Joe returns with an all-new Urban Death, the naturalistic horror show in the style of Le Th�…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:46PMTHE TROUBLE WITH THE TROUBLE WITH WORDS In 2011, I stumbled upon a refreshing new composer at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. The extraordinarily encouraging work in Gregory Nabours’ song c…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:57AMSaturday, March 9, 2013
GAY ABSTRACTION For years, Ken Roht has proved himself to be one of the most inventive theater practitioners in Los Angeles. His avant garde works include the renown 99 Cent Only shows, whic…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:15PMFriday, March 8, 2013
WHAT WERE JEW THINKING? Baby boomers should recall the time when a great comedy album could be played with regularity. Some of my favorites were Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow…Right…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:11PMFriday, March 1, 2013
THE CORN IS HIGH INDEED Messrs. Rodgers and Hammerstein reinvented American Musical Theater for the ages when they created Oklahoma! in 1943, incorporating song and dance to tell their story…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:02AMSunday, February 24, 2013
ON THE WAY TO PARADISE There is a telling item buried among the bric-a-brac of Stephanie Kerley Schwartz’ detailed country set of an economically depressed, coal-mining, hillbilly burg nam…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:53PMWednesday, February 13, 2013
MUSICAL WITH A CHECKERED PAST GETS A CHECKERED PRODUCTION Chess, the musical about two chess tournaments between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War, is the 1979 brain child of lyr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:09PMSunday, February 10, 2013
A SIZE THAT DOES NOT FIT ALL Of the three plays which constitute Tarell Alvin McCraney’s “The Brother/Sister Plays,” The Brothers Size, now playing at The Old Globe, is the most intima…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:26PMWednesday, February 6, 2013
THE DRAG QUEEN TO DRAG YOUR THOUGHTS AWAY FROM YOUR TROUBLES I first saw Coco Peru perform in a B movie sendup – a campy romp called Blood Orgy of the Carnival Queens! But at New York’s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:31AMSaturday, February 2, 2013
THE RITE OF JOFFREY One hundred years ago, a new ballet took place in Paris’ Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. This highly controversial work – for both its music and choreography – …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:59AMSaturday, January 26, 2013
A CIRCUS BUT NO BREAD The theater space is a cavernous church gym with lousy acoustics. The intrepid thespians at Red Tape Theatre transform it into the title setting, an arena of death with…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:03PMThursday, January 24, 2013
GOTHIC OPERA You will notice in the first five paragraphs of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” that the storyteller’s description of an ancient decomposing castle, s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:02PMTuesday, January 15, 2013
THE ACTORS’ GANG’S TARTUFFE RETURNS FOR THREE NIGHTS BEFORE NATIONAL TOUR The Actors’ Gang, the critically acclaimed Los Angeles based ensemble theatre company, will present hi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:59AMMonday, January 14, 2013
PETER PAN AND CATHY RIGBY HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON: THEY WON’T GROW UP When the musical fantasy adaptation of James M. Barrie’s Peter Pan landed on Broadway in 1954, it received rave rev…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:01PMSunday, December 30, 2012
Sometimes in life, it’s the last Christmas present we open that makes up for all the lousy ones we unwrapped before. In what is truly the most dismal season of holiday-themed shows,…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:53PMWednesday, December 19, 2012
LET’S BE FRANK The dictionary has two main definitions for the word “bash”: One is “a thoroughly enjoyable, lively party,” which is undoubtedly what the producers of Christmas …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:59AMSaturday, December 15, 2012
ALEXANDER THE GREAT…CHARMER, THAT IS When I first heard Cortés Alexander sing in 1992, he wasn’t alone. He was part of a group named The Tonics, and they performed a jazzy rendition…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:57PMFriday, December 14, 2012
STUCK IN THE DESERT Don’t the powers that be at Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum understand that casting is roughly 80% of a play’s success? Don’t they understand that any play, i…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:30PMSaturday, December 8, 2012
BOB’S HOLIDAY OFFICE FIASCO Bob’s Holiday Office Party, now in its 17th season, is basically a fifteen-minute Carol Burnett Show-type sketch stretched out to about 100 minutes. And unles…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:52PMRECIPE FOR A CHRISTMAS STEW I sent this recipe to a friend, who will let us know how this Christmas Stew turned out: This is a family favorite, cooked up every holiday season. There are a lo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:21PMSunday, December 2, 2012
SECOND CITY OFFERS A LUMP OF COAL Scene 1—INTERIOR OF SPOOGE AND FARLEY’S CRITIC HOUSE (EVERWHEEZER SPOOGE, an irascible, irritated editor-in-chief and theater critic, is hunched over hi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:52PMSaturday, December 1, 2012
LAMC SHINES IN A HISTORICALLY INFORMED PERFORMANCE OF MONTEVERDI’S VESPERS OF 1610 After Los Angeles Master Chorale’s (LAMC) astoundingly successful performance of Claudio Monteverdi’s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:50AMTuesday, November 27, 2012
BEST TO LOOK AT THE QUILT AS A WHOLE, NOT THE INDIVIDUAL ELEMENTS Intimate Apparel is a delicate but persuasive play about Esther (Vanessa Williams), a gifted black seamstress in 1905 who be…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:12PMMonday, November 26, 2012
GREAT F. SCOTT! REDCAT’S GOT GATZ A phenomenon is arriving at the Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theatre (REDCAT) this week in Los Angeles. I promise that once its 9-performance run is over …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:58AMSunday, November 25, 2012
CHRISTMAS ISLAND With the superfluity of Christmas-themed theater descending upon America like a Biblical plague, there is one play which is opening this week that has intrigued and even exc…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:44PMFriday, November 23, 2012
CALL ME SLACKJAWED It’s amazing what critics and audiences alike are willing to forgive when they’re in the presence of a true star. Regardless of some bouncy and hummable Irving Berlin …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:41PMSaturday, November 17, 2012
AN OPENING NIGHT SURPRISE It’s one of those instances that may just be talked about in the San Francisco opera circle for years to come. In Act One of Puccini’s Tosca (1900) at San Franc…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:17PMThursday, November 15, 2012
A DREAMY BEDTIME STORY Theater critics often speak of “universal themes” in the theater—these are topics to which people in any place and at any time can relate. One of the main reaso…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:36PMWednesday, November 14, 2012
THERE HAS TO BE ANOTHER WAY When Anna Ziegler’s world premiere play Another Way Home began, it seemed that the thrust of the play would revolve around Joey (Daniel Petzold), a 17-year-old …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:37PM 
