Saturday, February 4, 2012
THE SHOW ABOUT THE HAND THAT GIVES YOU THE FINGER I get a thrill when I think of the tourists who are milling about Old Town in San Diego. Exhausted from tchotchke shopping and sugary treats…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:13PMTHE FEATS OF THE FOOTES America is preoccupied with an unstable economy, tax increases, oil profiteering, cash deficiencies, and the plummeting worth of real estate. Yet history does indeed …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:47AMEXCELLENCE VS. HOKUM With Lonesome Traveler, a compendium of the golden years of American folk music, writer/director James O’Neil has developed a long-winded and incoherent revue that is …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:01AMTuesday, January 31, 2012
HERE COMES MR. JORDAN Have you ever been to a sultry party that has the oppressive feel of a languid, humid day in the Deep South, only to have the energy shift dramatically when a raconteur…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:32PMSunday, January 22, 2012
THE VALUE IN SIMPLICITY The purposefully simplistic proceedings of David Cromer’s production of Our Town may seem bold and innovative to some, especially to those weaned on Broadway specta…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:12PMSaturday, January 21, 2012
OWNING HER INNER KVETCH In Michael Wex’s treatise Born to Kvetch, he asserts that Kvetching (complaining) is not only a pastime for Jews – it’s a way of life. Kvetching can be applied …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:24PMWednesday, January 18, 2012
BLACK COMEDY AND KITCHEN SINK DRAMA: AN IRISH STEW While the horror and suspense merely simmer in The Beauty Queen of Leenane – Martin McDonagh’s 1996 black comedy – the dark humor, bl…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:53PMFriday, January 6, 2012
GO TO THE DEVIL Within the manifesto of Kneehigh – an avant-garde, world-class theater company based in Cornwall, England – is a simple but mighty statement: Kneehigh tells stories. By…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:58PMFriday, December 16, 2011
ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A GOOD STORY After winning two Tony awards in 2007 for book and lyrics of Spring Awakening, Steven Sater teamed up with the one-and-only Burt Bacharach to write s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:38PMMonday, December 12, 2011
SUITORS SUIT ILL-FITTING SUITS Enda Walsh, scribe of The Walworth Farce and The New Electric Ballroom, is one of the great polarizing writers in modern theater: his admirers love the Engli…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:37PMThursday, December 1, 2011
UNAPPRECIATED MASTERPIECE OR ABJECT FAILURE? Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein began the Golden Era of Broadway with two musicals that reimagined the previous form of musical comedies �…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:55AMTuesday, November 15, 2011
AN ERROR IN COMEDY One of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, The Comedy of Errors, is also his shortest and most farcical. In fact, while scholars argue over the classification of other Bard wo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:30PMSaturday, November 12, 2011
QUEEN OF THE GYPSIES It’s a relief that Chita Rivera, one of the last great holdovers from the Golden Age of Broadway still performing today, told the audience in Costa Mesa that she doesn…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:49PMThursday, November 10, 2011
GET SOME FANNY There are many reasons to see the revival of Harold Rome’s 1954 musical Fanny at the Alex Theatre, but you only have one shot. Musical Theatre Guild (MTG), an Equity company…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:11AMWednesday, November 9, 2011
SITTING VIGIL FOR THE CENTER THEATRE GROUP, OR LIVING ON BORROWED THEATER Vigil, which was first done in Canada in 1995, is an oft-produced play, having been translated into 19 languages. At…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:50PMYOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN A trip to South Coast Rep is exactly what was needed to shake off the blues of this year’s morass of over-produced and/or over-written theater. The Trip to Bountiful,…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:36PMTuesday, November 8, 2011
FALL FLAT My extreme reluctance to recommend Next Fall should not necessarily deter you from seeing it. Stay with me here. Geoffrey Nauffts’ Tony-nominated play, which concerns a gay cou…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:32PMSaturday, November 5, 2011
MANAGEABLE HAIR Say what you will about Musical Theatre West’s fluffy season selections, including Winter Wonderettes, Forbidden Broadway and Spamalot, this company continues to collect an…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:37PMThursday, November 3, 2011
A BIGGER NOISE NEEDS TO BE MADE WITHIN A Noise Within (ANW), one of the nation’s leading classical repertory theatre companies, has done the unimaginable: after 19 seasons in a Masonic bui…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:49AMThursday, October 27, 2011
A COWARD IN PEACETIME [Undelivered letter to Noël Coward discovered in North Hollywood:] My Darling Noël: Sir Anthony here, writing to you from the palm-drenched regions of Los Angeles, wh…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:12PMTHIS FAIR IS JUST THAT: FAIR Science Fairs are an opportunity for students to apply scientific methods to an experiment and present them at a competition. The best way to take first prize fr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:46AMFriday, October 21, 2011
A BRIDEGROOM ROBBED OF ITS CHARM Anxiously anticipating The Robber Bridegroom at International City Theatre (ICT), I felt like an excited bride who had already slept with her soon-to-be husb…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:38PM‘TIS FOLLY TO OVERPRAISE FOLLIES The buzz in the lobby of Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) on opening night of Stephen Sondheim’s landmark 1971 musical Follies was palpable; people from…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:43PMMonday, October 17, 2011
TWO PLAYS IN ONE What is the purpose of theater? Some say that it is to reflect reality while being entertaining, enlightening, and/or educating. Yet when Shakespeare wrote that theatre is d…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:33PMSaturday, October 15, 2011
THE SHADOW OF A GREAT PLAY The birth of the Irish Republic occurred around Dublin in 1916. Aiming to end British rule, Irish Volunteers staged an insurrection known as the Easter Rising, a r…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:29PMTuesday, October 11, 2011
WHO IS TO SAY WHAT IS REAL? Tom Stoppard is the thinking person’s playwright. Ever since his breakout hit Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in 1967, the erudite scribe has been earmark…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:51PMWHAT WE FIND IN THE ATTIC IS A CASE OF THE CUTES It was a privilege to witness Snapshots: A Musical Scrapbook at Northlight Theatre, for this reviewer has never seen anything like it before.…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:37PMLITERATURE NOT MEANT TO BE STAGED Halfway through the first act of Brand at Red Tape theatre, it occurred to me that I had no idea what was going on. First of all, it can be argued that Henr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:19PMSaturday, October 8, 2011
THIS MUSICAL IS MURDER Dear Drury Lane Theatre: Since your production of Sweeney Todd is closing this week, please allow me to write a love letter to you for giving me the privilege of witne…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:12AMSunday, October 2, 2011
A PALE SHADE OF RED The closing stage picture in John Logan’s 2010 Tony-winning Red at the Goodman is about as thrilling and breathtaking as theatre gets: as Abstract Expressionist painter…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:29AMWednesday, September 28, 2011
FORGIVE AND FORGET The Amish people of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania taught the world a sobering lesson in 2006 when they instantly forgave the man who murdered five girls in their one-room sch…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:10PM 
