84 stories by "Ernest Kearney"
DEAD BLONDES TELL NO TALES " EXCEPT THIS ONE Conspiracy theories have surrounded the death of actress and restaurateur Thelma Todd since 1935, when her lifeless body was discovered in a gara…
WAITING FOR COWDOT Normally, a surfeit of hyphens in any production assures trouble ahead, but Aaron Francis, the writer-director-designer-producer of this subversive, potent indictment of t…
A KNOCK AT THE HEART With her staging of Dolores, Edward Allan Baker's two-woman drama about domestic violence, director Stephanie Feury"at the theatre that bears her name"has placed on disp…
OFFTIME Abi Watkinson's one-woman show 5:45 is a poor receptacle for a great deal of talent"one that feels underdeveloped and not fully thought through. The trouble starts with the title. A …
A TAIL OF LOVE ON A LEASH Playwright Benjamin Schwartz and director Natalie Nicole Dressel, in league with actors Callie Ott and Spencer Weitzel, have served up in Dog of Carnage one of the …
NOBODY LOVES A FAT GIRL (UNTIL SHE HAS A MIC) Laural Meade has treated the concept of the solo-bio show like an origami master, folding it over and out until it becomes something other than …
DÉJÀ LOUCHE Just to Be Close to You opens with an immaculately coiffed and mustachioed Cam Poter stepping before the packed audience at the Broadwater Studio as his alter ego, the re…
SOUNDCHECK FOR SURVIVAL "Aha…sure…uh-huh…yes…ummm…you say…." And so begins NO, dancer/actuation artist Annalisa Limardi's intriguing, minimalistic dissertation on the social pres…
PAGING DR. DRAMA, STAT! VITALS NOT STABLE Nursing Is My Life was a heart-breaker for me. Charley Karlotta has spent decades as a registered nurse, raising her family, and dreaming of one day…
NICAEA TRY Oh, Constantine! at the Zephyr Theatre is an odd nut to crack. Or I should say review. One of the best-produced shows at the Fringe, this is the brainchild of playwright / directo…
A DUPLEX THAT'S GOING TO THE DOGS Those who flocked to the "Sunshine State" during the population boom of the 1920s and '30s, were mostly "easterners" who had only known tenement living, cut…
A NEW MUSICAL HAS ARRIVED TO PUMP UP PATRONS FOR DECADES TO COME Allen Moyle's 1990 film Pump Up the Volume starred Christian Slater as Mark, a graceless, socially awkward high school studen…
PIPPIN GOES HOLLYWOOD Pippin, with music and lyrics supplied by Stephen Schwartz, and book penned by Roger O. Hirson (who was best known for writing the script to the war flick The B…
A MONODRAMA OF SHADOWS AND SHATTERED SANITY As part of an international procession"a dread march of artistry across borders"Mr. Stephen Smith did, for a grievously brief engagement, alight a…
FIRE AND BRIMSTONE FATIGUE One must admire Antony Zioni for his aspirations with Tales of the Ancient East, which, regrettably, makes the failure of this production all the more lamentable. …
A GAME OF HEARTS PLAYED FACE DOWN There is no question that Ann Noble is one of the most talented actresses gracing the stages of Los Angeles. There are moments in her bitter-sweet, two-pers…
ALL IN ONE AND ONE IN ALL With Except Myself at the Broadwater Black Box, playwright Drew Petriello has achieved a clever, slick, and absolutely entertaining deconstruction of the solo sh…
THE GOOD ANDREW BYRON CREATES A LONG AND WINDING RUSSIAN Andrew Byron frames his one man show The Good Russian within the historical context of 2018, when Sergei Skripal, a Russian expatr…
NOT ENOUGH HEAT The Second Coming of Joan of Arc is the best-known work of American playwright, author, and lesbian feminist Carolyn Gage. Loosely based, scholars will tell you, "very loosel…
SEA WORTHY Wilds of Sea is an undersea adventure that will leave little ones wide-eyed and utterly captivated. But make no mistake"this all-ages puppet spectacle is as enchanting for the gro…
 I always look forward to the shows of Shelley Cooper at the Hollywood Fringe. They are musical biographies of women who made history not only with their presence but with their voices a…
SQUEEZABLE THEATER Those dark days all seem so long ago. The face masks, drive-thru testing, fear of crowded indoor spaces, and some idiot assuring us, "It's going to disappear. One day " it…
Unlike his previous shows at The Hollywood Fringe " Spank the Monkey and Shagadelic: The Origins of Slang Words for Doing It " Michael Blaha has shed his stage persona of Professor Richar…
FEMINIST CLOWNS COLLIDE WITH CAPITOLISM Clownish perfection poses a unique problem for reviewers in that the blend of Da-Da slapstick and rib-tickling existentialism tends to defy easy descr…
TITANIC SINKS AGAIN Mallie McCown's madcap reimagining of Titanic, James Cameron's $220 million epic, is ambitious beyond words, which is the source for most of the problems that plague this…
