THEATER OF THE ADVENTUROUS I hadn't realized how deeply entrenched in my unconsciousness the Peter Pan legend was; that is, until I found myself, in the last minutes of the rousing and mirac…
BEYOND REALISM The living room and foyer of the modest house on 9th Street in the South Philadelphia of 1986, created by David Meyer, is as dank and dreary as social realism will allow. …
YOU’RE GONNA STAND UP… Sometimes in the theater, all you need are four chairs and four actors and a director who knows how to move them around so that everything they do is as natura…
BLOODY MASSACRE, DULL SONG As they march through (or are flung through) the doors of an abandoned slaughterhouse, their bodies bloodied, one wonders what battle zone of what war they have co…
POLITICS AS USUAL Given the nastiness of the recent Republican primary debates and a sense of even worse nastiness to come with the next election, it is no surprise that thoughts of reviving…
A TRIUMPHANT TRAINWRECK If you've never applauded a trainwreck, be prepared to do so when you see Peter Quilter's End of the Rainbow. I am not talking about the gossip-driven, hardly revelat…
WHICH AMERICAN IDIOT ARE YOU? If you know and love Green Day’s studio concept album on which it is based, American Idiot is the show for you. If, like me, you are a stranger to the …
MEMORIES OF SEAGULLS PAST If you have never seen The Seagull " though I can’t imagine a seasoned theatergoer who hasn’t, can you? " you just might possibly get an inkl…
THE GODOT WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR Samuel Beckett is a great comic playwright. You don’t believe me? Then run, don’t walk, to the Mark Taper Forum and see the blissfully funny and …
TWO MORE ONE-PERSON PLAYS AT THE SKYLIGHT Burke Byrnes’s The Yellow House (Fridays) and Harry Hart-Browne’s Special Delivery (Saturdays) both possess the virtues and weakne…
WILL THE REAL MOLLY IVINS PLEASE STAND UP? Molly Ivins was a ballsy Texas-based reporter who became a legend in her own time by calling a spade a spade (or, more succinctly, calling George W…
SING A SONG OF AFRICA Fela! is a scorcher. On these chilly nights in December and January, everyone (with a vested interest in the continuing power of musical theater) should retreat to the …
TELL US A STORY, AUNTIE CHARLAYNE If I were a child, I would want Auntie Charlayne to tuck me in and tell me a story. Why? Because Auntie Charlayne "Â that’s Charlayne Woodard "Â …
TWISTED LITTLE PASSIONS IN THE SUBURBS Now that A Noise Within "Â the Southern California repertory theater company dedicated to the classics " has gotten a snazzy new suburban theater in…
THE BLIND LEADING THE HALF BLIND “It’s The Devils meets Marat/Sade.” someone said to me. “Yes,” I responded. “As performed by the Marx Brothers!” We…
SHORT TAKES ON CURRENT LOS ANGELES THEATER AS IT WAS: As Is, written by William M. Hoffman in 1984, when so many of our contemporaries were dying of the AIDS epidemic, still maintains its po…
THEATER IN NEW YORK: THE ACTING’S THE THING (BROADWAY) You may go to see Relatively Speaking in the hope of seeing three bright comedies by some of our funniest comic writers – E…
AUTUMN THEATER IN NEW YORK:Â OFF BROADWAY, THE ACTING’S THE THING Acting is the main artery through which most of New York Theater travels. When a new season is announced, one looks…
OCCASIONALLY, WHEN WE’RE LUCKY, IT FLIES In Come Fly Away, there are at least four dances " "I've Got A Crush On You," "Body and Soul," "I Like To Lead When I Dance," and "Teach Me Ton…
THE TROUBLE WITH BHUTAN I am not advocating that bad directors should face a firing squad in the town square in full view of the entire community. But I have seen three plays now that were d…
WHAT’S COOKING IN HER KITCHEN? In the bracingly intelligent and potentially powerful Hermetically Sealed, playwright Kathryn Graf has set out to explore the ways in which families dece…
TENNESSEE W’S MASTER CLASS FOR ACTORS The New American Theatre production of Five Beauties (or, as it turned out to be at the performance I attended, Four Beauties) is not like going t…
DANCE MACABRE The Zombie Joe's Underground production of The Cask of Amontillado: Although there are only two performances left of this show, this is a piece that should be extended; if it i…
ON ONE’S VERY BEST POOR BEHAVIOR Ian is a monster. Oh, not your fire-eating dragon sort of monster. Quite possibly you’ve met this kind of monster yourself. He’s British; h…
PROSPERO IS UP TO HIS OLD TRICKS There seems to be a plan afoot at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group to give us The Complete Abridged Works of William Shakespeare, a project that …