HISTORY AS MYTHOLOGY AS ROCK AND ROLL Dan Dietz’s American Misfit is the kind of smart, provocative entertainment that stimulates the best part of an audience: its appreciation. As…
THE BLEEDING HEART OF DARKNESS Joseph Conrad's 1899 novel Heart of Darkness concerns an English ship captain’s journey to the Belgian Congo, and the revelatory effect of his encounter …
NOT YOUR RANK-AND-FILE PRODUCTION No getting around it: Robert Massey’s Rank is talky and familiar. Without a top-flight cast and director, this show could easily be lost in the va…
THE WILDE ACCORDING TO BURBANK By Los Angeles standards, Theatre Banshee’s The Importance of Being Earnest is pretty good. It’s a time-tested script; the actors know their li…
HOWLER Steve Yockey’s new play isn’t new, and it isn’t a play. The first contention first: Part of a new promotional concept of "rolling world premieres" designed specifica…
SMILE, AND SMILE, AND BE A VILLAIN Since civilization stopped executing them outright, the notorious have always had the fallback of a second act as freakshow attractions. From 1883 well…
GO GET LOST IN AUSTEN I drove to Jane Austen UnScripted directly from a production of Oklahoma! as grand and empty as the wind sweepin' down the plains. With a quarter of the cast of …
WAY TOO EARLY PLAYS Imagine you’d never heard of the Wooster Group, and that you knew nothing of the avant-garde theater’s storied history, or its origins in the downtown scene o…
AN IMPROVISED TRUTH Los Angeles-based Impro Theatre opens a run of Jane Austen: UnScripted on Valentine’s Day at the Pasadena Playhouse's Carrie Hamilton Theatre. Their most …
IN THE SHADOW OF STARS David Wiener’s ten-year-old, never-before-produced play Cassiopeia needs work. As usual at Boston Court, this experimental piece has received a production so…
AVOIDABLE MADNESS There’s a show running right now at a smaller venue of a state-of-the-art West Side arts complex. It’s a foreign import, a one-woman show that, in a differe…
CRACK YOUR CHEEKS By placing himself in the charge of his fickle children, old King Lear abandons the security of his own reason to wander an inhospitable wilderness. It’s a fittin…
VOLUBLE Once in my earnest youth I dogged a homeless man around lower Manhattan for a whole night, from his steady gig panhandling the car line into the Holland Tunnel through four hoursR…
PLEASE SIR, WE WANT SOME MORE SeaGlass Theatre only does one show a year, which is remarkable, since they’re such a spirited bunch. For instance, it’s a shame to miss Paul St…
A PRO-CHOICE ARGUMENT Michael Michetti’s staging of Kathryn Walat’s Creation will, I hope, long hold the record in my experience for Most Literal Production. This decidedly n…
LIKE THE LAST, AND THE ONE BEFORE THAT About twenty minutes into John Hurt’s solo performance Wednesday, the character Krapp’s voice on tape said, "Extraordinary silence tonight.…
AN OCTOBER UNSURPRISE Scott Zigler learned to direct theater from David Mamet, which is like having David Ortiz teach you how to pitch for the major leagues. A designated hitter thinks e…
OFF AND ON Once again, I talk to a troupe of foreign artists, and once again, apart from the art, there’s an utter lack of coherent understanding between their world and mine. It&#…
HAUNTED BY EXPOSITION Last October, Hollywood stuntman Jon Braver put up Delusion, a much-celebrated high-end haunted house. One of Mr. Braver’s purposes with this project, which h…
KIDS KILL THE DARNEDEST THINGS Much has been made recently of the physical and psychological dangers of bullying and hazing. Less is said of their value as a teaching element that makes …
UNDER MY SHOE If the comedy in Under My Skin were any more broad, it would require a wider stage than the one at the Pasadena Playhouse. If the play were any less funny, it would have to…
THIS RABBIT IS EARLY FOR ITS DATE Keliher Walsh’s new play, Year of the Rabbit, treats with respect and compassion the lives of three families wracked by war. The gravity of the te…
CHEKHOV’S GUN, SERLING’S CIGARETTE The most authentic and thoughtful staging of Anton Chekhov I’ve experienced in America didn’t use any Chekhov script you’ve r…
LIFE AS WE KNOW IT Mask work reduces the craft of acting to the essential elements of pose and gesture. That’s all you get when there are no words or facial expressions. Watchi…
WITH A LITTLE LOVE, THIS COULD BE GREAT The perfect show is like the happy marriage: you can go decades without seeing one. If the script is good, the lead actor is usually somebody̵…