A PRODUCTION FOR TUTTE TO COSÃŒ UP TO For those who think that the "semi-staging" for Così fan tutte, which opens on Friday at Disney Hall, is simply a world-class orchestra accompanyin…
COME HOME TO THE THEATER Statistics vary, but there were approximately 700,000 homeless Americans in 2013. While the government reports that figures are less drastic since the 2007 economic …
a poem about a play This critic, this poet this pinch faced sailor Blueblack eyes like wet rocks icy sharp nose like a dagger screams I AM A PLAGIARIST this poem MY poem paraphrased from act…
A ROAD TRIP YOU HAVE TO TAKE Some may not know this, but Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actor, ex-cowboy, and musician Sam Shepard is also an amazing short story writer. After reading Cr…
DAZZLING DOMINGO IN MASSENET’S MASTERPIECE What do world-renowned singers do once they have reached the age of retirement? On the strength of their name, they fill cabarets and concert…
THE OLD SONG-AND-DANCE Full of vitality, eagerness, and joie de vivre, the indefatigable, cheerful, and fast-talkin' showman Maurice Hines is offering a walk-down-memory-lane with song, big …
GOING WHERE NO FESTIVAL HAS GONE BEFORE Writer and actor David Dean Bottrell came up with a swell idea for Los Angeles"a science fiction theater festival. Consisting of two different program…
INTO THE WORDS For his production of Into the Woods, director T.J. Dawson notes that Stephen Sondheim's score is often revered as genius. "However, many of his incredible lyrics rush by most…
JUST DANCE I recently read an email from a dance mentor whose advice for performing was simply, "Let it all go and Dance, Motherfuckers!" I couldn't help but think back to the email as I wat…
29 IS THE NEW 19 "If you ever feel stuck in your life," Broadway, TV, and film heartthrob Jeremy Jordan told the adoring throng at his L.A. debut last night, "go back to your childhood and r…
OOPSY DAISY With enough comic personality to rival Fanny Brice, the droll, deft, dirty, daffy, derisive, delirious, and delightful Daisy Eagan, best-known for being the youngest female Tony …
NOT PREMEDITATED ENOUGH Despite playwright Evelina Fernández' ability to take clichéd problems about marriage and turn them into humorous complaints about men tossing underwear on the fl…
TIME IS RELATIVE FOR THE RELATIVES IN TIME J. B. Priestley's Time and the Conways is in some ways a creaky play, yet the production at The Old Globe is so lovingly directed, thrillingly acte…
DIM LIGHTS As part of its 17th Annual Pacific Playwrights Festival, South Coast Repertory presented a play by Adam Rapp. Unlike Theresa Rebeck's Zealot and Rajiv Joseph's Mr. Wolf, which rec…
WHAT DO YOU HAVE A TASTE FOR? Six weeks before the opening of Sacred Fools' cannibal play, one of Stage and Cinema's writers (to whom I will assign the alias "Ethel") asked if she could revi…
WATER IS THE GIFT OF LIFE Water by the Spoonful is the second play in Quiara Alegria Hudes' "Elliot Cycle," three stand-alone plays written over an eight-year period. Elliot, A Soldier's Fug…
DON'T PASS ONÂ PASSION When first I saw Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Passion on Broadway in 1994, it was clear that this shattering new work was like nothing that had come before. I…
THE DROWSY CHAPERONE OPENS AT THE NORRIS Before American Musical Theater was reinvented by Oklahoma! in 1943, musical comedies were constructed piecemeal"a comic star here, a songwriting tea…
GET SOME TALE In 1918, Igor Stravinsky and Swiss writer Ferdinand Ramuz wrote L’Histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) a short theatrical work meant to be "read, played, and dan…
UNBEREAVABLE Bekah Brunstetter's Be a Good Little Widow is awash with structural issues (ambiguous timeline, disconnected scenes), trite themes and relationships, and a refusal to penetrate …
WHICH GAME IS ON? With the 2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival set to begin in June, I decided to check out Fathers at a Game. I was curious to see why this 50-minute three-hander was being bille…
YOU'RE THE TOP, GIRLS For the most part, Joyce, a working class Englishwoman in Ipswich is not a sympathetic or likeable person: She is annoyed by her 16-year-old daughter Angie (who admitte…
TAYLOR-MADE When a visiting dance company plays Los Angeles, it usually offers pieces which cover both the old and the new. And so it is with Paul Taylor, who presented last weekend at the C…
EVERYTHING NEEDS A RETOUCH 30-year-old Jess is a mess. A New York-based dotcom genius, Jess is fraught with low self-esteem, making her an overweight, smelly, anti-social, stressed-out, aggr…
INVENTIVE MEMORY PLAY COULD USE JUST A BIT MORE MAGIC Inspired by the work of Johanna Cooper"a broadcaster who was commonly drawn to Jewish tales"Nicola Behrman, David Kersnar, Abbie Phillip…