SO MANY ATROCITIES IN ONE EVENING When stories appear which elucidate the carnage during WWII, many look to heaven and ask, "Why?" But the script and execution of Our Class, about a true-lif…
NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED Henrik Ibsen stated that he had no conscious thought of making propaganda with A Doll's House (1879). Yet many productions have a feminist bent: Nora is the misu…
BETWEEN IRAQ AND A HARD PLACE A soldier named Mario returns from Iraq just in time for the 2005 New Year's celebration with his East Los Angeles family, friends and novia " but he also retur…
MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL Although he wrote at least 15 complete operas, Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) is not a familiar name, even to many in the opera world. The first-generation modernist…
FOOD FIGHT Using Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children (1939) as a template, writer Peter Howard has created a wartime tale about the need to survive in challenging times. But the war isn…
EVERYBODY HAS A BALL AT THIS CINDERELLA Gioachino Rossini's Cinderella (La Cenerentola) was written in 1817 during the bel canto era when operas were written to showcase beautiful singing, b…
NETHER NOR Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, right? Not anymore. It's fascinating that the World English Dictionary defines reality as "the state of things as they are o…
HAVING ISSUES WITH ISSUES Ken LaZebnik's On the Spectrum, which opened last week at the Fountain Theatre, belongs to a genre known as Theatre of Identity, aka Social Issues Theatre; the idea…
NOT WORTH THE WEIGHT The title of Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale refers to three things. The first is Charlie, a homebound, 600-pound tutor who instructs online classes in expository writing. …
L. A. THEATER RISES FROM THE DEAD With an assemblage of the bravest actors in Los Angeles, Zombie Joe returns with an all-new Urban Death, the naturalistic horror show in the style of Le Th�…
THE TROUBLE WITH THE TROUBLE WITH WORDS In 2011, I stumbled upon a refreshing new composer at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. The extraordinarily encouraging work in Gregory Nabours' song cyc…
GAY ABSTRACTION For years, Ken Roht has proved himself to be one of the most inventive theater practitioners in Los Angeles. His avant garde works include the renown 99 Cent Only shows, whic…
WHAT WERE JEW THINKING? Baby boomers should recall the time when a great comedy album could be played with regularity. Some of my favorites were Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow…Right…
THE CORN IS HIGH INDEED Messrs. Rodgers and Hammerstein reinvented American Musical Theater for the ages when they created Oklahoma! in 1943, incorporating song and dance to tell their story…
ON THE WAY TO PARADISE There is a telling item buried among the bric-a-brac of Stephanie Kerley Schwartz' detailed country set of an economically depressed, coal-mining, hillbilly burg named…
MUSICAL WITH A CHECKERED PAST GETS A CHECKERED PRODUCTION Chess, the musical about two chess tournaments between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War, is the 1979 brain child of lyr…
A SIZE THAT DOES NOT FIT ALL Of the three plays which constitute Tarell Alvin McCraney's "The Brother/Sister Plays," The Brothers Size, now playing at The Old Globe, is the most intimate and…
THE DRAG QUEEN TO DRAG YOUR THOUGHTS AWAY FROM YOUR TROUBLES I first saw Coco Peru perform in a B movie sendup " a campy romp called Blood Orgy of the Carnival Queens! But at New York's O…
THE RITE OF JOFFREY One hundred years ago, a new ballet took place in Paris’ Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. This highly controversial work " for both its music and choreography "…
A CIRCUS BUT NO BREAD The theater space is a cavernous church gym with lousy acoustics. The intrepid thespians at Red Tape Theatre transform it into the title setting, an arena of death with…
GOTHIC OPERA You will notice in the first five paragraphs of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" that the storyteller's description of an ancient decomposing castle, surrounde…
THE ACTORS’ GANG’S TARTUFFE RETURNS FOR THREE NIGHTS BEFORE NATIONAL TOUR The Actors' Gang, the critically acclaimed Los Angeles based ensemble theatre company, will present high…
PETER PAN AND CATHY RIGBY HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON: THEY WON'T GROW UP When the musical fantasy adaptation of James M. Barrie's Peter Pan landed on Broadway in 1954, it received rave reviews…
Sometimes in life, it's the last Christmas present we open that makes up for all the lousy ones we unwrapped before. In what is truly the most dismal season of holiday-themed shows, I…
LET’S BE FRANK The dictionary has two main definitions for the word "bash": One is "a thoroughly enjoyable, lively party," which is undoubtedly what the producers of Christmas My Way "…