1,397 stories by "Tony Frankel"
HOT AUGUST PLAY NEEDS EVEN MORE HEAT It was impossible not to have any expectations prior to The Old Globe's production of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize and Tony© Award-winning three-act bl…
IT'S NOT THE SIZE OF THE PLAY THAT MATTERS Say what you will about Voice Lessons, Justin Tanner's shockingly uproarious one-act play, now receiving an encore presentation at Sacred Fools The…
A CRITIC WHO RHYMES? IT'S A SIGN OF GOOD TIMES. I tell you, there's no place that I'd rather be in, than a theatre where actors become Jacobean. A classical company, Antaeus by name, has cre…
DISAPPEARANCE ACT After the opening night performance of Fin Kennedy's existential and enigmatic drama How To Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, someone remarked that, while film is ab…
MASTERS OF AUTOSCHEDIASM I was so blown away by Impro Theatre's Shakespeare Unscripted that I had to check out Unscripted Rep at the Odyssey, where the inimitable company is having fun in…
THE WILD, WILD BRECHTIAN WEST The Chinese Massacre (Annotated), Tom Jacobson's rousing new play, is like a fun day at Disneyland. Jacobson chronicles the 1871 lynching of 18 Chinese men by a…
A SHOW IN HOT WATER The Chance Theater is the best and most enterprising small theatre in Orange County; under the guidance of managing director Casey Long and co-founder and current artisti…
FOXY TROT There are three reasons to attend Burn the Floor " the heart-pounding Ballroom Dance Sextravaganza now throbbing and thumping on the boards at the Pantages: one, the sexiest bodies…
I SING THE THEATRE ELECTRIC Any mental notes I had regarding I Never Sang For My Father at The McCadden Place Theatre disappeared just after curtain call. I was haunted by thoughts of my own…
HOW THE HELL DO THEY DO IT? Ah, celebrity. If you think that the headlining of television stars in Broadway musicals is a new phenomenon, check out the action in the early 1960s: brassy redh…
THE ACTOR AND THE ARTIST: TWO MASTERS AT WORK AND PLAY What a joy it is to watch the Los Angeles Theatre Center roar back to life. Once considered a dodgy neighborhood, the Historic Core has…
WHAT AN ABSURD WEEKEND: EXISTENTIALISM 101 You're watching a play but you have no idea what's happening. There is no plot, the dialogue is gobbledygook, and characters are filled with despai…
NOT SO WILD ABOUT HARRY Real-life gay activist Harry Hay and the West Coast Premiere of The Temperamentals — a play based on his story — have much in common: fascinating but pecu…
THE PLAY'S NOT THE ONLY THING Reinterpreting the setting of Shakespeare's plays for modern audiences will always be a subject for debate: purists believe that a play's relevance lies in the …
AN EVENING OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSIVENESS It was one of those magical nights in the theatre: a confluence of activism, sterling talent, and magnificent playwriting, made all the more joyous …
SHOO SHOO BABY "How do you review The All Night Strut?" my theatre companion asked as we left The Colony Theatre. Well, you don't. This short Cabaret-style evening of songs (culled from the …
UNCOMMON GRACE In order to validate his experience of a play, a reviewer should dissect and probe the components of a production, but once in a while a show comes along which catapults the h…
TAKING JUKEBOX MUSICALS TO TASK Grab those love beads and tie-dye shirts, smoke a bowl, and head down to Long Beach to hear kick-ass songs from the 60s and 70s delivered with professional gu…
THE BOYS IN THE BOND Regarding his play bonded, black playwright Donald Jolly has said that he is trying to lay claim to his own place in this world by using tales of his enslaved ancestors …
SON OF A HORROR FLICK How lucky we Angelenos are that Re-Animatorâ„¢ The Musical a funny, campy, thoroughly entertaining gore-fest, opened here before splattering itself on legions of cu…
COWARD ON THE BEACH Noël Coward's oft-produced classic Private Lives is indeed, as one of his characters states, jagged with sophistication. The story is of a divorced, fiercely contentio…
AND THEN THERE WAS NUN 'Til Death Do Us Part: Late Night Catechism 3 is actually the fourth installment of Maripat Donovan's phenomenally successful series of one-woman shows (a fifth is due…
