6,591 stories from Stage and Cinema
SUSANNAH SOARS IN SAN FRANCISCO Susannah may be a tragedy, but the San Francisco Opera production is worthy of a hoedown celebration. This near-perfect production is one of the best oper…
A SORT OF JUDGMENT The Life and Sort of Death of Eric Argyle, Ross Dungan’s 2013 play about fate-after-death, is pleasantly eloquent and several times touching in a comforting way, but…
THE PERFECT COCK Whether breeding chickens or designing your kitchen with rooster tchotchkes, it can be challenging to find the perfect cock. But if you look to the theater, your search for …
A BIO-DRAMA THAT WORKS "Of course I care (what she thinks), I hate her," says a character in Lauren Gunderson's Bauer, a San Francisco Playhouse production about the German artist Rudolf Bau…
UNBURIED RED-HEADED STEPCHILD In the mid-1990s, Sam Shepard rewrote his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1978 play, Buried Child, for a new Steppenwolf production that director Gary Sinise dragged fro…
MAGICIANS OF THEATRICALITY Aaron Posner is on fire right now. His adaptations, My Name Is Asher Lev and Stupid Fucking Bird, are being produced all over the country, and his version of Sh…
DANIEL EZRALOW: WHAT IS DANCE? To say that Daniel Ezralow is a busy man this week is an understatement. After making a worldwide name for himself as a dancemaker and aerial choreographer for…
SMOKIN' The premise of Kim Davies' new play Smoke, that two strangers, a young man and woman, who independently come to the kitchen to have a cigarette while a friendly S&M sex party is …
PRAY FOR MIRACLES The "fall" in the title doesn't mean the season. Miracles in the Fall refers to the expulsion from Paradise, the epic fall that supposedly created original sin. Pursuing th…
BASTARDS OUT OF SWEDEN In 2012 the Scandinavian American Theater Company commissioned four playwrights to each write a sort of riff on Strindberg's Miss Julie. The result is the four short p…
NOT AS TRYING AS IT COULD HAVE BEEN A slight bio-drama is given heft by larger-than-life performances in this latest outing from International City Theatre in Long Beach. Trying is based on …
THE BACK STORY BEHIND MOBY DICK A thrilling feat that reclaims the past, The Whaleship Essex is sailor-playwright Joe Forbrich's detailed and driving reimagining of an 1820 tragedy that, 30 …
ONE IN A MILLION Rabid theatergoers who often attend plays are akin to miners panning for gold: The drudgery and disappointment from months of discovering rocks is dissipated when a precious…
FORD INTO PECKINPAH VIA THE CHICKEN HYMN I’m a big fan of John Ford and Howard Hawks; My Darling Clementine and Red River are apex achievements in Hollywood studio storytelling. But Fo…
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, MY DEAR WATSON A cardinal rule gets broken here: You can be funny or you can be scary–but try to be both and you're neither. You'll be this show. Deft at farce in Le…
DUEL NATURE In Trevor, recently produced by A Red Orchid Theatre, playwright Nick Jones delivered a sardonic and heavy-handed attack on dangerous animals kept as domestic pets. He wastes no …
FIRST PERSIAN PLURAL To see the oldest extant Greek tragedy performed sort-of as it was 2500 years ago, but excluding masks and including Anne Bogart’s affection for fabric and y…
REASONS TO BE CRITICAL Neil LaBute seems to have a penchant for ironic titles. His 2002 play The Mercy Seat was anything but merciful; LaBute described it as a "kind of emotional terrorism."…
MORE MEAT If you are one of the many theatergoers who caught Pacific Resident Theatre's production of Out There on Fried Meat Ridge Road (and possibly the special Christmas follow-up) during…
YOU CAN NEVER GO HOME"AGAIN Chaim Potok's 1972 novel My Name is Asher Lev is a coming-of-age story that pits one passion against another. It depicts the declaration of independence by a youn…
CUCKOO FOR COCOANUTS In its 79-year history, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has cycled through Shakespeare's canon three times. That's impressive. But here's a vote from this corner that th…
LOST IN SPECTACULAR SPACE It's easy to get lost during the world premiere production of A Wrinkle in Time, particularly if you're not familiar with the classic science fiction/fantasy novel …
LBJ'S RELEVANCY After premiering at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2012 and moving to American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Robert Schenkkan's All the Way became the hot ticket on Bro…
I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE OF LOS ANGELES BALLET Along with the film industry, one of Los Angeles' greatest entertainment assets is music. While theater, dance, opera, and other mediums continua…
A POWERFUL PLAY EVEN WITH A PLOT AS POINTLESS AS ITS PEOPLE With Ecstasy, now being revived at A Red Orchid Theatre, a new Chicago theater succeeds at first: Cole Theatre Company establishes…
