6,591 stories from Stage and Cinema
NEITHER WILLIAMS OR THE GOODMAN AT THEIR BEST Sweet Bird of Youth is not top drawer Tennessee Williams. The play has some of Williams’ lyricism and humor, and at least one sharply etch…
HOW LOVE DIES: TWO VERSIONS Brian Friel's excellent 1968 play Lovers is actually two separate plays with similar themes and settings. Both take place in a small town in Ireland in the mid 19…
HAUNTING HOWLS Rose Afratian harbors a dark secret. This wiry old woman's shoulders are hunched and her eyes are sunken from ninety-one years of hell on earth, living with a sin she dare not…
INTO THEÂ WOODY American folksinger/composer/political activist Woody Guthrie lived during the Great Depression of the 1930's and the turbulent wartime and postwar years of the 1940's. In …
NEW MUSICAL TOO LUKEWARM TO PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO IT Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing "exclusion zones" which effectively allowed fo…
GOOD PEOPLE; GREAT PLAY; AMAZING PRODUCTION David Lindsay-Abaire's Good People is a wonderful play receiving a terrific production at the Steppenwolf Theatre and headed by a magnificent perf…
NOTHING WILD, EXCEPT… Tess Frazer gives a stellar performance as Willie in Tennessee Williams' This Property is Condemned, a play about an orphaned girl living alone in her family's di…
WILL THE REAL AMERICANS PLEASE STAND UP? I was on a road trip in 2007 seeking to explore the plethora of National Parks that we, the American people, own. While heading through Des Moines, I…
“YOUNG. SEXY. NEW. AND FULL OF LIFE.” Gob Squad's Kitchen, playing at REDCAT through Sunday, is an exquisite, provocative piece of experimental, experiential theatre. The perform…
MORE POLEMIC BARK THAN EMOTIONAL BITE IN THIS NORMAL HEART Some eyes will be misty, some guts will be wrenched, and some souls will be startled after attending Larry Kramer's seminal play Th…
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…
A BIG KNIFE THAT ISN’T VERY SHARP Clifford Odets is justly famed for his agit-prop Depression-era New York-based protest plays (Waiting for Lefty, Awake and Sing!, Golden Boy), but The…
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…
THEATRICAL ADVOCACY, THE GOOD KIND The Exonerated is theater as activism and proud of it, so it's difficult to speak about it from a purely artistic perspective as mixing art and politics ca…
THIS ISN’T GREAT THEATER, BUT IT’S TERRIFIC NOSTALGIA The American novelist Peter De Vries once wrote that nostalgia isn't what it used to be. Maybe he would have modified his ob…
FORBIDDEN BETTER THAN BROADWAY Musical theater fans, rejoice! Forbidden Broadway is back " Alive & Kicking! " with a raucous new romp through the current theatrical season. This off-Broa…
THREE DEGREES OF SEPARATION A woman asks for a martini in a highball glass and accuses her husband of peeing in the sink… again. He doesn't cop to it, but doesn't deny it. The couple seems…
BLAND MEAT COOKED WELL IN THE SPITFIRE GRILL Boho Theatre's rendition of James Valcq and Fred Alley's simple musical The Spitfire Grill demonstrates the redemptive power of acceptance, forgi…
COLLECTED STORIES: A SNOOZE INDUCING Â ”WRITE” OF PASSAGE As a critic I hope for one of two things: either a production is fantastic or, to be blunt, it sucks. For me at least,…
LIFE IN THE KITCHEN Suicide is no laughing matter. No laughing matter, that is, until someone tries to commit it repeatedly in a room full of oblivious friends. Then it's hilarious. …
LOTS OF LEVELS TO PLAY WITH If you tend to like plays with concrete storylines, well-defined goals, and a balance of symbolism integrated into reality, you may find The Custom-Made Theatr…
THE DANE'S THE THING The oft-produced Hamlet demands countless choices by a director and Michael Halberstam has met all the challenges; instead of overloading the evening with grandiose dire…
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…
SEE SCAPE A wonderfully questioning work from 1975, Edward Albee's whimsical, Pulitzer-winning domestic drama literally reflects our world as seen by diametrical couples. Seascape meets land…
SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL HAS ARRIVED Daniel Serrano's Roma al final de la VÃa (Rome at the End of the Line) is a highly recommended diamond-in-the-rough, and the 24th Street Theatre presents i…
