WHAT IS ART ANYWAY? What if you were an alcoholic ex-bartender who lived in a mobile home in a trailer park in Bakersfield that was furnished with junk bought from rummage sales and who foun…
OUR OWN PRIVATE GRAND GUIGNOL I hesitate to call anyone a genius on the basis of two productions, but if Sotto Voce alerted me to the unique talents of Zombie Joe, then Urban Death, the …
SPIDER-MAN 2.NO By now, you’ve probably read at least a portion if not all of the hoopla that surrounds Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark, originally helmed by book writer and director Jul…
TOO MUCH SUGAR ON THE DONUTS If Superior Donuts had come to us as a new American play by an unknown writer, we might have said that, despite a certain soft-headedness and the feeling that it…
THE SCHEHERAZADE OF POP CULTURE There are a thousand and one ways to tell a story. In Margo Veil, Len Jenkin, one of our most intriguing and often exasperating playwrights, becomes a modern …
FLEUR ELISE NOBLE: 2 DIMENSIONAL LIFE OF HER This is to installation art what NEVA is to theater: a sublime illustration of the form. Noble’s collage (of projected images, cut-outs, dr…
When a festival opens on as brilliantly shattering a note as the RADAR L.A. FESTIVAL did on Tuesday night with Neva, expectations for the rest of the festival run very high indeed. From Chil…
Editor’s note: Brewsie and Willie is currently running as part of the Radar L.A. Theater Festival. This review is reprinted from an earlier production of the show in July 2010.…
LEARNING TO FLY WITH BROKEN WINGS “Blackbird singing in the dead of night/Take these broken wings and learn to fly/All your life/You were only waiting for this moment to arise.”�…
GOING, GOING…GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN One of the pitfalls of being a theater reviewer in Los Angeles is that it is impossible to see more than the smallest amount of the cascade of plays…
WE OF LITTLE FAITH Kate Fodor's 100 Saints You Should Know is a mildly interesting play, given heft by its author's obviously sincere attempt to deal seriously with the nature of faith, but,…
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING BRIAN BEDFORD Lady Bracknell (arguably the greatest creation of Oscar Wilde’s surpassingly fertile comic imagination) is the aristocratic and imperious dowager …
PLENTY OF TALE " VERY LITTLE CITY The much-anticipated Tales of the City just opened at A.C.T. in San Francisco. Although the libretto (by Avenue Q's Jeff Whitty) splices together the first …
WHAT THE FUNK? When giving feedback at High School theatre competitions, adjudicators are reminded to encourage, not discourage young performers: negative criticism, however accurate, may da…
SHE MAKES IT LOOK EASY With Let Me Down Easy, Anna Deavere Smith's powerful, engrossing and resonant solo outing, you may feel inspired to have a meaningful conversation with friends and fam…
Our July 18, 1958 issue, from back before we existed.
THE EPIPHANIES THAT COME TO US AFTER BEING HIT IN THE HEAD BY A BASEBALL BAT Among the happiest of theatergoing experiences is entering the theater, without any expectations whatsoever, and,…
ONCE-A-WEEK Monday nights at 8:00 p.m. at the L.A. Gay and Lebian Center's Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Center (The Renberg Theatre): If you'd like to take a pleasant leisurely stro…
BY GEORGE, I THINK THEY'VE GOT IT; THE SCRIPT, HOWEVER… A friend of mine is an Alan Ayckbourn fanatic, owning dozens of the prolific playwright's scripts, yet he can count on one hand the …
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…
THE OBSESSIVE PURSUIT OF ARTISTS There are few things funnier than watching John Fleck, sweating and crazed, walk perilously close to the edge of a high cliff, teeter towards falling off, an…
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…
RECIPE FOR SUCCESS Here's a mouth-watering recipe for making people happy: 1) Take a great musical. (Kiss Me, Kate will do. If you need to ask why, then I'll tell you: It's both a wonderful …
HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY AND BECOME A STAR If you lose your way trying to navigate the Kafkaesque journey Fin Kennedy wants to take us on in his startlingly original and thematically dens…