G. Bruce Smith

ORLANDERSMITH CAN SEE  FOREVER There is a timeless quality to stories about families, particularly families riddled with alcoholism, drug addiction, bitterness, hatred, sadness, and lost dreams. Whether in the canon of literature (O’Neill anyone?) or through personal experience held close to a shamed soul, these tales have a “forever” quality. Which brings us to Forever, Dael…

HAS THE BLOOM WORN OFF THE LILY, OR IS IT ME? Dear Lily: I’ve adored you ever since you burst into my consciousness – and the nation’s – way back in 1969 on Laugh-In. Who could forget your Ernestine, the irascible telephone operator? Your Edith Ann, the precocious and deep-voiced 6-year-old? Your weirdly insightful homeless…

COME BACK TO A NOISE WITHIN The current production of Come Back, Little Sheba at Pasadena’s A Noise Within proves that William Inge’s breakout 1950 Broadway hit is still relevant today. The Tony Award-winning play (for actors Shirley Booth and Sidney Blackmer), later made into an Oscar-winning film, follows a middle-aged couple, Lola and Doc,…

GAY BOYS AND INDIANS A Nice Indian Boy, currently enjoying its world premiere production at East West Players, is a charming little comedy about love, marriage, culture clash and the shifting tides of public acceptance of gays. It would be a much stronger piece if the stakes for the protagonists were ratcheted up and if…

A BLESSING FROM BLESSING Playwright Lee Blessing has done a gutsy thing. He puts himself in the head and heart of the mother of a ruthless African dictator who murders and tortures his compatriots with horrifying abandon. Though supremely talented, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Blessing is, after all, a white American far from the horrors that…

BELOW THE FOLD Above the Fold, a new play making its debut at the Pasadena Playhouse, has two major flaws that result in an evening of uninspired theater: both a lack of credibility and compelling dramatic action. Written by former The New York Times reporter-turned-playwright Bernard Weinraub, Above the Fold follows a journalist from a…

MOUSE TRAP Flowers for Algernon has had many incarnations since it was first published as a short story in 1959 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: a novel, a telecast, a film (which won an Oscar for actor Cliff Robertson) and a Broadway musical. At its heart, the story is a moving account…

THE X FACTOR How many times have we mused that we would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when ___________? That’s exactly what playwright Kemp Powers has done in his One Night in Miami…, the world premiere of which is currently on at Rogue Machine. Taking a real gathering of four…