Harvey Perr

MEMORIES OF SEAGULLS PAST If you have never seen  The Seagull –   though I can’t imagine a seasoned theatergoer who hasn’t, can you? –   you just might possibly get an inkling of what Anton Chekhov’s masterpiece should be in the Antaeus Company’s otherwise listless and tone-deaf production, which stubbornly refuses to illuminate the quirkiness of human…

THE GODOT WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR Samuel Beckett is a great comic playwright. You don’t believe me? Then run, don’t walk, to the Mark Taper Forum and see the blissfully funny and yet profoundly melancholy revival of Waiting For Godot. You will finally see what so many productions fail to get: that Estragon and Vladimir…

TWO MORE ONE-PERSON PLAYS AT THE SKYLIGHT Burke Byrnes’s  The Yellow House (Fridays) and Harry Hart-Browne’s  Special Delivery (Saturdays) both possess the virtues and weaknesses of one-person shows. Both have the bracing intelligence of their creators. Both are very well performed. Both are highly personal and yet avoid the narcissism that personal works are often guilty of….

THE CLYBOURNE CONNECTION There are two reasons to revive a play. One: to see if the play has retained its power over the years. And two: to look at the play afresh, with eyes that see now what we may not have seen when the play in question was first produced. The beauty of Phylicia…

WILL THE REAL MOLLY IVINS PLEASE STAND UP? Molly Ivins was a ballsy Texas-based reporter who became a legend in her own time by calling a spade a spade (or, more succinctly, calling George W. Bush a moron – even before he was President – and who added glorious insult to magnificent injury by saying…

TELL US A STORY, AUNTIE CHARLAYNE If I were a child, I would want Auntie Charlayne to tuck me in and tell me a story. Why? Because Auntie Charlayne –   that’s Charlayne Woodard –   just happens to be a great storyteller. She can get right in there, keeping you interested every step of the way,…

TWISTED LITTLE PASSIONS IN THE SUBURBS Now that A Noise Within –   the Southern California repertory theater company dedicated to the classics – has gotten a snazzy new suburban theater in Pasadena, guess what?   They are doing the same fair-to-middling work on their new stage as they did in their old space in Glendale. I…

THE BLIND LEADING THE HALF BLIND “It’s The Devils meets Marat/Sade.” someone said to me. “Yes,” I responded. “As performed by the Marx Brothers!” We were talking about the new Zombie Joe’s Underground show, Hosea Nova: A Jealous and Violent Man, Robert Riemer’s wacky baroque take on Hosea, the Biblical prophet of doom (where there’s…