Jason Rohrer

AN OCTOBER UNSURPRISE Scott Zigler learned to direct theater from David Mamet, which is like having David Ortiz teach you how to pitch for the major leagues.   A designated hitter thinks every pitch should come right over the plate, and may be excused for only paying attention to the elements of the game that concern…

OFF AND ON Once again, I talk to a troupe of foreign artists, and once again, apart from the art, there’s an utter lack of coherent understanding between their world and mine.   It’s especially funny since so many Americans claim to believe that we’re the least sophisticated and least cross-culturally educated of the industrialized nations.  …

HAUNTED BY EXPOSITION Last October, Hollywood stuntman Jon Braver put up Delusion, a much-celebrated high-end haunted house.   One of Mr. Braver’s purposes with this project, which he wrote, directed, and produced, was to correct what he saw as a tired tendency toward “jump-out-of-the-corner” type scares in the haunted houses he visited.   He added narrative to…

KIDS KILL THE DARNEDEST THINGS Much has been made recently of the physical and psychological dangers of bullying and hazing.   Less is said of their value as a teaching element that makes new members useful to a smooth-running society.   Zero-tolerance policies are frequently abhorred by artistic and creative personalities (who appreciate the value of experimentation…

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 wear a black armband.   But it is well-intentioned, and so this blithely degrading show cannot be despised…

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 text and the production illustrate the sober care the author and her director, James Eckhouse, have taken in telling this harrowing story.   But…

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 read or seen performed or ever will see.   This Impro Theatre one-night-only production of Serfs in the Field was improvised over two acts’ relaxed mastery, nimbly directed, sublimely performed, and – I…

WESTSIDE CONNECTIONS INTEROFFICE MEMO from: Office of Setting Things Up to: Offices of no names; we’re all friends here re: the other night at the Broad We want to start by thanking you all for your hard work, your good work.   You are appreciated.   As you know, we’ve had our first Music & Story event…

WITH A LITTLE LOVE, THIS COULD BE GREAT The perfect show is like the happy marriage: you can go decades without seeing one.   If the script is good, the lead actor is usually somebody’s cousin, or the director doesn’t understand the material; a great production almost never has a great script.   And so on.   Eclectic…

A MOUTHFUL OF SAND Kiff Scholl’s production of Raymond King Shurtz’s new play, Under the Desert, is a show that’s impossible to discuss without equivocation.   It’s not terrible, and there are good things in it, but I’m not happy I saw it. When one sets a two-character play in a greasy spoon in the desert,…

SOUR SATURDAY A troubled production is a sad spectacle, especially at a venerable theater that does some fine work.   PRT’s new staging of the John Steinbeck novel Sweet Thursday tries hard, and that it fails to coalesce does not negate the good stuff that makes up the mess.   It does, however, make for a dull…

A GOGOL BORDELLO In adapting Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 comedy The Government Inspector (also known, in direct translation, as The Inspector General) for a modern idiom, Oded Gross has taken a work of enduring satire and made of it an instantly dated parody of 2011.   The original stands outside nation, era, or political alignment as an…

SMART FOOLERY A young-audience offshoot of the Troubadour Theater Company, the Funky Punks seem dedicated to kiboshing the notion that a clown’s function is to scare children.   At the hour of comic tumbling, dance, acrobatics and puppetry I attended, the only child who cried was merely afraid of being dragged onstage.   In fact, except for…