Jason Rohrer

IT’S JUST IT’S JUST SEX Cole Porter wrote sex comedies; Richard Brinsley Sheridan and William Shakespeare wrote them.   Michael Frayn wrote them.   Georges Feydeau and Arthur Schnitzler wrote them.   There’s nothing wrong with sex comedies.   A sex comedy can be very funny and therapeutic when it’s done right, and even when it’s done wrong, it…

ONE VERY, VERY SMALL STEP FOR DAMON CHUA Tony Gatto gets an A for effort, having mounted a colorful if unnecessarily literal production of a Damon Chua script that defies dramaturgy and good sense even as it embraces bad and even offensive conventions.   1969, billed as “a fantastical odyssey through the American mindscape,” feels more…

COMICAL, HISTORICAL, WHIMSICAL, “POP”ICAL If you like Shakespeare: go.   If you hate Shakespeare: go.   If you love or loathe Peter Cetera: go.   If you dislike ecstatic, adorable, hard-working mega-talents willing to entertain you by all of a thousand means at their disposal: go anyway; this show might just find your pulse. Two Gentlemen of Chicago…

BUT ONLY BY A THREAD During Connected, the 2011 dance piece from Australian company Chunky Move at the Luckman Theater in Los Angeles last week, a strip-club cat-call was heard from the audience when the performers removed portions of their costumes. With apologies to artistic director and choreographer Gideon Obarzanek for some hinterland denizens, the…

COMIC EPHEMERA In Tony Kushner’s adaptation of Pierre Corneille’s 1636 comedy L’Illusion Comique, the modern playwright has abandoned the contextual trappings that make the original at all interesting, in order to write for a contemporary audience.   The result, in Casey Stangl’s fleet staging, very slightly disguises shallow earnestness as light amusement.   It’s fun; it’s supposed…

BLACK AND WHITE AND GOOD ALL OVER A smart play is usually a provocative play, but a provocative play is rarely smart.   Many playwrights competent to stir controversy have neither the chops nor, sadly, the intention to say much of benefit except to their own notoriety; and really talented writers don’t always invest in the…

IMPRISONED BY ART Most literary intellectuals have as much business writing about life behind bars as incarcerated felons have teaching text analysis.   In the last few months, Los Angeles has hosted two plays written by playwrights who have spent time, and set stories, in prisons.   Miguel Pinero did his time as a thief and drug…

WHY DO WE HAVE WHY WE HAVE A BODY? Every few years a vanity project comes along so appalling that one’s jaw hangs open for its entire running time, saliva connecting the lower lip to the floor in a single unbroken strand.   The planets have to align very particularly for a travesty of this magnitude…

THRILLING HOPELESSNESS Go up into Gilead, and take balm, O virgin, the daughter of Egypt: in vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be cured. – Jeremiah 42:11. In 1964, Lanford Wilson wrote a play startling in its representation of a gritty present, and even more surprising now for its continued relevance.  …

ACTS OF CONSCIENCE All theater is inherently political, in that a story is only as objective as its teller.   But some plays go straight to the 24 hour news cycle definition of politics, addressing problems of international diplomacy divisive enough that only a stage may politely host them.   Sarah’s War, Valerie Dillman’s play enjoying its…

FANGS FOR THE MAMMARIES Carson Kreitzer’s 2003 play Slither conforms to a certain category of American text: the women’s empowerment monologue extravaganza.   Hallmarks of the genre include plotless, drama-free speeches of subjugation, delivered by female figures unfettered by character; a monologue format occasionally and inexplicably interrupted by thematically related scenes also lacking dramatic tension; and…

CHEATED OF FEATURE The joy of watching Shakespeare in performance largely depends on the ensemble’s ability to make sense of the language.   In this regard, Sacred Fools’ new Richard III succeeds, and before the intermission, it boasts the equally rare Shakespearean virtue of velocity.   But any staging of any play has responsibilities beyond diction and…

WARLIKE FROTTAGE The Porters of Hellsgate’s production of Shakespeare’s Trojan War essay, Troilus and Cressida, begins promisingly.   A shifting tableau establishes characters and relationships during the Prologue’s welcome, telling visually a story that might be hard to follow due to its many characters, plot lines, and changes of theme.   It’s too bad Charles Pasternak then…