Marc Wheeler

CAUGHT IN A TRAP Without spoiling, there’s only so much I can say about Deathtrap. Written by Ira Levin, this 1978 Tony-nominated play is an imperfect, though relatively delightful thriller now getting an even more imperfect, though relatively delightful production at International City Theatre in Long Beach. Best known for Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford…

A LUMINOUS NIGHT MUSIC I’m a little dizzy, bubbly’”not from any reception champagne, mind you, but from seeing my very first production of A Little Night Music. It’s left me floating. (The music, I confess, is still coursing through me; I hope they don’t ask for it back.) With its 20 cast members and 22-piece…

LOVELESS DISINFORMATION As I’m ushered into Antaeus Theatre Company’s mainstage theater at Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center in Glendale to see Love and Information, I’m invited (as evidenced by a freshly painted sign) to “embark on an exploration of meaning.” In the 90 painful minutes that follow, however, this promised “meaning”’”like Godot’”never shows….

THE SECRET’S OUT: THIS GARDEN’S IN BLOOM It’s been almost a year since Ahmanson Theatre ushered in spring with the national tour of Hadestown. This season (thank ye, Fates!), spring has come again with a lush new production of the 1991 Broadway musical The Secret Garden. Based on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 English children’s novel…

HELP WANTED AT THE LAPIN AGILE As I wrote last Sunday in my review of Sunday in the Park with George: “art isn’t easy.” Having just now seen Picasso at the Lapin Agile, I’ll add to that Sondheim quote: “’”especially comedy.” Opening last night at The Ruskin Group Theatre in Santa Monica, this 1993 comedy…

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE JUST GETS BETTER WITH TIME “Art isn’t easy,” sing the cast of players in Sunday in the Park with George; the words are most notably sung by the artist-protagonist himself — or perhaps, his creator. With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Sunday won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama…

WAITING TO EXHALE Getting its West Coast Premiere at the Geffen Playhouse’s mainstage Gil Cates Theater, The First Deep Breath, a 2019 play by Lee Edward Colston II, is an overstuffed family drama that left me wanting : less. Directed by Steve H. Broadnax III, this double-intermissioned, 3 hour and 45 minute play takes place…

CHEAP THRILLS WON’T LIFT YOUR SPIRIT You never forget your first. Mine happened in the West End of London in the year 2000. The Woman in Black (Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s gothic horror novel) marked the first time I was ever scared shitless in a theater. Not a movie theater, mind you: the…

THE ANACHRONISMIACS Poetry is all the rage in the madcap comedy, The Metromaniacs, David Ives’ 2015 English “translaptation” of La Métromanie (1738), an obscure French farce by Alexis Piron. While La Métromanie jocularly reflected the “poetry craze” of its era, Ives’ remake offers a modern lens in which to lovingly jeer that same 18th-century phenomenon….

CLASS ACT Nestled comfortably inside the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, Hershey Felder: Chopin in Paris is an enchanting “play with music” on the life of the renowned pianist and composer, Fryderyk Chopin. In the title role of this one-man show is Hershey Felder. Known for his biographical works on…

SAY “UNCLE!” Far be it from me to criticize Anton Chekhov. The long-deceased Russian playwright and short story writer is regarded as one of “The Greats” in all of literature; who am I to throw a dart at that great sky? It’s because of his prestige that I was actually looking forward to seeing a…

SKIN DEEP As I made my way through a gaggle of gay-listers to see “Los Angeles’s steamiest show” at the Hudson Theatre in Los Angeles, that’s when I saw it – yet missed it completely – right there on the play’s poster. The advert for Afterglow features three beautiful, bare-chested men holding each other in…

A BIG BAD-ASS WOOLF When Covid hit, I curled up one night, script in hand, poring over Edward Albee’s 60-year-old play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  Perhaps the daily death toll had me in need of comfort, and I knew good ol’ George and Martha could hold me in a doting embrace. If you’re familiar with…

M-I-C-K-E-Y (WHY-OH-WHY-OH-WHY?!) When I saw Lucas Hnath’s name attached to A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney – a boldly-titled play now getting its West Coast Premiere at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles – I jumped at the chance to review it. The playwright’s been on my radar…