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Sarah Taylor Ellis
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Los Angeles Theater Review: LA CAGE AUX FOLLES (Pantages Theater in Hollywood)
COME FOR GEORGE HAMILTON, STAY FOR CHRISTOPHER SIEBER The national tour of La Cage aux Folles leaves its audience basking in the warm afterglow of a delightful musical comedy. As an enthused audience member behind me exclaimed at intermission, “I want to live inside this show!” – and no wonder. The Broadway revival of this…
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Regional Theater Review: MR. BURNS, A POST-ELECTRIC PLAY (Woolly Mammoth in D.C.)
I WILL SURVIVE In the opening act of Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play, a group of campers sits by the warm glow of a trashcan fire and tries to retell a favorite episode of The Simpsons. Matt (the ever-energetic Steve Rosen) recalls and reperforms “Cape Feare” with entertaining accuracy. Maria (Jenna Sokolowski) and Jenny (Kimberly…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: LOLPERA (Hudson Theatre/Hollywood Fringe Festival)
FINDING CHEEZBURGER AT THE THEATER In a not-too-distant dystopian future in which lolcats are humans’ only form of communication, the epic LOLPERA – a lolcat pop opera – links our memes into a new religion for the Internet age. Ellen Warkentine and Andrew Pedroza’s inspired new work manages to provoke, disturb, and endlessly entertain. The LOLs echo…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE LIGHTS ARE OFF (Underground Theatre/Hollywood Fringe Festival)
A WELCOME MATT In Matt Soson’s new dark comedy The Lights Are Off, a college dorm room becomes a hotbed of sex, violence, drug dealing, and explorations of identity. The play centers on roommates grappling with competing moral codes. Bad boy Burnt, played by a gripping Mikey Hawley, battles with his uptight Christian roommate Randy,…
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Off Broadway Theater Review: LOST IN YONKERS (The Beckett Theatre/Theatre Row)
SIMON’S LOST IS FOUND The disappointing turnout for The Neil Simon Plays on Broadway in 2009 suggested that Neil Simon’s style of dysfunctional family comedy, a mainstay of The Great White Way, was suddenly passé. Brighton Beach Memoirs barely drew an audience, closing within two months, and the planned companion production of Broadway Bound never…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE WOMAN IN THE WALL (Masonic Lodge in Culver City)
“IF I AM DEAD TO LIFE, WHAT AM I ALIVE TO?” In The Woman in the Wall, Overtone Industries reinvents a tradition of medieval mystery plays in a stunning new chamber opera about a 14th century Anchoress, voluntarily confined for a life of solitary religious study. This entrancing performance takes the audience on a spiritual journey…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: O(H) (casebolt and smith)
NOT YOUR ORDINARY EVENING OF DANCE Liz Casebolt and Joel Smith’s long-term friendship shapes their every move as a duo dance company. Such a partnership between a straight woman and gay man is not unusual in the dance world. Self-conscious acknowledgement of it in a performance is. Yet fessing up to the friendship that sustains…
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Off Broadway Theater Review: KISSING SID JAMES (Brits Off Broadway at 59E59)
THE SOUND OF TWO BRITS KISSING Stationary sales executive Eddie and sexy casino worker Crystal fumble through their first weekend trip together in Robert Farquhar’s Kissing Sid James. This playful Brits Off Broadway production at 59E59 offers an endearingly awkward portrait of lonely longing and misfit romance. In an uncomfortable phone conversation that opens the…
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Off Broadway Theater Review: APOLOGIES (AND OTHER GREY AREAS) (The Paper Industry)
OUR APOLOGIES FOR TELLING YOU TOO LATE Something is happening in New York theater. With their latest “ugly opera” Apologies (And Other Grey Areas), The Paper Industry explores the uncertainty of beginnings and the possibilities of the present through a compelling combination of design, music, and movement: a thrilling theatrical excavation of Schrödinger and Heisenberg’s…
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Off Broadway Theater Review: THE MYTHS WE NEED – OR – HOW TO BEGIN (Purple Rep)
ONE OF MANY GENESIS STORIES TO COME Creating a fresh twist on the Biblical tale of Adam and Eve is no small feat. Unfortunately, Larry Kunofsky’s The Myths We Need – or – How to Begin stumbles about with 1920s flare, but with little original insight into what makes us human. Kunofsky casts Adam and…
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LA/National Tour Theater Review: BRING IT ON: THE MUSICAL (Ahmanson Theatre)
PREPPY IS THE NEW SUBVERSIVE When the development of Bring It On: The Musical was announced, I rolled my eyes. The commercial viability of yet another mediocre movie-to-musical had lured Tony Award-winning talent from three refreshingly original musicals: In the Heights, Next to Normal, and Avenue Q. I doubted whether director/choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, librettist Jeff…
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Los Angeles Stage & Cinema Review: THE LORD OF THE RINGS IN CONCERT: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (Honda Center)
EPIC SOUND The mark of a great film score is often its paradoxical “inaudibility;” music is in service of the story, and the visual tends to dominate. In The Lord of the Rings in Concert: The Fellowship of the Ring, however, Howard Shore’s Academy Award-winning score is deservingly foregrounded. On October 15, the majestic first…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE DINOSAUR WITHIN (The Theatre @ Boston Court)
ACCESS YOUR INNER DINOSAUR The Dinosaur Within digs up some curious storylines, but these fragments fail to cohere into a compelling narrative. In its West Coast premiere at Boston Court, John Walch’s play flounders in a fossil-filled fiasco. Walch aims to cut across the densely-sedimented layers of time in a drama of mourning and loss,…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: I’VE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY (The Rude Mechs)
A WILD WEST PARTY IN CULVER CITY The Rude Mechs’ I’ve Never Been So Happy works overtime to please. This Western extravaganza spills into the Kirk Douglas Theater’s lobby for an interactive romp before and after the show, as well as during an extended intermission. Audience members who embrace the Frito pies and margaritas, the…
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Off Broadway Theater Review: SEPTIMUS & CLARISSA (Ripe Time)
WHO’S AFRAID OF ADAPTING VIRGINIA WOOLF? Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway beautifully intertwines the inner and outer worlds of her characters, seamlessly sweeping from description to dialogue, from one character’s consciousness to another’s, from the past to the present. Ripe Time physicalizes not only the narrative of Woolf’s post-WWI classic, but her evocative style in the…
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Off Broadway Theater Review: DUBLIN BY LAMPLIGHT (Inis Nua Theatre)
SHINES BRIGHT BUT GOES DIM In Michael West’s Dublin by Lamplight, a community theater’s idealistic mission to establish an “Irish National Theatre of Ireland” crosses commedia style with the grim poverty of the nation in 1904, making for a decidedly mixed evening’s entertainment. Philadelphia-based Inis Nua Theatre brings spectacular life to the stock characters of…
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Off-Broadway Review: ARIAS WITH A TWIST (Abrons Arts)
THE ETERNALLY UNMISSABLE SHOW An alluring voice reverberates across the intimate, pitch black theater. This sultry sound is the product of a mysterious Z chromosome, the audience is informed, rather than the usual Xs and Ys that define a body as male or female. This voice belongs to none other than legendary drag diva Joey…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: WHAT’S WRONG WITH ANGRY? (Celebration Theatre)
WHAT’S WRONG? IT’S ALL RIGHT In thousands of YouTube videos, out-and-proud adults tell marginalized queer youth that life will get better. Yet the “It Gets Better” campaign advocates for a rather troublesome passivity. Hopes are pinned on an ambiguous future, and the question of exactly how things will get better remains unanswered. In a stunning…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: WHAT THE MOON SAW, OR “I ONLY APPEAR TO BE DEAD–” (Son of Semele)
A NEARLY MAGICAL EVENING News reporters ask one passerby after another, “Where were you when the Moon fell?” Yet the Moon has not fallen. She perches on a white chiffon-covered platform, plunking out a minor-key refrain on her accordion and singing a plaintive tune that begs those below to recognize her. The shining Moon is…
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LA Theater Review: THE COMEDY OF ERRORS (Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble)
A COMEDY OF EXCELLENCE Cue the epic battle underscoring, full orchestra and chorus. A lanky gaoler lopes onstage, indicates a prisoner’s head, clumsily hoists an ax from the prop box, and – after a few awkward missteps – finally manages to split a watermelon rolling about on the ground. Triumph! Shakespeare’s stage directions for this…
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