Tony Frankel

A SHOW IN HOT WATER The Chance Theater is the best and most enterprising small theatre in Orange County; under the guidance of managing director Casey Long and co-founder and current artistic director Oanh Nguyen, the Chance produces new, challenging, and rarely seen works with astounding professionalism. Nguyen brings a brilliant interpretation to the shows…

THE ACTOR AND THE ARTIST: TWO MASTERS AT WORK AND PLAY What a joy it is to watch the Los Angeles Theatre Center roar back to life. Once considered a dodgy neighborhood, the Historic Core has become the center of downtown’s magnificent gentrification. The area is now a haven of lofts, art galleries and restaurants;…

WHAT AN ABSURD TIME: EXISTENTIALISM 101 & THEATRE OF THE ABSURD You’re watching a play but you have no idea what’s happening. There is no plot, the dialogue is gobbledygook, and characters are filled with despair, yet you are told that this is Theatre of the Absurd, one of the milestones in modern drama. Still…

THE PLAY’S NOT THE ONLY THING Reinterpreting the setting of Shakespeare’s plays for modern audiences will always be a subject for debate: purists believe that a play’s relevance lies in the time in which it was written; modernists believe that updating the visuals helps a contemporary audience connect to the Romantic language; still, others may…

SHOO SHOO BABY “How do you review The All Night Strut?†my theatre companion asked as we left The Colony Theatre. Well, you don’t. This short Cabaret-style evening of songs (culled from the Swinging Years) has no plot, no skits, no set changes, no characters, and no reality – it’s a superficial stab at recreating…

UNCOMMON GRACE In order to validate his experience of a play, a reviewer should dissect and probe the components of a production, but once in a while a show comes along which catapults the human spirit to near nirvana. Such an outing dictates more than mere analysis – it requires a plea for your attendance….

TAKING JUKEBOX MUSICALS TO TASK Grab those love beads and tie-dye shirts, smoke a bowl, and head down to Long Beach to hear kick-ass songs from the 60s and 70s delivered with professional gusto – songs which take you back to your early years when’¦wait, that’s too simple. Okay, how about this? In Summer of…

SON OF A HORROR FLICK How lucky we Angelenos are that Re-Animatorâ„¢ The Musical a funny, campy, thoroughly entertaining gore-fest, opened here before splattering itself on legions of cult-loving audiences around the country. Horror fans will love the grisly story, theatre fans will prick up their ears to an exciting composer/lyricist, and cultists will love…

COWARD ON THE BEACH Noël Coward’s oft-produced classic Private Lives is indeed, as one of his characters states, jagged with sophistication. The story is of a divorced, fiercely contentious, and veddy British couple who, having reconnected on the honeymoon night of their new marriages, run off with each other to Paris, abandoning their respective spouses….