Los Angeles

THE WORST OF THE BEST Let me say that I have no idea what I just saw. Clearly, some very clever folk have come up with the very clever idea to spoof a Fringe Festival, which Fringe Festivals certainly deserve. Two very silly and rarely believable hosts, played by Jacob Smith and Lauren Flans (the…

IT’S VERY CLEAR, FEINSTEIN IS HERE TO STAY No one can argue that Michael Feinstein has singlehandedly reinvigorated the American Songbook for the 21st century, but this beguiling raconteur is also a consummate showman who is so knowledgeable and adorable that you may just want to pinch his cheeks. This is why he is a…

THE HOLLYWOOD HILLS ARE ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF MAX AND ELSA Greetings my lovelies! Garrulous Greta here with some glorious news. You may remember not long ago I received a letter from a fan of The Sound of Music (and who isn’t in love with that glorious 1965 film?’”and if you aren’t we don’t…

THESE, OUR PLAYWRIGHTS Kinky Neon Rocker is one of those rally-round-the-flag excuses theater people use to put on shows: A beautiful old curved-wood rocking chair, painted in day-glo motley, features six times in six skits. Although six members of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights (ALAP) wrote a skit each, the writing is fairly consistent,…

MASTERFRINGE THEATRE When Barnaby Hughes reviewed a previous Magnum Opus production of Surf Dogs Unite  for Stage and Cinema, he wrote that the show “will leave you doubled over with laughter.” Even knowing my own writers, I somewhat doubted that clichéd statement. But last night, I saw the players take  an actual awful screenplay about misfit high…

MARRIED TO SONDHEIM When I first saw Marry Me A Little in the mid-1980s, it was a revelation. But not because of the story. This revue uses trunk songs of Stephen Sondheim, songs which–at that time–were relatively unknown (many have since been performed in the show they came from (Saturday Night) or at any given…

WHAT A DOG The term “Dog Days” refers to the hottest period of the year, the sultry part of summer when Sirius, the Dog Star, rises in unison with the sun. It’s a time marked by sluggishness. Opera is going through its own dog days in which the majority of new works I’ve seen are…

HITCHES IN EXECUTION In his latest one-hour act, Simon Coronel divides the world into three categories: people who want to know how a magic trick is done, people who don’t want to know, and people who don’t care. I’m in category two: I want the suspension of my disbelief to be total and continuous. I…

I WOULDN’T MOUSE IT FOR THE WORLD Saturday June 13 is one of those magic days for entertainment choices in Los Angeles. Along with theater, dance, opera, the L.A. Film Festival and the Hollywood Fringe Festival, classic film is represented across town in classic movie palaces. Chaplin’s masterpiece City Lights is showing at the beautiful…

HAROLD THE CONQUERING HERO Harold Pinter wasn’t an Ivory Tower practitioner who won a Nobel for writing twenty-nine shocking plays about morality and five or six books of rather precious poetry. He was a professional writer who also typed up (get my salts!) almost thirty movies, including some of the gold standard screenplays for literacy…

THE UNEXPECTED CUE Yasmina Reza is the most internationally popular playwright France has produced in a long time; certainly since Jean Genet, possibly since Molière. Her 1994 play Art, in which three friends debate the value of a white canvas, ran for eight years in London; when’s the last time Tartuffe did that? 2007’s adults-are-just-big-children…

THEATER OF WHAT THE FUCK As an impresario and creative force, the man who calls himself Zombie Joe is the envy of the North Hollywood arts scene. Largely on the remarkable popularity of Urban Death, its signature show now in the tenth incarnation since 2005, Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group operates year-round out of an…

RULIER THAN THOU I came to this show in a bad mood and left in a better one, which is as much praise as I can heap on a one-woman show about identity issues. There’s no theatrical fauna I want more sincerely to see on the endangered list, and none that looks less likely to…

THE CRAGS OF DELIVERANCE If bad reviews are the flattest line my pen can draw, a steppe of the imagination that writes its unsurprising self, a good review is the Caucasus. To critique Impro Theatre requires ice boots spiked with inked nibs. Frankly I’ve become fearful of seeing this company scale the heights of artistry,…

LIFE AS WE KNOW IT It was one of those magical evenings in the theater that shall live with me forever. When Kulunka Teatro’s André & Dorine appeared at the Los Angeles Theatre Center for only three performances back in September, 2012, I considered myself among the lucky few privileged enough to have witnessed such…