Los Angeles

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…

AN ABUNDANCE OF DANZA In 1994, Tania Pérez-Salas founded Compaí±í­a de Danza in Mexico City. Since then, her company has become unrivaled in the arena of Mexican contemporary dance, and Pérez-Salas has not only proven herself to be Mexico’s premiere contemporary choreographer, but her troupe has made many global appearances. Thanks to Glorya Kaufman Presents…

MUSICALS LIKE THIS OCCUR  ONCE EVERY 100 YEARS In 1947, when Brigadoon confirmed the mutual genius of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, timing was everything: A second global conflict had just ended, leaving in its wake postwar angst and searing doubts that the millions of deaths had made no difference. Hoping that faith could move…

IN HARLEM’S WAY We never meet the titular Our Lady of 121st Street, a no-nonsense New York nun who had a profound effect on the characters in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s 2003 play. Nor do we meet, as it were, the plot. At rise, a middle-aged boxer shorts-wearing white man’”his suit is conspicuously missing the pants’”stands…

LUMBER Workshopped once onstage in 2000, Stephen Fechter’s The Woodsman had its play form set aside while Fechter and director Nicole Kassell turned it into a screenplay that won the 2001 Slamdance screenwriting competition. The 2004 film was about as good as most movies starring Kevin Bacon, whose luck cruelly runs out every time he…

THE SUM OF THESE Pí„RTS It really was a bit of a revelation. I was always interested in choral music, from Barbershop four-part harmonies to the more intricate passages of Tallis, but I distinctly remember the thrill when first I heard the work of the modern Estonian composer Arvo Pårt. A friend popped a cassette…

COMMERCIAL WITHOUT COMMERCIALS Imagine if the ‘70s sitcom Good Times did not hit TV until 2007. Now imagine a 3-episode arc about the coming out of a black man who brings his white boyfriend home for his brother’s wedding. Toss into the racial and gay humor some dysfunctional family drama revelations and old-fashioned sight gags,…

THE LATEST FASHION Since its founding in 2004, Vs. Theatre Company has upped the ante for storefront theater in Los Angeles, offering both original works and LA premieres with the kind of love and professionalism I associate with Chicago theater (the best in the nation). Among Vs.’s productions are In Arabia We’d All Be Kings,…

GO FACE THE MUSIC+DANCE Assuredly, Artistic Director Lincoln Jones’ American Contemporary Ballet (ACB) has become the go-to organization for thrilling dance in Los Angeles. Along with his muse Theresa Farrell (ACB’s associate director), Jones offers two programs that are always accompanied by live music. The polished technique of the company’s dancers combined with highly original…

MOVIES THE WAY THEY WERE MEANT TO BE SEEN 28 years ago, a handful of volunteers from The Los Angeles Conservancy, a nonprofit that recognizes, preserves, and revitalizes the historic architectural of L.A. County, dreamt up Last Remaining Seats, a summertime program which presents classic films and live entertainment in historic movie palaces. The brilliantly…

ON HENRY  AND HISTORY Henry IV Part 1 opens with a lengthy speech delivered by King Henry IV himself: “So shaken are we, so wan with care:” begins James Sutorius, one of the double-cast actors to play the King. “No more the thirsty entrance of the soil / Shall daub her lips with her own children’s…