Los Angeles

ITHACA John Perrin Flynn and Brenda Davidson’s production of Penelope is so vivid that it’s hard for me to imagine the play in any other presentation – even though I’ve recently seen another  that had its own strengths.   Flynn’s direction is unequivocal, authoritative.   He finds the excitement and narrative drive carefully laid underneath Enda Walsh’s impossibly…

A BUTTERFLY WITHOUT WINGS Madama Butterfly (1904) is understandably one of the most popular operas in the world. Not only does it boast a tragic story that is incredibly moving, but the drama at its core is heightened and given beauty by Giacomo Puccini’s score. However, Center Stage Opera’s production fails to do the opera…

COMFORT CANCER Steven Dierkes has written the play one thinks of writing after a friend gets a brain tumor.   Like a character in Land Line, I once was a guy who talked long-distance day after day to a sick friend who’d had to move back into his parents’ house; if you live long enough, you’re…

IMPORTANCE AND FRIVOLITY Radically altering the circumstances of a revered text is the prerogative of any new production.   It’s one of the methods theater reserves to drag fusty old plays into the present.   And if you look at the Queer Classics version of The Importance of Being Earnest as taking place in a Sartre-esque vacuum,…

LOST Lost Moon Radio’s new Hollywood Fringe Festival show is by far the least impressive Lost Moon outing I’ve seen.   A departure from their usual late-night free-form radio show format, Million Dollar Hair has a fine enough conceit: it more or less purports to be a piece of musical theater (book: Frank Smith, Ryan Harrison…

PERHAPS THE POPE WAS BORED TO DEATH The Ahmanson stage is awash with white-haired old men in long sweeping gowns.   No, it’s not the old folks’ home production of Priscilla Queen of the Desert.   Rather, the touring production of The Last Confession crackles and blusters with Cardinals, Archbishops, and Popes; these are the characters inhabiting…

FANTASTICKS ON THE FRINGE With the original opening in 1959 and running an astounding 42 years, The Fantasticks is a veritable classic amongst the repertoire of musical theater.   By way of the Hollywood Fringe Festival at the quaint Lillian Theatre, Good People Theater Company is taking a crack at capturing the essence of this historical…

WHEN A BELT DOESN’T HOLD UP AN ACT There was a time when American cabaret singers simply sang songs’”no social commentary, no motifs, and no directors were necessary because the audience was accustomed to great songs treated with unique vocal stylings by distinctive entertainers. Even when cabaret began to decline in the 1960s, headline singers’”whether…

THE RISE AND FALL OF A TRANSFERRED PRODUCTION When it was originally presented at Sacred Fools, Vanessa Claire Stewart’s play had a subtitle (The Rise and Fall and Rise of Buster Keaton), but Stoneface Productions and the Pasadena Playhouse have dispensed with that (along with a few scenes), which is good because Stoneface is a…

MTG BRINGS ANGELS TO LOS ANGELES The angels of concert-staged-reading productions come winging into town this week with a production of City of Angels, the 1989 musical spoof and homage to hard-boiled detective fiction, 1940s film noir genre, and the men who made both. This rarely produced gem was a huge hit, playing 879 performances…

AFRICAN MYTH ON THE BAYOU An atmosphere of mythic mystery suffuses Tarrell Alvin McCraney’s compelling drama about family, sacrifice, and deceit.   Awash with undercurrents of melancholy and rage, here’s a drama that manages to wrestle both powerful themes and ferocious emotions, even within a remarkably intimate context. It’s admittedly true that we find ourselves occasionally…

BRIGHT LIGHTS ON A DIM HORIZON Two hit men wait in a shitty Vegas motel for the boss to give them a goddamn call.   One of ’em (Leon Russom) is an all-business, no-shit guy on the verge of retirement; the other (Garrett Michael Langston) is a congenital fuck-up first-time gunman twitchin’ to get in over…

MERRY-GO-ROUND PLAYWRITING More of a writing exercise than a fleshed-out drama, Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries begins with an intriguing premise, but sputters to a halt when we realize that this much-hyped “Pulitzer-finalist” has written himself into a corner. Flip-flopping throughout a 30-year time span, the play is constructed as a series of meetings between…

DON’T MIZ IT Unlike most of the characters in the blockbuster sung-through musical Les Misérables, the show itself will never die. Consistently presented either on Broadway, national tours, and/or globally since the English-language version opened on the West End in 1985, audiences can’t get enough of Victor Hugo’s story about ex-con and do-gooder Jean Valjean…