Los Angeles

CHRISTMAS ISLAND With the superfluity of Christmas-themed theater descending upon America like a Biblical plague, there is one play which is opening this week that has intrigued and even excited me for both personal and critical motives: Donald Margulies’ world premiere, Coney Island Christmas, commissioned by and playing at the Geffen Playhouse. This will be…

CALL ME SLACKJAWED It’s amazing what critics and audiences alike are willing to forgive when they’re in the presence of a true star. Regardless of some bouncy and hummable Irving Berlin tunes in Call Me Madam, the book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse is basically a dog. Based on Perle Mesta, the millionairess political…

LIKE ADDING MILK  TO GREEN TEA, A GREAT PLAY IS SPOILED BY ADDING MUSIC. Post World War II Era in America isn’t a red, white, and blue haven with a backyard and a Buick waiting for everyone who wants to work. While the newsreels spun wildly about the success of the Marshall Plan, the development of…

PLEASE SIR, WE WANT SOME MORE SeaGlass Theatre only does one show a year, which is remarkable, since they’re such a spirited bunch.   For instance, it’s a shame to miss Paul Stroili any time he’s onstage: I’ve seen him do outrageously good work in good productions, like the last SeaGlass offering, Steven Berkoff’s Kvetch –…

HIPSTER OPERA LA Opera should take note of Pacific Opera Project. The upstart company’s edgy productions explode popular perceptions of what opera is and how it should be performed. Pacific Opera Project takes this typically elite art form and strips it down to its barest essentials: stunning music and simple, enjoyable stories. Its latest production,…

SILK-SCREEN DEEP Even though icon Andy Warhol passed away twenty-five years ago, his legacy remains elastically strong in all its plastic nature; a man very “American” for being of the culture, by the culture, and for the culture. Many imitate the illustrious imitator hoping to acquire fame for a little longer than just fifteen minutes….

WHAT THEATRE 40 NEEDS IS A GUIDE TO AN EXCRUCIATINGLY CORRECT PRODUCTION Miss Manners, the alter-ego of writer Judith Martin, is my heroine. Her “Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior” is witty, practical, and is about a lot more than table settings’”though she certainly instructs in dining service í  la russe, which entails fourteen courses and…

BAD GIRL DONE GOOD Here’s a play with a fascinating history for you.   Early-mid 20th century Chicago playwright Phillip Yordan originally intended this play to be set in the Polish American community, but when he couldn’t find a producer, he re-wrote it for the American Negro Theater, which, in its famous 1944 production, carried the…

BEING ALIVE IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT When the senseless Leap of Faith had its out of town tryout at the Ahmanson before its crash-and-burn on Broadway, there was only one thing which made sense: the pyrotechnic performer Raúl Esparza. This magnetic talent made evident that he could sing the listings from a phone book and make…

RED AND BROWN  IS THEATRICAL  GOLD Los Angeles is usually the last major theater city in the states to see productions of playwrights whose works have received praise in their world premieres, either in New York or at a regional house.   It often takes years for exhilarating plays to arrive in what is the busiest theater city…

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID Bootleg Theater  continues its run of the  world premiere of Death of a Salesgirl, an absurdist tragicomedy with integrated media, about one woman’s struggle to free herself from her past. Written by Patricia Scanlon, and starring Scanlon and Paul Dillon,  Death of a Salesgirl is a dark and humorous parable of a salesgirl breaking…

FLEET FEET, HOLLOW HEART When notes jostled in and out of the written score during the overture of Musical Theatre West’s 42nd Street, it portended a production that doesn’t have all the ingredients in place for a fully satisfying experience. The opening, that has the curtain raise just a bit to let us meet a…

LESS ADO IS STILL MUCH ADO Shakespeare’s plays tend to be longer than those of contemporary playwrights, typically running 120-150 minutes. This leads many theatre directors to wonder about the feasibility of performing Shakespeare, since contemporary theatre audiences seem to have increasingly short attention spans – perhaps 70-90 minutes. A typical solution is that of…

THE SHTICK MAY DETRACT FROM THE PLAY, BUT JUST TRY TO RIVAL THE ACTORS’ GANG The Rivals (1775), Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s wonderful Comedy of Manners, is a play about pretension; everyone in the work is pretending to be better in station or morality than they actually are’”from a military officer who mimics being a sexy…