Los Angeles

CHEKHOV’S GUN, SERLING’S CIGARETTE The most authentic and thoughtful staging of Anton Chekhov I’ve experienced in America didn’t use any Chekhov script you’ve read or seen performed or ever will see.   This Impro Theatre one-night-only production of Serfs in the Field was improvised over two acts’ relaxed mastery, nimbly directed, sublimely performed, and – I…

THREE DEGREES OF SEPARATION A woman asks for a martini in a highball glass and accuses her husband of peeing in the sink: again. He doesn’t cop to it, but doesn’t deny it. The couple seems long married, used to one another, and not particularly happy’”probably in their 60s or early 70s. She’s nursing a…

COLLECTED STORIES: A SNOOZE INDUCING   “WRITE” OF PASSAGE As a critic I hope for one of two things: either a production is fantastic or, to be blunt, it sucks. For me at least, a review of a great show or an awful show practically writes itself: it’s the critiques of the so-so ones that take…

SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL HAS ARRIVED Daniel Serrano’s Roma al final de la Ví­a (Rome at the End of the Line) is a highly recommended diamond-in-the-rough, and the 24th Street Theatre presents its US premiere. Julieta Ortiz and   Norma Angélica are outstanding in their portrayal of women growing up together through life; bonded by their love for…

THE SCHLONG AND SHORT OF IT The great local critic Wenzel Jones, writing about the play “Naked Boys Singing,” (another play in which men happily doffed their clothes to showcase their Full Monties) drolly noted that “for best results” the show “should be seen on a warm night.”   It is  tough to avoid making a similar…

WESTSIDE CONNECTIONS INTEROFFICE MEMO from: Office of Setting Things Up to: Offices of no names; we’re all friends here re: the other night at the Broad We want to start by thanking you all for your hard work, your good work.   You are appreciated.   As you know, we’ve had our first Music & Story event…

THE PEASANTS ARE REVOLTING, NOT THE PRODUCTION Set amidst the teeming, verdant jungles of South India, Encounter is an often compelling dance theatrical production from the Navarasa Dance Theater, a group that has origins in South Asia and India (though the company is currently based in Massachusetts); it is a tale of atrocity, tyranny, and…

“WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T ASK WHAT THIS SHOW WAS ABOUT” Natalie Portman, The Musical! is a two-hour, no-intermission sketch-comedy musical written and directed by Brittany Garms, with music by Frankie Marrone and Tara Pitt.   With Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman as her theme, Garms does not explore Ms. Portman’s already very public personal history, but rather…

CLASSICAL/CONTEMPORARY MASHUP There are few venues in Los Angeles better suited to productions of ancient Greek plays than the Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater at the Getty Villa. Not only does it boast a large outdoor amphitheatre surrounded by galleries full of Greek and Roman antiquities, but it is positioned towards the sea and away…

NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE Author Joan Didion’s powerful piece of writing, the elegiac monologue The Year of Magical Thinking, receives its Los Angeles premiere in this intimate production at the Elephant Theatre.   Didion’s play, adapted from her book, describes what can only be called a bona fide annus horribilis, in which her beloved husband…

A WHOLE NEW WORLD Musical revues are a tricky business. While highly enjoyable and entertaining, even high profile compilations like Side By Side By Sondheim and the Fats Waller song book Ain’t Misbehavin’ amount to little more than glorified cabaret shows. Jukebox musicals—a la Smokey Joe’s Cafe (Leiber and Stoller) and the long running Broadway…

SILENCE! THE FRANCHISE Silence! The Musical was one of the big hits of the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival. The parody of Jonathan Demme’s 1991 Oscar-winning horror thriller Silence of the Lambs found a home Off-Broadway last year, created enough buzz for a long run, and is still packing ‘em in. Now, the Los…

THE PLAYWRIGHT MUST HAVE EATEN A PILLOW, BECAUSE THIS PLAY IS DOWN IN THE MOUTH Andy Bloch’s The Bellflower Sessions is a bleak, black comedy about Jack Calvin, a victim of “The Great Recession,” and his unorthodox, vulgar, yet purportedly effective shrink, Dr. Wendy Bellflower. In spite of its timeliness and readily relatable subject matter,…

A BROOKLYN LOVE STORY – FUHGEDDABOUDIT! Originally produced as Emergency Used Candles for NYC’s Emerging Artists Theatre One Woman Standing Festival and then followed by a run at the famed Cherry Lane Theatre Off-Broadway, the newly titled A Brooklyn Love Story is making its L. A. premiere at Theatre 68.   For those of you who…

WITH A LITTLE LOVE, THIS COULD BE GREAT The perfect show is like the happy marriage: you can go decades without seeing one.   If the script is good, the lead actor is usually somebody’s cousin, or the director doesn’t understand the material; a great production almost never has a great script.   And so on.   Eclectic…

MAGIC TRICKS OR TRAGIC MIX? Every once in a while a show comes along that defies classification. Elephant Room, making its West Coast Premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre is one such show. It’s sort of a comedy, it’s sort of a magic show, it’s sort of a bloated SNL skit, it’s sort of an…

FISHING FOR LAUGHS If you are now or were at some point a wannabe entertainment professional, chances are you’re no stranger to slinging hash in a greasy spoon to make ends meet.   Playwright David J. Duman spent his formative years dishing up organic eats to some of San Francisco’s “most particular, demanding, and ridiculous diners.”  …