Los Angeles

I AM NOT MY COCK When a new Godzilla movie came out in 1998 the marketing pundits urged, “Size does matter.” But when it comes to a woman’s sexual satisfaction with her partner’s penis size, apparently size doesn’t matter, at least, not to most women. Yet, many men seem to be obsessed with the size…

TWO CRITICS; TWO STAGED READINGS; BASICALLY ONE OPINION From Jason Rohrer: Plays in the Park, Brian Conners’ collection of one-acts (only one of which is set in a park), intends to showcase its writer (who also directs) in the glow of its rotating cast of Actors’ Studio headliners.   Mark Rydell, Ed Asner and Esai Morales…

GRIN AND SMILE AND LAUGH-ALOT Full disclosure: I am a big fan of Monty Python   and have seen five productions of Monty Python’s Spamalot. On Broadway, in Vegas, two touring companies in Los Angeles and now Musical Theatre West’s production currently running at The Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach. High art it is…

THIS ALMOST GREAT NIGHT Andrew Dolan, a working actor perhaps better known as a writer, had his second completed play produced first, in a Los Angeles world premiere: last season’s knockout EST production of his very smart race-and-academic politics piece, The Many Mistresses of Martin Luther King.   That play exemplifies all that is most promising…

LEARNING OF A DEATH PENALTY FOR ONE’S EXISTENCE Uganda has an alarming history when it comes to human rights violations, but recent developments against gay people are horrifying. In 2005, Ugandan police arrested a lesbian couple in their home, strip-searched and fondled them, and then released them without filing charges. In 2008, the couple won…

THE SIZZLE’S A FIZZLE It is an uncontestable fact that every play August Wilson wrote justifies being looked at again and again. It has been fascinating to see how the moral, political and emotional life of African-Americans has been given the sweep of history by concentrating on the ten decades of a tumultuous century and…

FLUFF IS NOT ENOUGH Fluffy Bunnies in a Field of Daisies is precisely the type of title that peaks curiosity leading one to think that with such a clever and catchy name it has to be good. Not so fast.   Celebrating its 10-year anniversary production, the show presented by Drew Brody / The Infinite Monkey…

RING IT ON! I hadn’t read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring since junior high, and the movie, which is the first installment of Peter Jackson’s gorgeous film trilogy The Lord of the Rings, left me bewildered at best. To say then that I was dubious attending  a musical parody of the popular book and…

WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE Somewhere around half-way through Guy Zimmerman’s The Black Glass, a “Hollywood Fringe Festival premiere,” my mind began to wander. Every opportunity for me to jump on board with this dense, impenetrable, and esoteric mess had been squandered by abstruse writing, obscured plot, elusive character development, and…

THE FRIEND IN THE DARK Did you ever drive alone across a big, flat stretch of country at night?   You and your headlights and the asphalt spinning beneath like a long speckled treadmill – in a certain state of mind it’s easy to see the world as an Earth-sized ball rolling under your wheels.   Maybe…

FINDING CHEEZBURGER AT THE THEATER In a not-too-distant dystopian future in which lolcats  are humans’ only form of communication, the epic LOLPERA – a lolcat pop opera – links our memes  into a new religion for the Internet age. Ellen Warkentine and Andrew Pedroza’s inspired new work manages to provoke, disturb, and endlessly entertain. The LOLs echo…

THE GIFT OF SPEECH There is no possibility of love or happiness in Enda Walsh’s play The New Electric Ballroom, produced by Rogue Machine, winner of 2010 and 2011 Ovation and L.A. Drama Critics Circle awards. Walsh won a Tony for the book of Once just days before this show opened, and he is widely…