Los Angeles

MEMORIES OF SEAGULLS PAST If you have never seen  The Seagull –   though I can’t imagine a seasoned theatergoer who hasn’t, can you? –   you just might possibly get an inkling of what Anton Chekhov’s masterpiece should be in the Antaeus Company’s otherwise listless and tone-deaf production, which stubbornly refuses to illuminate the quirkiness of human…

ONE VERY, VERY SMALL STEP FOR DAMON CHUA Tony Gatto gets an A for effort, having mounted a colorful if unnecessarily literal production of a Damon Chua script that defies dramaturgy and good sense even as it embraces bad and even offensive conventions.   1969, billed as “a fantastical odyssey through the American mindscape,” feels more…

PASSION GUARANTEED Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) wrote the St. John Passion for the Good Friday Service in Leipzig, Germany in 1724, just 3 months into his new job as “Cantor” of Leipzig.   The passion, a form which traces its origins to the 4th Century AD, is the story of the trial, torture, crucifixion and death…

“IF I AM DEAD TO LIFE, WHAT AM I ALIVE TO?” In The Woman in the Wall, Overtone Industries reinvents a tradition of medieval mystery plays in a stunning new chamber opera about a 14th  century Anchoress, voluntarily confined for a life of solitary religious study. This entrancing performance takes the audience on a spiritual journey…

CAUGHT IN A TAP Savion Glover is easily one of the best tap dancers this country has ever produced, but to the adoring throng at the beautifully sleek and modern Valley Performing Arts Center, Glover is both an institution and the rock star of the tap world (where else would you see a concert where…

COMICAL, HISTORICAL, WHIMSICAL, “POP”ICAL If you like Shakespeare: go.   If you hate Shakespeare: go.   If you love or loathe Peter Cetera: go.   If you dislike ecstatic, adorable, hard-working mega-talents willing to entertain you by all of a thousand means at their disposal: go anyway; this show might just find your pulse. Two Gentlemen of Chicago…

THE QUESTION IS: CAN YOU SEE TOMMY? Everything is murky about the DOMA Theatre Company’s new production of The Who’s Tommy at the Met Theatre’”the performances, the sound design, the staging, the choreography, and especially the lighting. Often actors are hardly visible when they sing, and the lighting design seemingly hasn’t been created with any…

BUT ONLY BY A THREAD During Connected, the 2011 dance piece from Australian company Chunky Move at the Luckman Theater in Los Angeles last week, a strip-club cat-call was heard from the audience when the performers removed portions of their costumes. With apologies to artistic director and choreographer Gideon Obarzanek for some hinterland denizens, the…

WHAT IS AN AFRICAN AMERICAN? While many plays purport to examine race issues, few tackle them head on. Ensemble Studio Theatre’s production of The Many Mistresses of Martin Luther King, by debut playwright Andrew Dolan, certainly does. It may not say anything new about race in America, but it does discuss race issues in a…

COMIC EPHEMERA In Tony Kushner’s adaptation of Pierre Corneille’s 1636 comedy L’Illusion Comique, the modern playwright has abandoned the contextual trappings that make the original at all interesting, in order to write for a contemporary audience.   The result, in Casey Stangl’s fleet staging, very slightly disguises shallow earnestness as light amusement.   It’s fun; it’s supposed…

BLACK AND WHITE AND GOOD ALL OVER A smart play is usually a provocative play, but a provocative play is rarely smart.   Many playwrights competent to stir controversy have neither the chops nor, sadly, the intention to say much of benefit except to their own notoriety; and really talented writers don’t always invest in the…

THE GODOT WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR Samuel Beckett is a great comic playwright. You don’t believe me? Then run, don’t walk, to the Mark Taper Forum and see the blissfully funny and yet profoundly melancholy revival of Waiting For Godot. You will finally see what so many productions fail to get: that Estragon and Vladimir…

SOMEHOW, IT KEEPS ON WORKING For those who have never seen the 1978 musical Working, the Production Company’s current revival may be somewhat of a revelation. The subtitle of Studs Terkel’s brilliant oral history of the same name – adapted for the stage by Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso – is People Talk About What…

IMPRISONED BY ART Most literary intellectuals have as much business writing about life behind bars as incarcerated felons have teaching text analysis.   In the last few months, Los Angeles has hosted two plays written by playwrights who have spent time, and set stories, in prisons.   Miguel Pinero did his time as a thief and drug…

OH WHAT A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE While Theatre Unleashed’s cast and crew have a gloriously and unashamedly good time bringing The Spidey Project to the West Coast, it’s a shame that their source material isn’t the parody it promised to be in the press release. There are some very funny moments in this silly,…

GROUNDLINGS ZERO The best part about cleaning up my DVR last weekend was catching up on Raising Hope, the hilarious FOX comedy. It’s funny, surprising, naughty, sometimes dirty, and wholly original. In one episode they give Cloris Leachman a beautifully timed joke about how she could only have an orgasm with her late husband when…

AMERICAN NIGHT SUCKS, BUT IT SWALLOWS Juan José, a Mexican cop sick of being on-the-take, has crossed the border in search of citizenship, leaving his pregnant wife behind. Panicking over flash cards while studying for his U.S. citizenship exam, Juan falls asleep and the rest of this 90 minute, intermissionless, astoundingly uneven cavalcade of skits,…