Los Angeles

THE HAPPIEST CORPSE I’VE EVER SEEN How many reasons do you need to rush out and get tickets for the Reprise revival of Cabaret? Let me offer a few. First of all, this is 2011, and a better time to see Cabaret could not be imagined. That may be Berlin at the dawn of Nazism…

HIGH CULTURE UNDER A MALIBU SKY Anne Bogart is not one to shy away from her own directorial eccentricities. As the American Theater’s Queen of Deconstruction, she has had a formidable career looking with fresh eyes at old texts, investigating them and re-inventing them and, at her best, encouraging audiences to look at the plays…

WHAT’S WRONG? IT’S ALL RIGHT In thousands of YouTube videos, out-and-proud adults tell marginalized queer youth that life will get better. Yet the “It Gets Better” campaign advocates for a rather troublesome passivity. Hopes are pinned on an ambiguous future, and the question of exactly how things will get better remains unanswered. In a stunning…

WHEN YOU USE MACE, USE WITH DISCRETION Playwright Kristoffer Diaz has an ear for unleashing the poetic possibilities in “street-smarts” vernacular; and director Edward Torres has an eye for how to turn a simple idea into an explosively theatrical metaphor; and, together, they have made of Diaz’s hip-hop comedy The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity…

A NEARLY MAGICAL EVENING News reporters ask one passerby after another, “Where were you when the Moon fell?” Yet the Moon has not fallen. She perches on a white chiffon-covered platform, plunking out a minor-key refrain on her accordion and singing a plaintive tune that begs those below to recognize her. The shining Moon is…

A COMEDY OF EXCELLENCE Cue the epic battle underscoring, full orchestra and chorus. A lanky gaoler lopes onstage, indicates a prisoner’s head, clumsily hoists an ax from the prop box, and – after a few awkward missteps – finally manages to split a watermelon rolling about on the ground. Triumph! Shakespeare’s stage directions for this…

A PATCHWORK OF THE PERSONAL AND POLITICAL My Name is Rachel Corrie is a solo show comprised of a patchwork of actual e-mails and diary entries by a young female activist in Gaza who was tragically run over by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003. Edited together by Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner, it is not…

SCIENCE, GOD, AND LOVE:   BEGIN ARGUING Buried somewhere in the convoluted twists, turns and ramblings of playwright Cody Henderson’s Wonderlust lives a great story waiting to be told.   Actually, you could say it has been told: think Mamet’s Oleanna slammed together with Lawrence and Lee’s Inherit the Wind – except instead of a college professor,…

THE ZOMBIE JOE AESTHETIC With each new production, inch by inch, layer by layer, we get closer and closer to tasting the artichoke heart of Zombie Joe. It is not a question anymore of which production is better; it is a question of how complex the new images are and how they sustain the mystique…

TOO MANY STONES, NOT ENOUGH POCKETS Marie Jones’s Stones In His Pockets is one of those plays that separate the boys from the men.   Fifteen characters that range in age, gender, accent, and change with rapid-fire succession, played by two actors. It is a surefire gauge to differentiate between the good and the great.   And…

THANKS FOR THE MEMORY Occasionally, I attend theater with no intention of reviewing a show, but afterwards my spirit is so refreshed by an uplifting and inspiring experience that an urgent plea for your attendance is my only priority. It was at the Ruskin Theatre that my need for ensemble acting of the highest order…

NO TROUBLE HERE Although the run of Pacific Opera Project’s Trouble in Tahiti was two days long, I had to check out this new company whose mission it is to use local talent and bring affordable opera to Los Angeles. With only one piano accompanying five singers in the overheated Santa Monica Playhouse, there were…