Los Angeles

NEVER FORGET Writer/performer Tom Dugan’s solo show Nazi Hunter – Simon Wiesenthal capitalizes on the strengths of the famous Nazi hunter – his resilience, tenacity and humor – but largely overlooks his checkered results and disputed claims that he flushed out nearly 1,100 war criminals. Dugan has crafted a show in which the retiring Wiesenthal…

MARK ME DOWN AS MILD ABOUT HARRY What’s a critic to do when he desperately wishes to support Los Angeles theatre, but also desires to hold theatre to a higher level? During the intermission of I’m Just Wild About Harry at Crown City Theatre, one patron’s comment summed up this critic’s complex condition perfectly: “You…

I’M IN THE NUDE FOR LOVE The main reason that the Groundlings company remains L.A.’s number one improv training and performance space is their emphasis on character work. When actors come to the Groundlings, they begin a series of classes in which proven methods are used to teach improvisational and sketch writing technique, ultimately creating…

THANKS FOR THE MEMOIRS If there were an award for “The Best Idea for a Theatrical Entertainment,” the winner surely would be Celebrity Autobiography, in which celebrities read the actual memoirs of other celebrities. Because the celebrities on hand read from scripts or directly from the books themselves, the evening lacks an inherent theatricality and…

LOW PLATELETS In his vision of a new translation of Frederico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding, director Jon Lawrence Rivera offers a diverse cast and updates the original 1933 setting in Spain to 1952 in Central California. But neither decision has helped to shed new light on either the playwright or his play about a bride…

COMING OUT THROUGH SKETCH COMEDY It Must Be Him is in desperate need of a laugh track. Although penned by former writer of The Carol Burnett Show Kenny Solms, this semi-autobiographical romantic comedy rarely soars to those hilarious heights an audience member might expect from such a promising creative team. Louie Wexler (David Pevsner) is…

A TERRIFIC STORY AND EVEN BETTER MAGIC SHOW; BUT THE TRICK IS BEING ABLE TO SEE IT Suave and debonair Guy Hollingworth is not only a full-time British barrister (specializing in intellectual property law) but a card conjuror of renown. When a friend had to back out of an appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe, Hollingworth…

TALKING ABOUT A BETTER WORLD Violence cuts across the walls in The Word Begins; sirens blare as iconic images of bloodshed and warfare, political figures and propaganda are projected larger than life onto the graffiti-covered set. The media continually broadcasts this reminder: we are at war. But onstage at Rogue Machine Theatre, writer/performers Steve Connell…

WHEN GOOD ENOUGH IS NOT ENOUGH The Los Angeles Times needs to be a player on the world stage and therefore assigns Critic-at-Large Charles McNulty to review plays in NYC and London. While this may exasperate the local theatre community (which desperately needs and deserves coverage), McNulty’s reviews and recent commentary on the ladies of…

HOLLYWOOD FRINGE FESTIVAL REVIEWS 2011 [Editor’s Note:   Our (either) amazing or insane (you decide) theater correspondent Tony Frankel saw somewhere in the area of 40 Fringe shows during its ten-day festival; we’re pretty sure no one else exceeded that.   Although the Fringe is now over, some of the shows that were featured have kept going…

THEY’VE GOT MAGIC TO DO It simply cannot be avoided: with Fun Family Festival of Tragedy, L’Enfant Terrible, a startlingly brilliant new theatre company, is poised and ready to take over the theatre world. Founded by director Justin Zsebe, writer Angela Berliner and producer Seth Compton, this group is dedicated to the art of storytelling….

YOU WILL LIKE IT VERY MUCH INDEED Credit adapter and director Tony Tanner for As You Like It – The Musical; he freely adapted Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden comedy into a text that contains the meat of the play with the Bard’s best lines while tossing in some modern references. By doing so, Tanner makes…

A PLAY THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN VISITED IN THE FIRST PLACE I was actively  angry after the opening of Revisiting Wildfire at the Odyssey Theatre (bad theatre will do that to you). I had to tell myself myself over and over, “No, no. Calm down. No one got hurt. It was just a bad play.”…

IN PRAISE OF LITERATURE Saving the “What is Literature?” and “Are Plays Literature?” arguments for another time, allow me to unequivocally state that there is a starvation for new drama as literature. Lacking lexicographical skills, allow me to paraphrase Mr. Webster: In the broadest sense, “literature” means any written material. Usually, however, it means the…