Los Angeles

FAUSTIAN PHANTASMAGORIA “There is nothing new under the sun,” said a Jewish writer more than two thousand years ago. While such a sentiment may not have been intended to discourage creativity, it can’t help but betray a certain weariness with the world. And such seems to be the present mood in Hollywood, where the big…

GOIN’ A’COURTIN’ IN THE BACKWOODS OF GLENDALE Glendale Centre Theatre continues its 64th season with a rambunctious production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, the highly successful MGM musical from 1954. Although the stage version was a flop on Broadway, it has nonetheless become a popular staple for musical theatre companies. Written in a sexist…

ON ONE’S VERY BEST POOR BEHAVIOR Ian is a monster. Oh, not your fire-eating dragon sort of monster. Quite possibly you’ve met this kind of monster yourself. He’s British; he’s smart; he’s opinionated; he’s articulate; he is, more often than not, an alcoholic, although the kind of alcoholic who, you are bound to admit, can…

IDENTITY CRISIS In a Mumbai flat, Deepa Kirpalani (Lina Patel), who lost her husband two years earlier, lives under the strict Hindu rules of widowhood. She never leaves her home, wears all white, goes without jewelry or make-up, and spends her days praying for moksha – liberation from the endless cycle of death and rebirth….

PROSPERO IS UP TO HIS OLD TRICKS There seems to be a plan afoot at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group to give us The Complete Abridged Works of William Shakespeare, a project that could happily go on for years. Purists, who object to cutting even one line of the Bard’s work, may be dismayed, but…

AMPHIBIANS MORE EVOLVED THAN HUMANS Theatre West’s production of Edward Albee’s Seascape is a study in contrasts.   Things either work, and work beautifully, or are muddled and miss the mark, creating an enjoyable but not completely satisfying evening. Nancy and Charlie are on the verge of retirement.   Their kids are grown and independent, and it…

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,…