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Los Angeles
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE TEMPEST (Zombie Joe’s Underground Theater Group)
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…
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Theater Review: THE CHANTEUSE AND THE DEVIL’S MUSE (Bootleg Theater)
DANSE MACABRE At Bootleg Theater, David J‘s The Chanteuse and the Devil’s Muse is not so much a play as it is an art installation. But, as an art installation, it has a terrible beauty and some moments of bizarre theatrical innovations that linger in the memory. While it purports to be an investigation of…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: SEASCAPE (Theatre West)
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…
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Theater Review: TO CARRY THE CHILD (Collaborative Artists Ensemble at the Raven Playhouse)
TOUCHING MOMENTS DO NOT SUSTAIN FAMILY DRAMA In Collaborative Artists Ensemble’s production of Jon Courie’s new play, To Carry the Child, the oldest daughter, Ashley (Meg Wallace), her life in shreds, is facing a serious disease and finds her lover, Diane (Justine Woodford) running from the crisis. She returns to her family home in Caraprice…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: CABARET (Reprise)
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…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: TROJAN WOMEN (AFTER EURIPIDES) (Getty Villa)
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…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: WHAT’S WRONG WITH ANGRY? (Celebration Theatre)
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…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE ELABORATE ENTRANCE OF CHAD DEITY (Geffen Playhouse)
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…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: WHAT THE MOON SAW, OR “I ONLY APPEAR TO BE DEAD–” (Son of Semele)
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…
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LA Theater Review: THE COMEDY OF ERRORS (Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble)
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…
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Theater Review: STRANGER THINGS (The Ghost Road Company in Los Angeles)
A PUZZLE TO RELISH SOLVING As both theatergoer and theater writer, this reviewer is decidedly unenthusiastic about absurdist, avant-garde, or post-modern theatre. It’s not so much the concept or ideas behind these movements as it is the execution. Playwrights and theatre companies get so caught up in approaching the presentation of their story – vignettes,…
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Regional Theater Review: STEEL MAGNOLIAS (Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura)
DROOPING MAGNOLIAS One of six female denizens at a rural beauty salon in Louisiana states that, from the Southern male’s point of view, “You either shoot it, stuff it or marry it.” Well, that’s exactly what can be said about Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias, the much-too-often-produced comedy/tearjerker lately receiving a diverting but uneven outing at…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE (The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum)
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…
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LA Theater Review: WONDERLUST (Theatre of Note)
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,…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: DEVILS LOVE AT MIDNIGHT and ROMEO AND JULIET (Zombie Joe’s)
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…
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Theater Review: VIVIEN (Rogue Machine in Los Angeles)
THE MANY FACES OF VIVIEN LEIGH The one woman play Vivien, presented by Rogue Machine at Theatre Theater, is a stunning showcase of two talents, both of which make this a recommended outing: the superlative acting of Judith Chapman and the extraordinary directorial guidance of Elina de Santos. Unfortunately, Rick Foster’s play is more like…
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LA Theater Review: STONES IN HIS POCKETS (The Zephyr Theatre)
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…
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Theater Review: BEAU JEST (Glendale Centre Theatre)
THIS BEAU IS JEST FINE Do you ever just want to go home, eat your mother’s comforting chicken soup, put on your oldest fuzzy slippers and find some old-fashioned comedy on AMC? Well, you’ll get no soup or slippers at Beau Jest, but you will be glad you got away from home for this old-fashioned,…
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Theater Review: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (The Porters of Hellsgate in North Hollywood)
AN OUNCE OF MISSTEPS IS WORTH THIS POUND OF FLESH Before you run off to see The Porters of Hellsgate production of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice — and I surely hope that you do — let us clear something up once and for all regarding the nature of its topicality. It would be…
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LA Theater Review: A MEMORY OF TWO MONDAYS (Ruskin Theatre in Santa Monica)
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…
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