Los Angeles

LEARNING TO FLY WITH BROKEN WINGS “Blackbird singing in the dead of night/Take these broken wings and learn to fly/All your life/You were only waiting for this moment to arise.” Â  Would it have been too obvious to play the haunting Beatles song either before the start of David Harrower’s unsettling Blackbird (which is receiving a…

GOING, GOING…GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN One of the pitfalls of being a theater reviewer in Los Angeles is that it is impossible to see more than the smallest amount of the cascade of plays that open here in a single week; it is probably a source of great frustration as well to the many performers…

WE OF LITTLE FAITH Kate Fodor’s 100 Saints You Should Know is a mildly interesting play, given heft by its author’s obviously sincere attempt to deal seriously with the nature of faith, but, despite its basic decency, it doesn’t really provide one with particularly fresh insights, nor does it probe with great depth its central…

WHAT THE FUNK? When giving feedback at High School theatre competitions, adjudicators are reminded to encourage, not discourage young performers: negative criticism, however accurate, may dampen the spirit of gung-ho newcomers to the theatre. It is the judge’s task to support thespian tenderfoots by accentuating the positive, lest they become dismayed and give up on…

THE EPIPHANIES THAT COME TO US AFTER BEING HIT IN THE HEAD BY A BASEBALL BAT Among the happiest of theatergoing experiences is entering the theater, without any expectations whatsoever, and, upon exiting, feeling that your life has been upended to a degree, perhaps even altered. Â  Roger Guenveur Smith’s soul-stirring Juan and John provides just…

ONCE-A-WEEK Monday nights at 8:00 p.m. at the L.A. Gay and Lebian Center’s Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Center (The Renberg Theatre): If you’d like to take a pleasant leisurely stroll down a very narrow path abloom with fresh wildflowers and strewn with patches of weeds, I recommend Standing On Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays….

THE OBSESSIVE PURSUIT OF ARTISTS There are few things funnier than watching John Fleck, sweating and crazed, walk perilously close to the edge of a high cliff, teeter towards falling off, and, by the neatest trick of balancing himself at the pivotal moment, catch himself from what seemed like inevitable disaster. There are few things…

IT’S NOT THE SIZE OF THE PLAY THAT MATTERS Say what you will about Voice Lessons, Justin Tanner’s shockingly uproarious one-act play, now receiving an encore presentation at Sacred Fools Theatre, but you will never forget that you attended it. Still emblazoned in my hippocampus is Tanner’s 1994 hit, Â Pot Mom, which remains one of the…

A CRITIC WHO RHYMES? IT’S A SIGN OF GOOD TIMES. I tell you, there’s no place that I’d rather be in, than a theatre where actors become Jacobean. A classical company, Antaeus by name, has created a show that begs nationwide fame. Penned by John Marston in 1604, The Malcontent proves to be all but…

RECIPE FOR SUCCESS Here’s a mouth-watering recipe for making people happy: 1) Take a great musical. (Kiss Me, Kate will do. If you need to ask why, then I’ll tell you: It’s both a wonderful backstage comedy romance and a scintillating interpretation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and it combines the two in…

THE TALENTED MR. JACOBSON Tom Jacobson is nothing if not ambitious. He is not only the most prolific Los Angeles playwright of the moment, but he is the one, given the astonishing record of his successes, on whom one is counting to stay the course and win national recognition – which has eluded some of…

THE WILD, WILD BRECHTIAN WEST The Chinese Massacre (Annotated), Tom Jacobson’s rousing new play, is like a fun day at Disneyland. Jacobson chronicles the 1871 lynching of 18 Chinese men by a mixed-race mob, historically considered to be Los Angeles’ first race riot. Actors break the fourth wall by expounding on exposition and commentating on…

A SHOW IN HOT WATER The Chance Theater is the best and most enterprising small theatre in Orange County; under the guidance of managing director Casey Long and co-founder and current artistic director Oanh Nguyen, the Chance produces new, challenging, and rarely seen works with astounding professionalism. Nguyen brings a brilliant interpretation to the shows…

IN PRAISE OF ECCENTRICITIES It is not surprisng that Tennessee Williams preferred The Eccentricities of a Nightingale to Summer and Smoke. Freed of the conflict between Puritanism (repressed sexuality) and science (sexual liberation), Â Eccentricities is also freed from a good deal of the melodrama which afflicted Â Smoke. Instead, Williams offered up a delicate character study of Alma…

TIME SPENT WITH A MUSICAL GENIUS If ever a production fitted so perfectly within the walls of the elegant Pasadena Playhouse as George Gershwin Alone, I can’t imagine what it may have been. This is, quite simply, what refinement and good taste is all about. Even Yale Pardess’s stage design evokes the thirties in a…