Los Angeles

IS THE RAILSPLITTER A LOG-SPLITTER? Written by Terry Ray, The  Lincoln  Debate — based on factual information provided in letters and biographies — concerns the debate about the romance of the 16th president and his friend Joshua Speed. Now being remounted (so to speak) by The Bent at The Palm Springs Cultural Center, Mr. Ray also appears…

THE DECONSTRUCTED PLAY’S THE THING William Shakespeare’s Hamlet recounts the story of the ghost of Denmark’s murdered king who wants his son, Prince Hamlet, to kill his uncle Claudius, the man who murdered the king to seize the throne and marry Hamlet’s mother. Long considered one of the world’s greatest tragedies, it delves into Hamlet’s…

MEAN GIRLS MEETS THE THIRD REICH Three teenage girls sit at a table in a bunker of some kind bored out of their minds tasting food three times a day before it is sent off to Hitler. They have clearly been convinced that this job is a privilege, for if one should die of poisoning…

KINK SHAME: AN ENTERTAINMENT FOR THE MASSES In North Hollywood, the audience’s senses were assaulted, mainly by each other, in the reception room before we even got into the theater for the return of Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group‘s signature production Urban Death, a cornucopia of short, and I mean brief, minutes-long scenes of the…

A MONSTER MASH Like most boomers, I was raised watching black-and-white horror movies. Both frightening and amusing, those giant ants, grasshoppers and spiders attacking some innocent town were the best action movies back in the day. And once seen, the major  monsters  — King Kong, Godzilla, The Blob, Frankenstein, Dracula, et al. — are not forgotten. In…

A ROYAL KING From the moment Irish actor extraordinaire Pat Kinevane appears out of the darkness as if in a dream, his lithe body moving as seductively as a snake into a sexy Argentine Tango, you will be entranced to meet Luther, a lonely Elvis Impersonator looking for love in all the wrong places. Taking…

A Noise Within continues their 2023-2024 season with a fine production of King Hedley II by August Wilson. This ninth play in his ten-play cycle about the Black experience in twentieth-century America is loaded with the symbolism, spirituality, and superstition we have come to know from his writings. The exceptionally talented Aaron Jennings plays the…

I FEEL YA, OPHELIA Acclaimed playwright, director, and actor Stefan Marks has outdone himself taking on three roles in his World Premiere play Ophelia, now at the Odyssey Theatre through May 18. It’s a tale of family history, the journey to find love, the heartbreak of dementia, struggling to forgive yourself for past mistakes, and…

A HEARTBREAKINGLY BEAUTIFUL MINDFUCK “He was immortal, so he couldn’t die, but this pain, it was agony — it was a wound that would never heal. So he begged the other deities to make him mortal. He knew that death was the only way to stop the pain.” Sylvia Kwan Laughter and pain are always…