Los Angeles

CHICKEN STORIES IS A FOWL BALL! There are more than 8 billion people on the earth. But did you know that there are more chickens on the planet than human beings? And you know that we’re not talking as pets. Costco alone sells more than 75 million roasted chickens every year. But what of fried…

A RIVETING TALE OF ART AND IDEOLOGY AT ITS FINEST In Tom Jacobson’s Crevasse, playing at the Victory Center Theatre, the curtain rises on a fractured world where art, love, and propaganda intersect amidst the gathering storm clouds of World War II. This ambitious play, set in the fall of 1938, deftly traverses the fraught…

TELEMARKETING SURE IS A PITCH There’s nothing like a fascinating story, and that’s what’s in store with The Pitch, now at the Odyssey Theatre directed by Louie Liberti. If you’ve ever done telemarketing, it can be a cold and brutal business, because — of course — the bottom line is sales, and as we have…

ESPIONAGE COMES TO GROUP THERAPY There’s a pretty good reason why the world premiere of Gregg Ostrin’s The Spy Who Went Into Rehab, onstage at Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice, has been extended. It’s a darned good farcical and absurdist comedy. The studly, well-cast Satiar Pourvasei plays Cross. Simon Cross. He’s been dropped off at…

Mayuri Bhandari, an unenthusiastic gorgeous yoga instructor, has something to get off her chest. She’s miffed at how Western folks have commercialized the practice and teaching of yoga, turning an ancient, sacred practice into a commodity. In The Anti Yogi, which I caught at a packed encore performance at The Zephyr Theatre on July 10,…

A TIME-TRAVELING UNBROKEN BLOSSOMS REVEALS BIGOTRY AND MISOGYNY Before seeing the world premiere of Unbroken Blossoms by Philip W. Chung at East West Players, I had never heard of the 1919 American silent film Broken Blossoms, directed by D. W. Griffith  starring Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess, in which a frail waif is abused by her…

MEET NOËL COWARD’S THROUPLE OF ARTISTS IN THE 1930s Design For Living is one of Noël Coward’s less performed plays but it fair crackles with bons mots — you know you’re in good hands when delightfully old-fashioned words like “horrid,” “bloody,” “cheap,” and “vulgar” are tossed around with, well, gay abandon. Odyssey Theatre Ensemble is…

A NICE EXPAT ON THE HEAD Now, here’s a fascinating show. Two former lawyers (the best kind I say) and whip-smart writers, Dominique Roberts and Candace Leung, wrote and starred in Expatriated at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. In a dizzying series of vignettes, we meet a white lawyer sent to Hong Kong and a Hong…

THERE MAY BE SOMETHING WRONG WITH CYRUS, BUT NOT SO MUCH HIS SHOW Meet Cyrus Deboo. An adult actor who, against all the odds and ends of a traditional Persian upbringing, blossomed into an out gay man in a loving relationship, and with the eventual acceptance from his dad. In There’s Something Seriously Wrong with…