Los Angeles

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…

Then trip him that his heels may kick at heaven Hamlet soliloquy / Shakespeare Fat Ham by James Ijames — who received a Pulitzer for his play — is an unbridled, entertaining, and funny take on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, outrageously turned on its ear. Elsinore castle is transported to a lovely house in a suburb of…

WITNESSES FOR THE PROSECUTION Taking place within the confines of a witness room in Manhattan Criminal Court, four obdurate NYPD officers who have “done all this before and know what to say” are coached by the Prosecuting Attorney, who is fact-checking their testimony prior to a drug suppression hearing.   She has instructions on what they…