Los Angeles

THE TEMPEST AS RADIO PLAY One can only wonder why productions of Shakespeare’s The Tempest have been sprouting up like magical vines in the jungle. Is it because the tale is about revenge as much as it is about redemption? What I can say is this: When the sorcerer Prospero discards his magic staff and…

ANTSY The subject of “haves” and “have-nots” in the theater is nothing new, having been explored from The Greeks to Molière. More recent hallmarks are the Industrial Age’s The Hairy Ape by O’Neill; Odets’ Depression era Awake and Sing!; and John Osbourne’s “Angry Young Man” hurled in the world’s consciousness in Look Back in Anger….

OOHS AND OZ Just in time, a new, colorful and fun version of everyone’s childhood favorite movie is here in Long Beach. Musical Theatre West’s Royal Shakespeare version of  The Wizard of Oz — a faithful recreation of the 1939 movie — which opened last Saturday at the Carpenter Center, isn’t just for kids. Over the…

LAST SUMMER THIS SUMMER Written in 1976 by the late Jane Chambers, Last Summer at Bluefish Cove — which opened in 1980, NYC — is a milestone in lesbian theatre history. Chambers’ name is legend as a daring playwright who put lesbian writing on stage before it was widely accepted to have out lesbians in…

BETTER MAKE THAT LATER Christopher Shinn clearly understands the American consciousness. In Now or Later, a 2008 one-act which opened at the Royal Court Theatre with a fresh-faced Eddie Redmayne, he offers an engaging discussion in lieu of a play. There’s no dramatic action — characters stand around and present their point-of-view. Shinn’s play is…

TRANSPARENT COULD ONE DAY TRANSITION FROM COCOON TO BUTTERFLY A  Transparent  Musical  is based on the Amazon Prime TV series  Transparent and written by the TV show’s creators – Joey Soloway and Faith Soloway. Yet while it features many of the same characters and themes as the TV show, this is a brand-new standalone story. Under Tina Landau‘s overwhelmed…

BECAUSE IT’S THERE What if Dr. Martin Luther King was a down-to-earth, simple, vulnerable human being like the rest of us? What if human existence could be viewed from another dimension, one that allowed the viewer to weigh the pluses and minuses of the greater good versus personal choice, or the path of one human…

A PLAY OUT OF THE BOX NO, INSIDE THE BOX NO, OUTSIDE… One of the finest offerings at this year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival is writer/director Patrick Hamilton‘s The Box which runs through June 18 at The Zephyr Theater. The title has a triple-meaning: It refers to a piece of furniture that may or may not…