Los Angeles

CRANES HAS A CLIPPED WING Last night at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles, CalArts presented a new play by Octavio Solis, and the story is magnificent. In East L.A., a teenager named Nico has been mowed down by a car outside his home, but it’s a mystery as to why. And this was a special…

A BRAINDEAD MUSICAL REANIMATED TO GLORIOUS LIFE In 2007, the Mel Brooks musical Young Frankenstein opened on Broadway to largely dismissive reviews. Some say it opened too close on the heels of Brooks’s powerhouse, The Producers. But when the touring version visited Los Angeles years later with original star Roger Bart imitating the film’s star…

THE FARM-TO-FABLE REVOLUTION IS HERE In what is Los Angeles’s best season since well before the pandemic, comes along the best show of the season. Only in New York would one expect the caliber of talent and technical elements than in A Noise Within’s production of Animal Farm. Riveting, frightening, and entertaining, director Julia Rodriguez-Elliot’s…

THE SKY’S THE LIMIT IN THIS LOVELY PRODUCTION Unless you are an astronomer or an astronomy buff, you likely have never heard of Henrietta Swan Leavitt. She was an American woman who made discoveries during the early 1900s that helped later scientists establish the present scale of the universe. Leavitt’s story attracted the interest of…

A BLINDINGLY BRILLIANT PRODUCTION Since its premiere in c. 429 BC, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King has been considered the Mount Olympus of Greek Tragedies, largely because it humanizes the theme of fate, a subject that fascinated the Greek culture; personally, I warrant that a story which contains patricide, unholy incest, self-mutilation and not leaving well…

SMALLS MAKES A HUGE STORY In January 2017, President Barack Obama issued an executive order establishing Reconstruction Era National Monument in Beaufort County, noting the significance of Robert Smalls to our national story. In 2019, the park was renamed Reconstruction Era National Historical Park with a visitor center located just a few blocks away from…

THE HEAVEN’S BREATH SMELLS WOOINGLY HERE It seems odd to say that I was enchanted and beguiled with Independent Shakespeare Co.’s (ISC’s) production of Macbeth, which opened this past weekend at the Dell in Griffith Park (site of L.A.’s old zoo). You would think perhaps horrified. After all, this is a tale of treachery, malice,…

THE ANACHRONISMIACS Poetry is all the rage in the madcap comedy, The Metromaniacs, David Ives’ 2015 English “translaptation” of La Métromanie (1738), an obscure French farce by Alexis Piron. While La Métromanie jocularly reflected the “poetry craze” of its era, Ives’ remake offers a modern lens in which to lovingly jeer that same 18th-century phenomenon….

A PLAY OFF A rich, black, ball-busting pro-sports super-agent who has worked her way up from poverty to making partner at a major firm. The white male head of that agency who wants his protégé of 22 years to take over the company as he nears retirement. The agent’s put-upon ambitious Latina assistant of five…