Los Angeles

OH, WHAT A NIGHT Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana (1961) may be viewed as the finish of a journey the playwright began twenty years earlier with The Glass Menagerie (1944). The one was his first critical and commercial success, the other his last. After Iguana, Williams would continue to write plays and one-acts…

WHAT DOGS REALLY THINK ABOUT UNCONDITIONAL LOVE Those of us who have ever lived with a beloved canine companion (I hesitate to use the word “owned” since I question who really owns whom) certainly know the amount of time spent happily together sharing human concerns and feelings with no hope of a canine verbal response….

WEST SIDE SNORING Astoundingly unsatisfying, LA Opera’s many-headed Hydra production of West Side Story, directed with no sense of urgency by Francesca Zambello, opened tonight to a crowd largely made up of donors and subscribers dressed to the nines. Oddly cast, oddly acted, and oddly staged, my head was reeling at the amount of money…

ONE MAN, TWO HOURS TOO LONG Ask yourself how much you liked The Play That Goes Wrong series. That’s a pretty good indicator as to your enjoyment of Richard Bean’s 2011 play, One Man, Two Guvnors, now running at A Noise Within. If you liked it, stop reading and go. You’ll have a great time….

Ragtime is the epic musical by Terrence McNally (book), with music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens (based on the novel by E.L. Doctorow). It weaves together stories of a Jewish immigrant, a Harlem pianist, an upper-class white woman, and historical figures — all pursuing the American Dream amidst societal change, prejudice, and…

TRACES OF POSSIBILITY Premiering Off-Broadway in 1989, Cindy Lou Johnson’s Brilliant Traces is one of those plays that can be either mesmerizing or exasperating and tiresome. Lacking a firm idea of what it wants to be, Soul Gym Productions’ new mounting at the Hudson for a brief three-day run, fell firmly in the latter. In the middle of…

OUTBREAK OF MANNERS: WHEN POLITENESS TURNS CONTAGIOUS The play begins with a picture of composure. Five parents sit at a polished library table in a progressive private school in Berkeley. They lean forward, nodding with exquisite concern, and speak in the gentle cadences of inclusivity. Words like “shared narrative” and “holding space” float through the…

A GEM OF A PRODUCTION FOR THERESA REBECK’S DAZZLING SUNDAY ON THE ROCKS Solid. Diamond Solid. Strength and luster. That is what’s most striking about Sunday on the Rocks by playwright Theresa Rebeck, now at The Actor’s Company Theatre.   The finest razzle-dazzle that money can buy? Not in this production; there is just good old-fashioned…

FLY ME TO THE SUN… AND LEAVE ME THERE I confess, playwright Brian Quijada was an unknown quantity to me, and after attending Fly Me to the Sun at the Fountain Theatre, I was of the mind that he could remain so. But, I’ve a good deal of experience with the Fountain, which is one…

IT MAY BE JUST ANOTHER DAY, BUT THIS ISN’T JUST ANOTHER PLAY If I were to start by telling you what author Dan Lauria’s sly new play is about, a great number of you might stop reading in disgust, thinking, “I’ve lived through that; I don’t need to see a play about it.” However, Just…

ACHILLES’ HEEL IN ARCADIA There is a misunderstanding of critics among some circles, a sense that they are all cast in the mold of Ellsworth Toohey, the sniveling, Machiavellian art critic from Ayn Rand’s heavy-handed, objectivist treatise masquerading as a novel, The Fountainhead. Toohey is a vile creature who resents anyone who displays the talent…

A MASTERPIECE OF MUSICAL MISCHIEF In 1911, the Louvre was the largest building in the world, containing more than a thousand rooms, spread out over 45 acres and housing over a quarter million works of art.  As it had a security force of just over a hundred guards, it is not surprising that someone was…

MOTHERFUCKER! WHAT A COLOSSAL MISSED OPPORTUNITY With heightened and relentless dialog, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Motherfucker with the Hat follows Jackie, a recently paroled ex-con and recovering addict whose fragile new life teeters when he finds an unfamiliar hat in his girlfriend Veronica’s apartment. The discovery ignites suspicions of betrayal that ripple through his relationships—with…

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME A friend warned me that The Heidi Chronicles might feel dated—after all, Wendy Wasserstein’s Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play ends in 1987. Nothing could be further from the truth. Group Rep’s production, directed with a sure hand by Brent Beerman, proves Heidi’s journey from the late…