Los Angeles

THE RIDICULOUSNESS OF IT ALL I had a college film-course assignment: Read Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella The Heart of Darkness and then watch Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film adaptation, Apocalypse Now. In the novella, a British ivory transporter named Marlow develops a concentrated curiosity about an ivory-procurement agent named Kurtz while journeying up the Congo…

THE SEXUAL POLITICS OF SAVAGES Who would have imagined that a 30-year-old stage adaptation (by Christopher Hampton) of a 1782 novel (by Choderlos de Laclos) would be so devastatingly of the moment. In a time when sexual harassment, abuse, and assault are at the center of a national conversation many hope will bring about overdue…

TAKE A PAWS Pacific Opera Project (POP) is serving up six spooky performances of the world premiere of LA-based composer Brooke deRosa’s The Monkey’s Paw. This is the company’s first presentation of a world premiere opera, and it is paired with Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium, one of his best works. Performances begin tonight, October…

LIGHTING UP THE SOUTHERN SKY Carmen Cusack is luminous. She uses her whole self’”physically, emotionally, vocally’”to open herself to the audience, holding every last one of us in her loving arms. Cusack has been on a multi-year journey with Bright Star, since the Steve Martin/Edie Brickell musical began in a 2013 workshop by the New…

THE SOLITARY LONELINESS OF LOSS There is something cheeky and even a bit dangerous about a writer reaching far outside his or her community, culture, or country. When an outsider succeeds, though, the unfamiliarity can be an advantage, yielding wonder and illumination’”as happens here with Italian playwright Alessandro Camon’s remarkable new play, now getting its…

BUREAUCRATIC NIGHTMARE; OPERATIC DREAM After witnessing Long Beach Opera’s extraordinarily satisfying production of Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Consul, starring the magnificent Patricia Racette, I find it shocking that this dramatic opera has not become part of the standard repertoire. There may be one simple reason. When this Pulitzer Prize-winner opened on Broadway in 1950, its…

DRY WIT AND RIGHTEOUS OUTRAGE The best sequence in this largely solo show starring Joe Morton as civil rights activist, comedian, and writer Dick Gregory, is playwright Gretchen Law’s dramatization of a 1968 interview Gregory gives at the legendary hungry i in San Francisco. By this point in his life and career, he is driven…

SCHOOLED BY CALLAS; ENTERTAINED BY HENNESY If you’ve ever been to a master class, then Terrence McNally’s Master Class will seem very familiar. If you haven’t, then you’re in for a real eye-opener. A master class, as its name suggests, is a class given by an expert (or master) to students in a particular discipline,…

EXIT TRAGEDY Fierce, funny, and relevant under Deena Selenow’s choreographic direction, Ike Holter’s entertaining but uneven melodrama takes place in a Chicago high school that’s suffering from an image problem and a 40% graduation rate. There, a feckless assistant principal, five diverse, overloaded teachers and an intelligent, social media-savvy, system-fighting student will suffer triumph, defeat,…

SHUFFLE ALONG Is stuff magical only because it can’t be explained? Perhaps it’s more than just the absence of logic, probability, or reason. There’s a presence too: Magic evokes a child-like sense of wonder in the oldest adults, rewarding their imagination more than their ignorance. But in a world where Vegas-styled, hi-tech acts abound, nothing…

A FINE PRODUCTION OF A MINOR  ORGAN Midway through playwright Julia Lederer’s feather-light, yet rather droning romantic comedy, a character literally reaches into her own chest and pulls out her heart, which thumps and pumps and leaks blood into the padded envelope she shoves it into. The lovesick woman then leaves it in a New York…