Los Angeles

THE UNBEARABLE CURSE OF BEING I remember reading Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker review of Gypsy when Tyne Daly first starred as Mama Rose. She described the experience of not being sure beforehand whether she had ever seen the show. The songs were so familiar’”of course she had seen some production or other at some point….

GOD THE FATHER AND THE MOTHER OF ALL GODS I will remember Phylicia Rashad’s performance in Head of Passes until the day I die. She is an emotional hurricane, often still, even funny’”while in the eye of the storm’”but then raging and howling with a pain rooted so deeply inside the love and bondage of…

MISERY LOVES COMPANY In referring to August Strindberg’s 1900 play The Dance of Death as a foreshadowing of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, director Ron Sossi is on firm ground. Strindberg’s mordant characters (Alice, a former actress, and Edgar, an artillery captain) are certainly waltzing to the same music as George and Martha….

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES The Road Theatre Company, one of L.A.’s most dependable companies for original material, amazing casting, steadfast directors, and terrific production values, presents the first show of its 2017-2018 season, Stupid Kid, which plays  September 22 through November 12, 2017 at Road’s Magnolia Boulevard location. This world premiere, written by one of…

AN EXTRAORDINARY FIVE-COURSE MEAL Course One (Primer Plato): The Story. Two unnamed political prisoners, languishing in an Argentine maximum security prison, are allowed only one hour each Sunday to congregate: the inmates make use of storytelling, specifically Cervantes’  Don Quixote, as a means to find solace under great duress. This course feeds the spirit, for it…

A STAR IS BORN Paul Rudnick’s bright new comedy takes place on Oscar night. Michael (Brian Hutchison) is a journeyman actor with a career and life-changing Best Supporting Actor nomination. After years of steady theater work and occasional television guest shots, he is on the verge of becoming a star. His trans nephew Eddie (Tom…

‘SELF DEPORTATION’ OR SIX STAGES OF AMERICAN GRIEF Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In life, death, and in playwright Tom Jacobson’s world view, these familiar five stages to acceptance are missing the one that is most important for survival: Laughing. Life is funny. People are funny. If God exists, He, She, They, or It…

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC; A VERY SHORT RUN; A MOST ACCOMPLISHED CAST Get ready for the wit, sophistication, and gentle eroticism of this most worldly and elegant of American musicals. The story is worldly, charming, and rueful—emotions eloquently displayed by Stephen Sondheim’s score, and abetted by Hugh Wheeler’s astounding book. A Little Night Music  is an…

DON’T ARGUE WITH ME, I HAVE CANCER As the play begins, two women are asleep in hospital beds in a shared room with a curtain drawn between them. A tightly wound young woman, Karla (Halley Feiffer) is on one side of the curtain, with the younger of the two patients. She is an aspiring comedian,…

FOOTLOOSE AND FANCY FREE Based on the 1984 film Footloose, this eponymous musical opened on Broadway in 1998. Both adaptation and jukebox musical, in which songs sometimes land willy-nilly without thought to plot advancement and character (that’s SO old-fashioned, isn’t it?), this fish-out-of-water, stranger-changes-stuffy-town dance show doesn’t have to be examined too closely. It’s a…