Los Angeles

A  LIMP  STIFF Before composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens were, well, the Flaherty and Ahrens who created Once on This Island, Ragtime, Suessical, et al., they were a young upstart pair of ambitious writers. Their first project, Lucky Stiff, a musical farce based on Michael Butterworth’s 1983 novel The Man Who Broke the Bank at…

SIX KINDS OF WONDERFUL I’ve loved Obba Babatundé since I first saw him thirty-five years ago in Dreamgirls. Even amidst the legendary star turns of his female co-stars, he made a remarkable impression, with his ineffable presence, and warm, smoky voice. He’s had many successes in the years since, and the 25th Anniversary production of…

SWEETHEART DEAL IS A MISSED ROMANCE There’s been scant theater documenting the plight of the Latino farm workers and their fight for economic and racial equality, especially in California. Arts advocate and playwright Diane Rodriguez has lived some of that fight, which is reflected in the best parts of her new play,  The Sweetheart Deal. Unfortunately,…

A GREAT STATE FAIR Corny? Completely! Simple and sentimental? Sure! Did I love it? You betcha! Rarely performed since its Broadway outing in 1996, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s frolicking farmyard musical will have you believing that happiness is just a thing called prize pig and perfect pickle (“She knows her way around a cucumber” is now…

PURE CONFIDENCE BY A NOSE Featuring a bright, pretty Tom Buderwitz set, Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble’s Pure Confidence is a chance to see something increasingly rare under Equity rules: a stageful of hot actors really close up, working hard and nailing it. From the front row (there are only three), William Salyers’ frightened eyes, Tamara…

PRINCE ON FIRE Chronicling the lurid and lamentable swashbuckles of a permanent ingenue, Pericles is a Book of Job for the Age of Reason. If the play were self-aware enough to be cynical, with its outrageous slings and arrows it could be a grandfather to Voltaire’s Candide. But Pericles doesn’t enjoy the season-anchoring repute of…

ACB’S BEGUILING  ABC’S OF BALLET On the 32nd floor of The BLOC building in downtown LA, a small gathering looks out at a twinkling cityscape through large windows, admiring the scene until a wavering note from a lute draws us  back into the room. Three musicians tune  Renaissance instruments’”lute, long tabor, and double-reeded curtal (or dulcian)’”as audience members…

COME SALUTE THE END OF AN ERA It’s a bit surreal, but the the theater community’s longest-running AIDS-related benefit is having its final fundraiser on Saturday May 13, 2017. The Southland Theatre Artists Goodwill Event (best known by its acronym S.T.A.G.E.) will present its 33rd  cavalcade of stars at the snazzy Art Deco-styled 1930 Saban Theatre…

THE LOVE CONTINUES [Editor’s Note: To celebrate the work being done on intimate stages in Los Angeles, the Center Theatre Group (CTG) is producing Block Party at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. CTG received 76 submissions from intimate theatre companies throughout the L.A. area. Each company was able to submit one production that opened between January…

AN ORIGINAL IDEA The late Antonin Scalia (1936-2016) was an important conservative voice on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1986  until his death. He was a loud-voiced proponent of the intellectual ideal of “originalism,” meaning that interpreting the U.S. Constitution (b. 1789) lies directly with what the framers meant at that time and that no “newfangled”…