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Theater Review: SUNDOWN, YELLOW MOON (Raven Theatre in Chicago)
A FAMILY IN KEY SIGNATURES As she showed in  Five Mile Lake,  Rachel Bonds works with a small brush. She lays low before her subject in order to convey tender, unassuming connections between the characters. The result: inconclusive plots that suggest so much more life around these souls — ones that we can only assume but nonetheless…
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Theater Review: BORDER PEOPLE (The Marsh San Francisco)
ON THE BORDERLINE What do a Latino cop, a black vet in the Bronx, a Saudi Arabian without a country, a gay pagan goat rancher, and a homeless HIV-positive man have in common? Dan Hoyle. SF’s own master storyteller is back with a new show, Border People, one he has crafted from a series of…
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Theater Review: THE VANDAL (West Coast Premiere at Chance Theatre)
WHAT LIES BURIED Actor Hamish Linklater’s funny, sharp and tender play The Vandal begins on a cold winter night as a down-on-her-luck middle-aged woman waits for a bus on a deserted street. A high-school boy appears and starts up a conversation. Precocious and lively, he quickly overcomes the woman’s reluctance to participate. He points out…
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Theater Review: YOGA PLAY (Laguna Playhouse)
THE CORE IS THERE, BUT THE POSE IS OFF Not only is yoga a gentle exercise and a Hindu spiritual discipline, it’s also an $83 billion international industry. Meet Joan (Susi Damilano), a new marketing director of Jojomon, a yoga merchandise conglomerate. She actually could care less about yoga; she’s going for numbers and new…
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Theater Review: THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (City Lit in Chicago)
THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME Terry McCabe, artistic director of City Lit Theater, knows Sherlock Holmes and his shadow sleuth Dr. Watson almost as well as author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His adaptations of their adventures combine storytelling urgency and narrative drive with crime solving at a perfect fever. Ever at…
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Theater Review: LERNER AND LOEWE’S GREATEST HITS (Music Theater Works)
WELL, LERNER & LOEWE ME DOWN Seldom has a dream team had a shorter span: It was all over in only 13 years. But between 1947 and 1960 Alan J. Lerner and Frederick Loewe ran a glorious gamut. It happened both on Broadway and in Hollywood transfers of five very different successes. The powerful partnership…
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Theater Review: LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (Pasadena Playhouse)
A GREEN NEW DEAL As Little Shop of Horrors teaches us: sometimes you just need fresh blood. In that vein, the Pasadena Playhouse more than delivers. Their audacious revival of the quirky cult classic – directed with exemplary vision by Mike Donahue – offers audiences something they may not have realized they craved. In this…
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Theater Review: BARNUM (Musical Theatre Guild at the Alex Theatre in Glendale)
I LIKE YOUR STYLE P. T. Barnum claimed there’s a sucker born every minute, but composers like Cy Coleman come along only once in a lifetime. His vigorous score was in the capable hands of musical director Jan Roper for Musical Theatre Guild’s staged reading of Barnum at the Alex Theater. Score, book and lyrics…
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Theater Review: NEVER IS NOW (Skylight Theatre in Los Angeles)
NEVER TAKE FOR GRANTED THE PHRASE “NEVER AGAIN” Wendy Kout, the playwright of Never Is Now asks the question, “What happens when people from diverse backgrounds experience the firsthand accounts of ten survivors who were labeled ‘undesirable’ and thrust into Hitler’s systematic genocide?” She shows us exactly what happens in a very powerful, emotional and…
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Theater Review: TOP GIRLS (A.C.T. in San Francisco)
YOU’RE THE TOP, GIRLS For the most part, Joyce, a working class Englishwoman in Ipswich is not a sympathetic or likeable person: She is annoyed by her teenage daughter Angie (who admittedly is belligerent and daft), and begrudging toward her sister, Marlene, whom she views as a ball-busting, career-driven, selfish, soulless abandoner (not that there…
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Theater Review: A PLAY IS A POEM (World Premiere by Ethan Coen at the Mark Taper in Los Angeles)
SHOWTIME AT THE VANITIES Ethan Coen’s A Play Is a Poem at the Mark Taper Forum strikes me as neither a poem, nor, strictly speaking, theater. I don’t know what it is. For the most part the five short playlets come across as sketches — and not in a good way. Coen attempts to project…
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Theater Review: BERNHARDT/HAMLET (Goodman Theatre in Chicago)
TO BE OR NOT TO BE SARAH BERNHARDT Well, with “Bernhardt” and “Hamlet” sharing the marquee, Goodman Theatre’s season-opener must be larger than life if not literature. Sprawling and stuffed at 150 minutes, Theresa Rebeck’s multi-focused 2018 drama Bernhardt/Hamlet takes a quizzical look at a bizarre chapter of theater lore. We’re witness to the sensation-seeking choice of…
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Theater Review: HELLO AGAIN (Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre in Evanston)
A MUSICAL CIRCLE JERK You could call it a daisy chain of horizontal encounters, this chronicle of sexual partisans whose sleeping around creates a sort of chain letter of lust. A ton of talent reduced to silly shenanigans — a miscalculation dogs director/choreographer Brenda Didier’s revival of Hello Again, Michael John LaChiusa’s 1993 musical trivialization of…
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Theater Review: THE KING’S SPEECH (The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare)
MY FAIR MONARCH We love levelling. Mark Twain’s prince and the pauper, Queen Victoria and her Scottish and Indian boyfriends, Queen Anne and her favorites, a British schoolteacher and the King of Siam, King George III and his equally mad doctors — these equalizing polarities keep history real. Add to these opposites that attract another…
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Theater Review: OSLO (TimeLine Theatre at Broadway Playhouse in Chicago)
DANCE OF DIPLOMACY Clandestine and volatile, high-stakes diplomacy can be as taut as any courtroom drama. It’s hard to imagine a story more intrinsically theatrical than the real-life crises and complications that transform Oslo into a foreign-affairs thriller. Now at the Broadway Playhouse in a crackling collaboration between TimeLine Theatre Company and Broadway in Chicago, it’s history…
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Theater Review: KISS MY AZTEC (La Jolla Playhouse)
SHOULD EVERYONE KISS MY AZTEC? IT DEPENDS: For fans of John Leguizamo, the notion of a full-length musical written by him is a thrilling draw. Whether a fan from his numerous edgy one-man Broadway shows like Ghetto Klown and Latin History for Morons, or his dramatic roles in Carlito’s Way and ER, or his comedic…
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Theater Review: SKINTIGHT (Geffen Playhouse)
THE NEW NORMAL A weird dynamic takes over the house at Skintight, Joshua Harmon’s comedy, now at the Geffen Playhouse. In broad terms, it feels like a battle of the sexes — with men in the audience, straight and gay alike, cheering for Elliot (Harry Groener), a seventy-year-old billionaire clothier who defines love as something…
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Theater Review: THE GREAT LEAP (Steppenwolf)
HOOP DREAMS IN THE CELESTIAL KINGDOM No question, Lauren Yee is a wonderful new voice in theater. With Cambodian Rock Band she made crucial connections between iconic survivors and unspeakable genocide. Victory Gardens Theater’s 2018 local premiere was a powerful work of witness and redemption. Just as remarkable in its fusion of sport and history, people…
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Theater Review: FIVE PRESIDENTS (American Blues Theater at Stage 773 in Chicago)
A CONVERGENCE OF HISTORY It was supposedly the “end of an era,” the memorial service for Richard Nixon in the Nixon Library in his birthplace Yorba Linda, California, on April 27, 1994. And we are there: Five Presidents, a recently revised 2015 drama by Chicago favorite Rick Cleveland, delivers 85 minutes of fascinating “fly on the…
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Theater Review: THE CHINESE LADY (Greenway Court Theatre in Los Angeles)
DECORATIVE CHINA I saw this beautifully sad, poignant, dark play last Saturday evening and I’m still thinking about it. Thanks to the wonderful writing, acting and directing this two-person outing based on a true story is that memorable. In 1834 a 14-year-old Chinese girl, Afong Moy (the excellent Amy Shu), arrived in New York from…
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