Areas We Cover
Categories
Theater
-
Theater Review: OPPENHEIMER (Rogue Machine at Electric Lodge in Venice)
PARTNERING ARROGANCE WITH SACRIFICE In taking residence at the Electric Lodge, their new digs in Venice, Rogue Machine makes an audacious choice with the American premiere of Tom Morton-Smith’s Oppenheimer, first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. The play takes over three hours, a cast of 24, and multiple physics lessons to tell…
-
Theater Review: PRIVATE PEACEFUL (Greenhouse Theater Center in Chicago and on tour)
TRENCH STAGEFARE It’s a small-scale marvel, a feat to treasure: In only 80 minutes director/adaptor Simon Reade and performer Shane O’Regan do total justice to Private Peaceful, Michael Morpurgo’s 2003 anti-war novel for older children. Not to be missed at Chicago’s Greenhouse Theater Center, it’s an enthralling achievement, this solo reenactment of childhood, peace, coming of…
-
Theater Review: FRANKENSTEIN (Remy Bumppo Theatre Company at Theater Wit)
MARY SHELLEY’S ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: FRANKENSTEIN’S TRICK IS OUR TREAT Creating a Halloween story for all seasons in a novel that launched a terror genre, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley named Dr. Victor Frankenstein the “modern Prometheus” (the monster, among other deprivations, has no name). It’s a sardonic slam at this very debatable benefactor for making this re-animator…
-
Theater Review: IT’S ONLY A PLAY (Pride Films and Plays at the Pride Arts Center)
THIS TURKEY IS SO SCARY, YOU HAVE TO KEEP REPEATING TO YOURSELF, “IT’S ONLY A PLAY… IT’S ONLY A PLAY…” There’s a glaring contradiction in It’s Only a Play: Written by the usually crafty Terrence McNally, a 20-time Broadway playwright, this two-act love letter to Broadway theater and its “plays of fools” — depicted in full…
-
Theater Review: PIPPIN (Mercury Theater Chicago)
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR AS FLOWER CHILD Some shows stay young by never growing up: Stephen Schwartz’ silly-stupid 1972 musical is the (im)perfect example of a musical that’s saved by its songs and spirit. A sort of ninth-century, one-ring circus crammed with presentational glee, it was practically a tribal sequel to Schwartz’s Godspell (with homage…
-
Theater Review: FLYIN’ WEST (American Blues Theater)
FLYIN’ HIGH: THE HEARTLAND SOLIDARITY OF SODBUSTING SISTERS For a while it must have seemed like a black Eden. Founded in 1877, Nicodemus, Kansas was a Reconstruction success story founded on a racial covenant. It offered a second chance for former slaves and future dreamers: The reputedly all-black town was the enlightened creation of the…
-
Theater Review: CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY (Raven Theatre in Chicago)
CRUMBS IS A RICH MEAL Much like Lorraine Hansberry and Tennessee Williams, Lynn Nottage is a memory-monger. She sees truth in small stuff that looms larger later. And as with Arthur Miller or Clifford Odets (especially the latter’s Awake and Sing!), she also has the gift of moral magnification: She can make family feuds stand for…
-
Theater Review: EVERYTHING THAT NEVER HAPPENED (Boston Court in Pasadena)
ANCIENT LIES AND MODERN QUESTIONS Theatrical magic happens when all the elements of a production come together to form a seamless whole; when the text, direction, acting, and technical contributions feel so organically intertwined that it is hard to tell where one person’s work ends, and another’s begins. Everything That Never Happened at the Boston…
-
Theater Review: ROPE (Actors Co-op in Hollywood)
HERE’S SOME GOOD NOOSE FOR YOU Amid the jukebox musicals and feel-good issue plays of the moment, thank the macabre heavens for two grippingly disturbing entertainments. The first is Echo Theater Company’s Gloria killing them across town at Atwater Village Theatre. The other is Actor Co-op’s splendidly unsettling Rope, Patrick (Gaslight) Hamilton’s 1929 play about…
-
Theater Review: CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (National Tour in Chicago)
MORE LIKE A SILVER TICKET Saccharinity, like speed, can kill: The guilty pleasure of loving chocolate can, it seems, cover a multitude of sins. Harnessing “pure imagination” as well as a sweet tooth, the 2013 British musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory milks, so to speak, Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s novel. This adored adventure, of course, connects…
-
Theater Review: UK UNDERDOG (Zephyr Theater)
HE’S NOT GOING TO THE DOGS, BUT THE PROCEEDS ARE There are many reasons to see writer/performer Steve Spiro’s entertaining and touching one man show, a powerful and emotional true story now playing at the Zephyr Theatre. Nicely shaped by director Ann Bronston, Spiro brings his childhood and subsequent years to life in a palpable way…
-
Theater Review: NELL GWYNN (Chicago Shakespeare)
THE BELLE OF COAL YARD ALLEY LEAVES YOU GWYNNING FROM EAR TO EAR When you’re mistress to a monarch, your perch is precarious. Envy supplants praise as, moving from “rags to royalty,” your origin pursues you through slander and shaming. Lacking the protection of marriage, seldom measured by your merit (just your maneuvers), the royal…
-
Theater Review: AMERICAN HERO (IAMA Theatre Company at the Pasadena Playhouse)
FEAR THAT TASTES LIKE CHICKEN IAMA Theatre Company’s 2018-19 season opener, Bess Wohl’s American Hero (a Pasadena Playhouse guest production at the Carrie Hamilton Theatre) is a portrait in miniature of the underemployed working poor’s quiet and not-so-quiet desperation. There is superb teamwork between the actors, and when it is at its best, the play…
-
Theater Review: MAME (Musical Theatre Guild)
THE ENDURING LEGACY OF JERRY HERMAN AND THE ‘STAR VEHICLE’ The chief pleasure in Musical Theatre Guild’s presentation of Mame at the Alex Theatre is hearing the music, full-out, as written, unencumbered, and unembellished. I mean that in the best sense. Jerry Herman’s score is lush and lovely, and it requires no reinvention. In the…
-
Theater Review: THE CAKE (Geffen Playhouse)
LOVE AND TOLERANCE BEGIN AT HOME Debra Jo Rupp is like a hurricane in miniature. She takes us inside a character’s small, unexpected, interior storms. We see and feel her mind and emotions churning. Sometimes she lets all that energy propel itself outward, and she bounces around the stage with adorable comic effect. Other times…
-
Theater Review: BONNIE & CLYDE (Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theater in Claremont)
A SURE(GUN)FIRE HIT The team of Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow, the most famous robbing, murdering, loving couple in U.S. history, is as unlikely a subject for a musical as Sweeney Todd. From their first meeting in West Texas through their tumultuous courtship and romance; from their brief, history-making crime spree to their fateful…
-
Theater Review: THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE (Studio/Stage in Hollywood)
BLACK COMEDY, KITCHEN SINK DRAMA & ONE FECKIN’ MOTHER While the horror and suspense aren’t as delectable as previous productions of The Beauty Queen of Leenane — Martin McDonagh’s 1996 black comedy — the dark humor, bleakness, and romance positively boil over, making Capricorn Eleven Productions’ revival a recommended trip. For 20 years, 40 year-old spinster…
-
Theater Review: THE HEART OF ROCK & ROLL (The Old Globe’s Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage)
AN EARNEST HEART THAT SHAKES, THROBS, PALPITATES & FLATLINES For all of its sincere heart and driving rock ‘n’ roll, this new jukebox musical inspired by Huey Lewis and the News’s upbeat pop tunes — either original (“I Wanna New Drug”; “The Power of Love”) or covers (Curtis Mayfield’s “It’s Alright”) — remains earthbound. Surprisingly…
-
Theater Review: FUN HOME (San Diego Repertory Theatre at the Lyceum Stage)
BETTER THAN BROADWAY SD Rep’s production of Fun Home is more intimate with more heart and fun Wise and warm, funny and tender, this 100-minute family memory-play musical charts the twisted courses of a self-shaming gay father’s suicide and the coming out of his self-affirming lesbian daughter. Based on Alison Bechdel’s 2006 graphic novel, this…
-
Theater Review: FAIRY TALE THEATRE 18 & OVER: THE MUSICAL (Ammunition Theatre at Pico Playhouse)
18 & OVER THE MOON You gotta love a revue that starts with a song, “Turn off Your Fucking Phone.” Even better is that Ammunition Theatre Company — which gave us the astounding Giant Void in My Soul this summer — ups the ante with this modern olio for grown-ups. Creative dude par excellence Michael…
Search Articles
Please help keep
Stage and Cinema going!
