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Theater Review: SWANSONG (Skylight Theatre)
AN EXTRAORDINARY PERFORMER IN A POWERFUL PLAY Produced by the Australian Theatre Company along with Skylight Theatre, Conor McDermottroe’s one-man play Swansong and André de Vanny’s pile-driving performance will stay with you long after the 65-minute one-act ends. Meet Austin ‘Occi’ Byrne, the abused illegitimate child of a single mother growing up in the 1960s on the…
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Theater Review: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (Shattered Globe Theatre in Chicago)
THE RIGHT TO DO WRONG Count this among the finest offerings from a Chicago theater: Shattered Globe Theatre’s kinetic staging of Chris Hannan’s adaptation of Crime and Punishment is flawlessly directed by Louis Contey, Eleven actors simultaneously attain personal bests in 155 minutes. First, however, a look at the roots of this wonder: Following his…
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Theater Review: GUNSHOT MEDLEY: PART 1 (Rogue Machine Theatre in Los Angeles)
MURDER WITHOUT END Sha’Leah Nikole Stubblefield is already a mesmerizing, ethereal presence on stage when you take a seat for Rogue Machine’s American Saga Gunshot Medley: Part 1, now in its American premiere at the MET Theatre. She is the High Priestess of Souls, perched in a graveyard, resplendent in a vermillion gown. Her garment…
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Theater Review: SCHOOL GIRLS; OR, THE AFRICAN MEAN GIRLS PLAY (Kirk Douglas Theatre, Culver City)
WE ARE THE MEAN GIRLS The subhead of Jocelyn Bioh’s 2017 play, now at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, is alluring but ultimately misleading. School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play is not merely a lighthearted twist on the popular film or its giddy siblings. This tale of a teenage queen bee and…
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Theater Review: SWEAT (Mark Taper Forum)
THE BIRTH OF TRUMP’S RACIAL BLUE-COLLAR DIVIDE Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage places much of the action of Sweat, now at the Mark Taper Forum, in a working-class bar in Reading, Pennsylvania, where floor workers from a nearby factory meet every evening to celebrate their comradery and drown their considerable sorrows. Though set in 2000 and…
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Theater Review: HOMOS, OR EVERYONE IN AMERICA (Pride Films and Plays at the Pride Arts Center)
TRAPPED IN A DREARY DRAMEDY There’s a tender scene at the start of HOMOS, OR EVERYONE IN AMERICA (a perversely paradoxical title) that wants to convince us that Jordan Seavey’s lads really are lovers. Brooklyn’s streetlights are dark from a power failure, so one guy comforts the other by playing some vinyl Vivaldi and holding him…
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Theater Review: THE WORLD GOES ‘ROUND (REPRISE 2.0)
THE WORLD IS FLAT Musical revues are a tricky business. While highly enjoyable and entertaining, even high profile compilations such as Side by Side by Sondheim and the Fats Waller songbook Ain’t Misbehavin’ amount to little more than glorified cabaret shows. Jukebox musicals a la Smokey Joe’s Café (Leiber and Stoller) and the long running Broadway smash Jersey Boys (Frankie Valli and…
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Theater Review: A SHAYNA MAIDEL (TimeLine)
NO CLOSURE FOR GENOCIDE Family is how history happens. As Arthur Miller wisely showed in All My Sons, The Gift and The Crucible, change radiates outward. Even, or especially, an immense abomination like the Holocaust can’t be measured in six million dead as powerfully as in one family crushed and confronted by what was, what might have been, and…
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Theater Review: I GO SOMEWHERE ELSE (Playwrights’ Arena at Atwater Village Theatre)
THE MOTHER OF THEM ALL “Don’t call me a liar,” a mother says. “But you lied,” responds her daughter simply. And all holy hell breaks loose. In I Go Somewhere Else from Playwrights’ Arena at the Atwater Village Theatre the “flat circle of time” gives life to the daughter at three ages, roughly 10, 30,…
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Theater Review: AIN’T TOO PROUD–THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE TEMPTATIONS (Pre-Broadway Run at the Ahmanson in Los Angeles)
MAGIC IN THE MUSIC Sometimes jukebox bio-musicals get so caught up in the fame and fortune of the journey that they miss the creative passion that is the true force driving most artists forward. Happily, Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations at the Ahmanson Theatre puts the music front and center,…
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Theater Review: JEWS, CHRISTIANS AND SCREWING STALIN (Matrix Theatre in Los Angeles)
RED SCARE IN BROOKLYN I was at a dinner party in New York once and met a 97-year-old woman who embodied a kind of Upper West Side left-wing glamour I find intoxicating. She had grown up in a family of Jewish intellectuals and recounted terrible tensions at the dinner table. “I was a socialist,” she…
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Theater Review: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (The Old Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre)
AND NOW, WITH FURTHER ADO… Not only is it one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, but Much Ado About Nothing contains a favorite character: Dogberry. This bumbling constable arrives much later in the play than the famous sparring couple Beatrice and Benedick, and adds an enormous amount of comic energy to a play that is already awash…
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Theater Review: PARADISE – A DIVINE BLUEGRASS MUSICAL COMEDY (Ruskin Group Theatre)
THE ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF A FOR-PROFIT PROPHET There are many pleasures on display in the newest incarnation of the bluegrass musical Paradise, which has been in development for over five years. Now at Ruskin Group Theatre, this is the third version I’ve seen in the show’s journey, and the most fully staged. The story is…
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Theater Review: NIGHTMARES AND NIGHTCAPS: THE STORIES OF JOHN COLLIER (Black Button Eyes Productions at The Athenaeum Theatre)
A WAY TO GHOUL OFF THIS SUMMER It’s not easy for a frightfest to work (or play) just as well as a laff-fest, let alone to be both: A delightful exercise in creepy-crawly quirkiness, Nightmares and Nightcaps: The Stories of John Collier pays hilarious homage to a British-born master of the macabre. Collier (1901-1980), a long-time New Yorker contributor…
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Theater Review: A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE (Coronado Playhouse in San Diego)
A STORY OF IMPORTANCE Unlike manipulative Broadway machines such as Priscilla and Kinky Boots, which shove issues down our throats, the societal consequences for a homosexual in A Man of No Importance resonate more because the story follows a closeted man who compensates for his restrictive 1964 Dublin atmosphere by taking pride in other areas of his life — namely…
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Theater Review: END OF THE RAINBOW (Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach)
THE LEGEND THAT GOT AWAY No, this show isn’t how fans want to remember Judy Garland at the bittersweet end. End of the Rainbow, Peter Quilter’s sardonic salute to a star on the skids, is a sometimes-sadistic portrait of an imploding diva. A festering production at Laguna Playhouse, Quilter’s retro take on “Little Girl Blue”…
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Theater Review: HAIRSPRAY (San Diego Musical Theatre at Horton Grand Theatre)
EVEN WHEN YOU’RE HAIR CAN’T HOLD UP, THIS MUSICAL CAN To say you like Hairspray really doesn’t cut it. Do you mean the 1988 John Waters film starring Devine and newcomer Ricki Lake? Or maybe you mean the 2003 Tony winner for “Best Musical,” which also yielded Harvey Fierstein a Tony for his role as…
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Theater Review: BAREFOOT IN THE PARK (The Old Globe in San Diego)
THE GLOBE MAKES IT LOOK LIKE A WALK IN THE PARK Barefoot in the Park, Neil Simon’s second Broadway hit after Come Blow Your Horn, played a staggering 1,530 performances in its initial run, winning a Tony Award for director Mike Nichols. It’s somewhat inconceivable that a play this frothy, containing less pathos than Simon’s…
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Theater Review: WAITRESS (National Tour)
SWEET AS PIE, FLAKY AS CRUST, OR BOTH? If the heat in the kitchen is getting you down, you may want to head on over to Hollywood, where the Broadway hit Waitress arrived last night for a limited four-week at the Pantages Theatre August 3-26, 2018, and then continuing on tour after that through the…
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Theater Review: ANNIE (Hollywood Bowl)
SHE’S BA-A-A-ACK For those who think the sun won’t come up until 2020, here comes another Annie, that 1977 optimistic spitfire of a musical — based on the Harold Gray comic strip Little Orphan Annie — which insists that simply thinking about a brighter tomorrow will perk you right up. Although a national tour just wrapped…
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