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Theater

  • Theater Review: ANTIGONICK (Sideshow Theatre Company at Victory Gardens in Chicago)

    By Lawrence Bommer | March 6, 2015
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    SOPHOCLES, ANCIENT BENDER OF GENDERS This “free translation” of Sophocles’ timeless tragedy about a sister against the state is only 75 minutes long. Even so,  Antigonick  manages to almost completely repeat itself. The catch or switch is that the protagonists’ sexes are reversed, as if to prevent a universal conflict from ever being sex-specific. Thanks to Canadian…

  • Theater Review: SONS OF THE PROPHET (The Blank Theatre in Hollywood)

    By Paul Birchall | February 12, 2015
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    ALL IS REALLY WELL In playwright Stephen Karam’s touching and funny drama, characters are frequently spotted quoting the great Lebanese poet-philosopher Khalil Gabran. “All is well,” they say, often in the midst of the most odious adversity. Of course, all is not well at all: Indeed, all is rather, as the Yiddish expression goes, full…

  • Regional Theatre Review: TRISTAN & YSEULT (Kneehigh Theatre Company at South Coast Rep)

    By Tony Frankel | February 2, 2015
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    THEATRICAL TRICKERY TRUMPS A TRAGIC TALE Cheeky, goofy and sassy, Tristan & Yseult at South Coast Rep affectionately mocks and contemporizes a classic love tragedy and literary legend while respecting English performing arts tradition, from music-hall and panto to Peter Sellers and Ealing Studios. This irrepressible import from Kneehigh, that brassy Cornish theater company which…

  • Theater Review: IT’S A WONDERFUL SANTALAND MIRACLE, NUT CRACKING CHRISTMAS STORY… JEWS WELCOME! (Stage 773)

    By Lawrence Bommer | November 17, 2014
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    ROASTING CHESTNUTS Nothing if not all-inviting, this modestly entitled holiday revue, It’s A Wonderful Santaland Miracle, Nut Cracking Christmas Story… Jews Welcome! is Stage 773’s second coming of 2012’s feel-good, all-purpose Yuletide romp. Accordingly, the pro(scenium) stage is festooned with colored lights, stockings, snowflakes and sparkles. The audience is regaled with cookies before the show…

  • Theater Review: PIPPIN (National Tour)

    By Tony Frankel | October 28, 2014
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    I’M NOT SAYING YOU SHOULD BE SKIPPIN’ PIPPIN, BUT: Prepare yourself. After all the rave reviews and buzz from New York, Diane Paulus’s Tony-winning revival hits the road filled with enough high-flying frivolity to bedazzle even the most jaded of theatergoers. But for all its extraordinarily magical moments it ends up being a soulless circus…

  • Theater Review: HAIR (Hollywood Bowl)

    By Tony Frankel | August 2, 2014
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    EVEN WHEN A GENERATION CAN’T HOLD UP, ITS HAIR CAN When Diane Paulus’s revival of Hair swooshed into the Pantages in 2012, it felt more like a cause for nostalgic partying than a recreation of the zeitgeist of the summer of love. Adam Shankman’s version which opened at the Hollywood Bowl last night is far…

  • Theater Review: INTIMATE APPAREL (Eclipse Theatre)

    By Lawrence Bommer | July 21, 2014
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    THE THREADS THAT BREAK There’s no doubt why Lynn Nottage’s drama won five national awards for best play, including the Drama Critics’ Circle Award and American Theatre Critics Association’s Primus Award. Nine years ago we saw the cause in Jessica Thebus’ Steppenwolf staging, a perfect marriage of inspired script and elegant production. Eclipse Theatre Company,…

  • Theater Obituary: RICHARD (RIC) MONTEJANO

    By Shelly Parsons | June 28, 2014
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    “THIS JOURNEY IS MINE” Richard (Ric) Montejano was born on September 22, 1949 in San Gabriel and grew up in Van Nuys and then La Habra. In the late 1970’s, he found his true community in Silver Lake, CA where he lived as a creative artist, entrepreneur, and activist on his own terms, chasing his…

  • Theater Review: TARTUFFE (South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa)

    By Tony Frankel | June 2, 2014
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    A BLASPHEMOUS BLAST After Dominique Serrand‘s jaw-droppingly juicy and insanely inventive production of  Molière’s Tartuffe, a South Coast Rep patron was heard to say, “Well, I don’t know if I can honestly recommend it.” Then she looked around cautiously and leaned towards her companion with, “It’s unlike any Tartuffe I’ve ever seen.” Then a whisper. “It’s…

  • Theater Review: CIRQUE SHANGHAI: WARRIORS (Pepsi Skyline Stage on Navy Pier)

    By Lawrence Bommer | May 29, 2014
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    CHINA SOARS OVER LAKE MICHIGAN For a ninth consecutive summer, Cirque Shanghai (its title actually referring to whatever Chinese city produces these performers) has returned to the well-named Skyline Stage on Navy Pier, Chicago’s tourist Mecca. A feast for the family, Warriors is the testosterone-fueled title of this year’s edition, a thrill show that’s a…

  • Theater Review: TOP GIRLS (Antaeus Theatre Company in North Hollywood)

    By Tony Frankel | April 21, 2014
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    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 16-year-old 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…

  • Theater Review: DESSA ROSE (Bailiwick Chicago at Victory Gardens in Chicago)

    By Lawrence Bommer | March 10, 2014
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    SOUL MATES FROM 167 YEARS AGO “Oh, we have paid for our children’s place in the world. We have paid again and again.” This assertion of achievement rings terribly true after two and a half hours of Dessa Rose. This characteristically urgent offering from Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, creators of Ragtime and Once on…

  • Theater Review: BRIEF ENCOUNTER (Wallis Annenberg Center / Beverly Hills)

    By Jason Rohrer | February 22, 2014
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    STILLED LIFE In 2007, Noël  Coward and David Lean’s 1945 film Brief Encounter, a somewhat maudlin expansion of the 1936 Coward one-act Still Life, was turned into a stage spectacle by Cornwall’s Kneehigh Theatre (a production commissioned by Cineworld, David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers). In it, two happily married, middle-class British strangers fall for each other…

  • Theater Review: THE HOW AND THE WHY (TimeLine Theatre)

    By Lawrence Bommer | February 7, 2014
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    ANATOMY IS NOT DESTINY Bursting with more arguments than solutions — cerebral, metaphorical and personal (sometimes simultaneously) — Sarah Treem’s two-act, two-person drama is also two plays: Two evolutionary biologists present conflicting theories of the sexual survival of the fittest, centering on menstruation and menopause. At the same time, these women — who are, not…

  • Theater Review: STOMP (North American Tour)

    By Tony Frankel | December 20, 2013
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    PLEASE MAKE IT STOMP When I first saw the Blue Man Group at the Astor Place Theatre in 1991, it was performance art nirvana. Sadly, what started as a sweet and satisfying event became a corporate machine; the size of the show in its newer behemoth incarnations (Vegas, Chicago, et al) has robbed it of…

  • Theater Review: SHE-RANTULAS FROM OUTER SPACE-IN 3D! (Diversionary Theatre)

    By Milo Shapiro | November 3, 2013
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    CAMPY SHE-RANTULAS HAS QUITE A BITE Dictionary.com defines “camp” as “something that provides sophisticated, knowing amusement, as by virtue of its being artlessly mannered or stylized, self-consciously artificial and extravagant.”   Perhaps more to the point, though, is the quote found in the margin; author Curtis F. Brown quips, “In short, camp mocks bad taste; kitsch…

  • Theater Review: EVITA (National Tour in Hollywood)

    By Tony Frankel | October 26, 2013
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    A HIGH FLYING, ADORED REVIVAL Composer Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice released the Evita “rock opera concept album” in 1976, a few years before the first theatrical production came to life on the West End and ultimately Broadway, a production that I vividly remember.   It was truly exhilarating to witness Patti LuPone…

  • Theater Review: FOREVER FLAMENCO! PAINT A WOMAN (Fountain Theatre)

    By Tony Frankel | September 21, 2013
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    THEY COULD HAVE DANCED ALL NIGHT Once a month at the Fountain Theatre, Deborah Lawlor presents Forever Flamenco!, an assemblage of the greatest flamenco artists anywhere. Programs change each time, but based on the show I saw last Sunday (which had two different artists than previously announced) it would be impossible to have a tepid…

  • Theater Review: THE WIZARD OF OZ (National Tour)

    By Tony Frankel | September 20, 2013
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    NO HEART. NO BRAIN. NO NERVE. STAY HOME. Just short of insulting, a Broadway Machine-styled version of the iconic film, The Wizard of Oz, opened at the Pantages this week. Instead of writing additional new material that matched the screenplay by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf (uncredited in the program), bookwriters Andrew…

  • Theater Review: A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE (Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice)

    By Jason Rohrer | July 7, 2013
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    IN PLAIN SIGHT Eddie Carbone (Vince Melocchi) is a good man whose frustration at not getting everything he deserves –  in this case his adopted niece Catherine (Lisa Cirincione) – costs him his soul. Such is the tale told in 1956’s A View from the Bridge, the play that marks the chronological boundary of “beloved”…

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