Theater

EVEN GOD CAN’T SAVE  THIS FROM ITSELF Dear God (if I may quote Alice Walker): What’s going on with the theater these days? Oh, that’s right, you already know. In fact, you’re appearing on stage at the Ahmanson in the guise of TV’s Will & Grace star Sean Hayes, whose name actually is placed over your…

GET CARRIE’D AWAY The key words in the title Carrie: The Killer Musical Experience are Killer Experience. Director Brady Schwind has taken a forever-troubled musical based on source material which probably should have never been musicalized and turned it into one of the most blazingly memorable and, yes, killer experiences you may ever have in…

BORDERING ON TRAGEDY There is a lot to like about playwright Luis Alfaro’s Mojada, a modern retelling of Medea which sets the main character as an undocumented immigrant and seamstress in the East L.A. neighborhood of Boyle Heights. At its best moments, this Euripides redux offers remarkable insight into both the harrowing and promising aspects…

RECREATION My editor and I didn’t toss a coin to see who would write the review – he’s smarter than that; he wrote a very nice preview piece, the kind I find very difficult, and that was that. Neither one of us wanted to write a review because we’re out of words to describe Impro…

A FINE CLINE Patsy Cline couldn’t be more fondly or accurately recalled than by Cori Cable Kidder in Robert Marra’s production of Always…Patsy Cline, the oft-produced 1990 paean to the once and future crossover country icon who made audiences “fall to pieces.” Written and originally directed by Ted Swindley, this tribute—equal parts play, concert and…

DACHAU DELIVERANCE TO THE MAX More than six million Jews were slaughtered by Nazis. When Martin Sherman wrote Bent in 1979, the yellow star that emblazoned the clothing of Jews was well-known, but history had yet to add “We shall never forget” to the image of a pink triangle, the insignia used to identify the…

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…

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…

“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…