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Theater Review: BEYOND THERAPY (Desert Ensemble Theater)
AN ABSURDIST ROMP INTO MODERN LOVE AND MADNESS Desert Ensemble Theater presents Christopher Durang’s hilarious comedy, Beyond Therapy, through April 27. The play is an exploration of neurosis, relationships, and the absurdity of modern psychobabble, and in this staging, directed by Jerome Elliott Moskowitz, the production delivers a chaotic cocktail of comedy and existential dread that…
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Theater Review: FALSETTOS (Dezart Performs in Palm Springs)
NOT A FALSE NOTE IN DEZART PERFORMS’ WONDERFUL PRODUCTION William Finn and James Lapine‘s two-act musical Falsettos follows Marvin (Tim Ewing), an appealing, brainy, anxious, obsessive, wealthy Jewish gay man who struggles to create a tight-knit family out of his eclectic array of core relationships: an ex-wife Trina (Stephanie Lynne Mason), new lover Whizzer (Patrick…
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Theater Review: HOW TO FAIL (Actors’ Gang Theater)
ONE MAN. 60 MINUTES OF DISASTER. EVERYTHING FAILS MAGNIFICENTLY! Ron Campbell is a clown all right. This is apparent from his first pratfall, which occurs about eleven seconds into his show, How to Fail. In this day and age of radical, assaultive clowns who prey on their audiences’ psychological foibles and are more comfortable staring…
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Theater Review: CYRANO (Los Altos Stage Company)
CYRANO GETS A CONFUSING NOSE JOB Why anyone involved in Los Altos Stage Company’s current production of Cyrano thought it would be a good idea to make Cyrano a woman—and without the trademark large proboscis at that—is a bit of a mystery. Cyrano de Bergerac remains a beloved staple of the stage, loosely based on…
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Theater Review: JERSEY BOYS (Palo Alto Players)
Palo Alto Players’ Jersey Boys Finds the Beat, Even When the Staging Stumbles Opening night at Palo Alto Players’ Jersey Boys had the Lucie Stern audience itching to jump out of their seats and dance. And who could blame them? The hits keep coming in this crowd-pleasing jukebox musical about Frankie Valli and the Four…
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Theater Review: YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE END OF THE WORLD! (South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa)
END-OF-WORLD TRAGICOMEDY CRACKS, BLEEDS AND THRIVES The end arrives not with a sob, but with a drag queen in a glittering black pantsuit, standing in a celestial spotlight, grinning like they’re about to host the universe’s weirdest game show. Keiko Green’s You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World! doesn’t so much begin…
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Theater Review: WRITING FRAGMENTS HOME (Hillbarn Theatre in Foster City)
COUCH SURFING AND CULTURAL BAGGAGE It makes sense that Jeffrey Lo—a Filipino artist who writes, directs, and knows the Peninsula theater scene inside and out—could write a play like Writing Fragments Home. It’s personal without being sentimental, funny without trying too hard, and it lands exactly where it needs to. I was at the near-sold-out…
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Theater Review: CORKTOWN ’39 (Rogue Machine at The Matrix)
IN CORKTOWN ’39, THE LIVING ARE JUST GHOSTS WITH BETTER TIMING Mark Mendelson‘s tightly composed set at The Matrix Theatre is a room cloaked in aging wealth at the Keating family’s Philadelphia home. Heavy curtains. Soft chairs. Whiskey always within reach. It feels like it once held power and still holds its consequences. That atmosphere…
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Theater Review: HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES (Tectonic Theater Project at Berkeley Repertory Theatre)
HERE THERE ARE HORRORS Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich’s Here There Are Blueberries, directed by Kaufman at Berkeley Rep, involves a fascinating true story. We are at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., where archivists study, document, and interpret Holocaust history—people often donate letters, photographs, and personal mementos from family members of that…
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Theater Review: HELLAS (The School of Night at the Broadwater)
A HELLUVA HELLAS Ancient drama gets short shrift here in Los Angeles. Sure, we get the stories, but the shows are usually adaptations, hardly ever a straight translation, and when we do, they’re performed in today’s style. In 2018, The School of Night did something radical: they performed Seneca’s Hercules Insane as written and with…
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Theater Review: HENRY JOHNSON (David Mamet Midwest Premiere at Victory Gardens)
MAMET’S HENRY JOHNSON PROVES A DIFFICULT PROTAGONIST Along with blazingly rapid dialog, there’s something aggressively determined about David Mamet plays—like Glengarry Glen Ross now being revived on Broadway—and his latest Henry Johnson is no exception. Written in 2023 where it premiered at the Electric Lodge in Venice, California, Mamet’s stage effort is now enjoying its…
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Theater Review: HILLARY AND CLINTON (OnWord Theatre at the Alma Hotel in San Diego)
WHAT’S IN A NAME? A LOT WHEN IT’S “CLINTON” “Feelings are a terrible way to make decisions, Bill.” “Yes, but people don’t think you have any.” Reviewing this show is almost like reviewing two separate factors: the show itself and the experience they are creating. In the talkback afterward, Producing Artistic Director and Education Coordinator…
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Theater Review: THE HOT WING KING (Cygnet Theatre)
THESE WINGS ARE FLAMING IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE In our divided nation, there are still a few universals that bring us together. Puppies. Mother’s Day. Pizza. And, tagging close behind on the pizza bandwagon: the deep-fried delight known as “chicken wings.” But the folks at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo who first served them…
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Theater Review: CROWNS (Moonbox at Arrow Street Arts)
SIT BACK AND LET THIS CAST TAKE YOU TO CHURCH Aptly described as a powerful mix of gospel music and “hattitude,” Moonbox Production’s Crowns—which opened last night at Arrow Street Arts—indeed hits on many levels. Regina Taylor’s adaptation of the eponymous coffee table book by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry flows easily between music and…
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Theater Review: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (Actors’ Shakespeare Project)
HALCYON AND ON AND ON Director Maurice Emmanuel Parent’s vibrant, pulsing production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream transforms the woods outside Athens into a 1990s dance floor. With throbbing club beats (sound design by Mackenzie Adamick), fairies dressed in glitter and leather (costumes by Seth Bodie), and a gender-fluid aesthetic of hedonism, this Dream…
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Theater Review: IN THE BAR OF A TOKYO HOTEL (Tennessee Williams at the Hudson Backstage Theatre in Hollywood)
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’ SELDOM SEEN PLAY SHOWS WHY IT’S SO SELDOM SEEN It can be a curse to start one’s literary or dramatic career with a masterpiece. Doing so serves to intensify the expectations of one’s readership or audience while inflating the artist’s creative anxieties. Towards the end of his life, author of the classic antiwar…
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Theater Review: REGENCY GIRLS (Pre-Broadway World Premiere at The Old Globe)
A RIOTOUS CARRIAGE RIDE THROUGH TIME Somewhere between empire waistlines and leather harnesses, Regency Girls carves out a raucous, messy, and strangely moving place for itself onstage at The Old Globe. This new musical, with a book by Jennifer Crittenden and Gabrielle Allan, takes the stiff-backed decorum of Austen-era England and smashes it headfirst into…
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Theater Review: HAIRSPRAY (Desert Theatricals)
TRY TO FIND A HAIRSPRAY WITH BETTER HOLD; THIS ONE WORKS FROM HEAD TO NECK! As I was driving to the Rancho Mirage Amphitheatre I noticed that the regular Friday Night Stress was lifting from my shoulders. I already loved Hairspray and Desert Theatricals can be quite stylish and classy, but I soon discovered that…
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Theater Review: HER PORTMANTEAU (Central Square Theater and Front Porch Arts Collaborative in Cambridge, MA)
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED The fourth episode in Mfoniso Udofia’s ambitious nine-episode Ufot Family Cycle, Her Portmanteau, takes us deeper into the fascinating story of a very specific Nigerian-American family whose struggles remain universal. Gripping performances by Patrice Jean-Baptiste, Jade Guerra, and Lorraine Victoria Kanyike create an immersive and emotionally charged one-act play that kept…
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Theater Review: SHUCKED (National Tour)
IT DON’T GET MUCH CORNIER– AND THAT’S THE POINT In Shucked, the jokes fly fast as exploding kernels of popcorn in this Tony-award winning musical comedy—part Brigadoon, part Music Man, and wholly the old TV show Hee Haw (which I’ve never actually seen but instinctively recognize). Quinn VanAntwerp and Miki Abraham Jake Odmark and Mike Nappi Shucked is the…
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