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Theater Review: 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE (Broadway Center Stage at the Kennedy Center)
S-T-U-P-E-N-D-O-U-S AND S-I-D-E-S-P-L-I-T-T-I-N-G The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a delightful and unconventional musical comedy that debuted in 2005. With music and lyrics by William Finn and a book by Rachel Sheinkin, the show is set at a fictional spelling bee in Putnam Valley Middle School. It follows an eclectic group of middle…
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Theater Review: LOOPED (The Roustabouts Theatre Company at Scripps Ranch Theatre in San Diego)
TALLULAH’S BACK IN TOWN, DAHLING! “Don’t touch my purse! Touching a woman’s purse is like touching her vagina! Except, I can only put so much in my purse.” Not quite a lady-like quote for 1965, huh? Welcome to the world of screen star Tallulah Bankhead, a stage actress best known for her role in the…
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Theater Review: TAKES ALL KINDS (Dan Hoyle at The Marsh SF)
IT TAKES DAN HOYLE TO CREATE GREAT JOURNALISTIC THEATER San Franciscans pride themselves on their open mindedness towards all walks of life and outlooks. But do we really listen objectively to other people’s opinions that may vastly differ from our own? We love living in our Blue bubble particularly now in our very divided political…
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Theater Review: THE WISDOM OF EVE (Whitefire Theatre)
BACKSTAGE BROADWAY BACKSTABBING: ALL ABOUT THE WISDOM OF EVE Any fan of film noir most assuredly has seen the 1950 major motion picture All About Eve, which shares the story of a young Broadway hopeful who schemes her way into the backstage life of an established star just to replace her in the ingenue role…
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Theater Review: FUCKING MEN (The Bent in Palm Springs)
THE BOYS IN THE BEDROOM Now in its third season, The Bent is presenting Fucking Men by Joe DiPietro at the Palm Springs Cultural Center. Based on 19th-century Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler’s much-imitated 1897 Der Reigen (in French, La Ronde), the play is a roundelay of ten couples, in which the one encountered in the first scene…
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Theater Review: GREEN DAY’S AMERICAN IDIOT (Deaf West and Center Theatre Group at Mark Taper Forum)
IDIOT IS AS IDIOT DOES Unlike the jukebox musicals Mamma Mia and Escape to Margaritaville, which invented stories around the songs of ABBA and Jimmy Buffett, American Idiot ’” inspired by the eponymous 2004 rock concept album by the American punk rock band Green Day ’” has a book by lyricist Billie Joe Armstrong and original director Michael Meyer with about…
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Theater Review: BABBITT (Shakespeare Theatre Company, D.C.)
BEMUSING, DISAPPOINTING, SUPERFICIAL, AND FULL OF CONTRADICTIONS After all the hype about Matthew Broderick starring in the title role of Babbitt, presented by Shakespeare Theatre Company at Harman Hall, the production — which had its world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse last November — is a disappointment. Yet, the fault doesn’t lie solely with Broderick’s acting….
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Theater Review: BECKY NURSE OF SALEM (Shattered Globe Theatre | Midwest Premiere at Theater Wit)
A WITCH’S BREW WHICH EFFECTS HOPE AT HALLOWEEN There’s a play about the Salem witch trials playing in Chicago, and amazingly it’s not Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Sarah Ruhl wanted a turn at telling the story but from a modern lens, folding in Trump’s America and the opioid crisis. The resulting play is Becky Nurse…
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Theater Review: BLOOD/LOVE (Crimson Nightclub, Hollywood)
VOCALIZING VAMPIRES & THE UNDULATING UNDEAD BITE ME! SUCK ME! ROCK ME! From Dracula to Dark Shadows, vampires have always been an entertainment staple during the Halloween season. This year, it’s the all-original “popera” Blood/Love with book and music by Carey Sharpe and Dru DeCaro, and additional music by Concord Records’ artist Erin Boehme and Adam…
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Theater Review: DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS (Moonbox Productions in Cambridge, MA)
IF SOMETHING’S ROTTEN, IT SURE ISN’T THIS DELIGHTFUL PRODUCTION If you’re ready for a break from the woes of daily life and tragic news cycles but can’t swing a European getaway, head on over to Arrow St Arts in a quaint corner of Harvard Square where Moonbox Productions is mounting a delightful Dirty Rotten Scoundrels….
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Theater Review: THE (MOSTLY) TRUE STORY OF A COMMON SCOLD (L.A. Performing Arts Productions, Promenade Playhouse)
As a female journalist myself, I was curious to learn about the life of Anne Royall, a former maid who married her employer, a landed gentleman in the early 1800s when such marriages were rarely allowed, and then rose to become America’s first female journalist at a time when women were “supposed” to stay home…
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Theater Review: LIGHT SWITCH (Open Space Arts in Chicago)
A SWEET, QUEER, NEURODIVERGENT LOVE STORY Open Space Arts’ Chicago premiere of Light Switch by Dave Osmundsen is a charming play with representation that is refreshing to see on stage. The play follows Henry Sullivan, a queer man on the autism spectrum, as he tries to find a love that stands up to the fervor…
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Theater Review: NASSIM (The Huntington Calderwood, Boston)
A PLAY THAT’S OUT OF THE BOX Like an acrobat without a net who thrills us with her daring, Iranian-German playwright Nassim Soleimanpour offers a play with virtually no set, no costumes, and an actor doing a cold read of a completely unfamiliar script to keep an audience enthralled with his 75-minute work Nassim. On…
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Theater Review: KIMBERLY AKIMBO (National Tour, San Diego)
WILL YOU STILL NEED ME, WHEN I’M (LOOKING) SIXTY-FOUR? How would you live your life if you knew you were going to die of old age : in your late teens? All teens experience appearance issues, but Kimberly Levaco (Carolee Carmello) has it worse than most. Kim has a rare chromosomal disease very similar to…
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Theater Review: TESLA: A RADIO PLAY FOR THE STAGE (Tour at Cal Tech and Big Bear Lake Performing Arts Center)
AN ELECTRIFYING TESLA Much has been written about Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla, the inventor of alternating current, radio and so much more, ever since his name became one of the world’s most known electric automobile brand names in 2003. Robbed of the scientific accolades he deserved by others more in tune with how to make…
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Theater Review: THE VERY BEST PEOPLE (IAMA Theatre Company at Atwater Village Theatre)
BLOOD AND RANCH DRESSING In December of 2020, the world was still in the grip of COVID-19’s unpredictable terror. Moderna and Pfizer had just released their vaccines, but supply was scarce and available only to a few high-risk groups. Physical distancing, masking, and sanitizing were all top of mind, as were, shall we say, “competing”…
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Theater Review: SOMETHING ROTTEN (Wildsong Productions in Ocean Beach, San Diego)
THERE’S SOMETHING GOOD IN ROTTEN So you’re a somewhat-talented duo of playwrights, living in 1595 England, with actors eager to work with you and a benefactor hiring you to produce a play. What could go wrong? Well, there’s this other guy named William Shakespeare in town and not only is he pretty good at it,…
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Theater Review: IRONBOUND (Raven Theatre in Chicago)
THEATER THAT BINDS Raven Theatre’s production of Martyna Majok’s Ironbound directed by Georgette Verdin is a brilliantly patient drama supported by a stellar cast and a detail-oriented creative team. Lucy Carapetyan Darja, a Polish immigrant, has few constants in her life, but a bus stop in a run-down New Jersey town is one of them….
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Theater Review: THE COMEDY OF ERRORS (Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington D.C.)
DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE, DOUBLE YOUR FUN The Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare’s earliest and most farcical comedies, centered around themes of mistaken identity and slapstick humor. The play tells the story of two sets of identical twins who were separated at birth, leading to a series of misunderstandings, wrongful accusations, and chaotic…
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Theater Review: PRIMARY TRUST (La Jolla Playhouse)
THIS IS GREAT THEATER. TRUST ME. Reviewers across the country have honored the 2024 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Primary Trust with many positive adjectives, like “touching” and “deeply affecting.” But one adjective comes closer to the mark in describing the Eboni Booth drama: mesmerizing. The show is receiving its West Coast premiere at the La Jolla…
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