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Theater Review: LIFE & TIMES OF MICHAEL K (Handspring Puppet Company and Baxter Theatre at The Wallis)
A LIVING PORTRAIT Regular patrons of the theatre are accustomed to passively sitting back, letting the story flow off the stage and course through them. Life & Times Of Michael K is not traditional theatre. It’s not really a play. This beautiful and spellbinding stage adaptation of the award-winning 1983 novel by South African-born writer…
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Theater Review: THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD (Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills)
DEAD ON ARRIVAL The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, adapted for the stage by Mark Shanahan from Agatha Christie’s 1926 novel, premiered at the Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas in 2023. It’s no surprise that the West Coast premiere at Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills is only the second production, as Shanahan’s script draws out the…
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Theater Review: OUR DEAR DEAD DRUG LORD (Moxie Theatre)
A PLAY THAT RAISES THE ESCOBAR Pablo Escobar was a Colombian drug lord, narcoterrorist, and corrupt politician who founded and ran the deadly Medellín Cartel. Known as “the king of cocaine”, Escobar was one of the wealthiest criminals in history, reaching a net worth of close to thirty billion U.S. dollars by the time of…
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Theater Review: THE 39 STEPS (Masquers in Point Richmond)
MASQUERS KNOWS THE STEPS TO A SUCCESSFUL, MAGICAL COMEDY Alfred Hitchcock gets a good-natured but thorough pummeling in The 39 Steps at Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond, through December 8. Sam Barksdale, Amy Stringer, Damion Clark A small theater in a quaint town at the eastern end of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, Masquers is known…
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Theater Reviews: LA CAGE AUX FOLLES; JOAN; FIRST DATE; CAROL COOKE DIED FOR MY SINS; BEING PIAF; RENT; A GOING AWAY PARTY PLAY (various theaters throughout L.A.)
WHAT’S YOUR STORY? In the “It’s Not the Story, It’s in How You Tell It” Department, an incredible number of shows I saw in the last month have incredible tales to tell, but falter in their context. Listen, storytelling is in our genes ever since cavemen told their friends how they caught a mammoth. From…
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Theater Review: LA CAGE AUX FOLLES (Pasadena Playhouse)
LA CAGE: STRIPPED OF ITS FEATHERS In Sam Pinkleton‘s well-intentioned but ultimately discordant revival of La Cage aux Folles at the Pasadena Playhouse, that old showbiz maxim about the show must going on feels less like a triumph than a duty. This production of Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s landmark 1983 musical about love, family,…
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Theater Review: HILLARY AND CLINTON (Dezart Performs in Palm Springs)
THE ALTERNATE UNIVERSE OF POLITICS When you hear the name Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton there are three visceral reactions that may occur. The first is deep respect for a woman who gave her entire life to making American local and federal government better for everyone. The second is patriarchal hatred for a woman stepping out…
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Theater Review: LOOT (Desert Ensemble Theatre, Palm Springs)
LOOT IS A HOOT Loot is Joe Orton’s darkly comic masterpiece that eviscerates societal norms and exposes the hypocrisies of authority figures with razor-sharp wit. Two young men, Hal and Dennis, rob a bank next to a funeral parlor and attempt to stash their ill-gotten gains in the coffin of Hal’s recently deceased mother, Mrs….
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Theater Review: EMMA (Actors Shakespeare Project at the Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge, MA)
A TIME-TRAVELING JANE AUSTEN What if Jane Austen had managed to read The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan’s groundbreaking 1963 exploration of why well-educated and prosperous women were so unhappy in their roles as homemakers and mothers? Obviously, it would have been impossible for Austen (1775–1817) to do such a thing, so playwright Kate Hamill has…
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Theater Review: MINDPLAY (Huntington Calderwood, Boston)
MIND FOR ALL ITS WORTH The antidote to anxiety is control — or so the mind would have us believe. Our knee-jerk reaction to worrying about a situation, event, person, outcome, or (let’s face it) life in general can be a desperate attempt to exert our limited human influence over it all. And we all…
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Theater Review: PAW PATROL LIVE! A MIGHTY ADVENTURE (International Tour by Nickelodeon at Hobby Center, Houston)
PAWFECT FOR THE KIDDIES I have often felt that anything that gets children exposed to live theatrical productions is such a gift. A staged show can have such an enormous impact on both creativity and cognitive development. With that said, Nickelodeon’s PAW Patrol Live! A Mighty Adventure certainly had an impact on all the little…
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Theater Review: ARMS AROUND AMERICA (Dan Froot & Company; World Premiere at The Nimoy Prior to Tour)
VOICES INSTEAD OF BULLETS Although Arms Around America, which opened last night at The Nimoy in Westwood, is about guns and their people (or “ammo-sexuality,” to steal a wonderful phrase from the show), it is also a feast of sounds, a display of musical bravura and an all-around fabulous evening of unconventional live theatre. Serving…
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Theater Review: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM (Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA)
THE GOOD-NATURED BUFFOONERY IN FORUM IS THE TONIC FOR WHAT AILS YOU A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, currently at Signature Theater, is knee-slapping farcical fun à la vaudeville and the Marx Brothers mixed with ancient Roman escapades, all set to the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim. Sound like a…
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Theater Review: WAITING FOR GODOT (Geffen Playhouse)
70 YEARS ON, AND WE’RE STILL WAITING You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. — Albert Camus, playwright and novelist Aasif Mandvi and Rainn Wilson Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot has generated volumes of…
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Theater Review: SUESSICAL (Berkeley Playhouse)
“HOW LUCKY YOU ARE” TO SEE SEUSSICAL No one does youth and family theater better in the Bay Area than The Berkeley Playhouse. Everything they offer features classic and family friendly shows performed by talented ensemble actors of all ages. Even the young child performers can sing and dance to choreographed numbers with heart and…
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Theater Review: DR. SEUSS’S HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS! (The Old Globe)
YOU’LL BE GRINCHING FROM EAR TO EAR For the 27th year The Old Globe is presenting its hit musical Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, continuing its position as one of the essential entertainment attractions of the holiday season. Youngsters and adults will love it for the same reasons. It tells a great story…
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Theater Review THE NANNY LIVE! (Oasis Nightclub in SF)
Club Oasis, San Francisco’s premiere drag and cabaret theater showcases the best of Bay Area’s queer community’s talent, from fresh performers to campy remakes of pop culture and TV shows (their recent Rocky Horror was a hoot). The latest sitcom to be spoofed by the talented Oasis team of performers is The Nanny. the CBS…
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Theater Review: THE ODD COUPLE (Roustabouts Theatre Company in San Diego)
EVERYTHING ODD IS NEW AGAIN Before ABC-TV made 114 episodes of the 1970-1975 sit-com The Odd Couple starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugma), there was the movie starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in 1968. But all of that followed the original Neil Simon play by the same name, which was a huge Broadway hit…
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Theater Review: INTO THE WOODS (Kokandy Productions)
INTO THE WOODS ACCOMPANIED BY TWO PIANOS? IN A STOREFRONT THEATRE? IT’S A DREAM COME TRUE Kokandy’s production of Into the Woods directed by Derek Van Barham with music direction by Nick Sula is a clever reimagining of this Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine classic for a storefront theatre space. Most notably, this production reimagines the orchestrations…
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Theater Review: PACIFIC OVERTURES (East West Players / Los Angeles)
EAST WEST PLAYERS PULLS OUT ALL THE SHOGUNS FOR A RARELY SEEN SONDHEIM MUSICAL On Sunday, East West Players opened their new production of Pacific Overtures by Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and John Weidman (book). From 1976, this is one of Sondheim’s more overlooked shows. If you’ve never seen this unusual musical, this will…
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