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Theater Review: THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT (Desert Ensemble Theatre at the Palm Springs Cultural Center)
ALTERNATIVE FACTS This past weekend Desert Ensemble Theater kicked off 2024 with The Lifespan of a Fact, a poignant and funny play by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Jordan Farrell. Based on a book by Jim Fingal and John D’Agata, who detailed their personal experience preparing a magazine essay for publication in 2003, the play’s…
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Theater Review: AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’ (Laguna Playhouse)
THE JOINT IS, INDEED, JUMPIN’ The musical revue Ain’t Misbehavin’ is a sizzling celebration of Fats Waller’s music ’” songs that he made famous in a career that ranged from uptown clubs to downtown Tin Pan Alley to Hollywood and concert stages around the world. This delightful revue evokes the humor and infectious energy of…
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Theater Review: LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR & GRILL (Cygnet Theatre Company in San Diego)
BILLIE’S LIFE WASN’T NO HOLIDAY The title actually says a lot. When a star as bright as Billie Holiday, the sultry jazz singer whose career lasted from 1929 to 1958, is performing at a bar and grill in her hometown of Philadelphia, late in her career, something is clearly amiss. Billie explains that she loves…
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Theater Review: STAND UP IF YOU’RE HERE TONIGHT (Huntington Theatre in Boston, MA)
A MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING “When the curtain is down, and it’s three minutes before the show, what’re you wishing for?” playwright John Kolvenbach wondered as he wrote Stand Up If You’re Here Tonight. He kept asking that question and many others as director of what at first appears to be a one-man show (Jim…
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Theater Review: A CASE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD (SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston)
A CASE FOR SEEING THIS PLAY Toward the end of A Case for the Existence of God (named Best Play of the 21–22 Season by the New York Drama Critics’ Circle), I tried to recall what I had learned in grad school about Aristotle and his theory of catharsis. Full disclosure: I had to look…
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Theater Review: KOOZA (Cirque du Soleil — International Tour in San Francisco and San Jose)
KOOZA RETURNS TO THE CITY OF ITS 2007 U.S. PREMIERE Circuses since the 19th century conjure up images of clowns, fire eaters, men walking on stilts and lion tamers with jungle felines jumping through flaming hoops. The sexy girl in the sparkling bustier riding atop the elephants around in a circle is the quintessential image…
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Theater Review: OUTSIDE MULLINGAR (Lamb’s Players Theatre in San Diego/Coronado)
DUBLIN YOUR PLEASURE WITH GOOD DRAMA AND COMEDY With a somewhat-forgettable title and a rather vague plot summary on the website, one walks into Outside Mullingar not quite sure what they are going to see. By the end of the first scene of this 95-minute one-act play, one could still be wondering: “Is this going…
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Theater Review: CABARET (CVRep in Cathedral City)
Cabaret was and remains one of the boldest and most innovative experiments in the history of musical theater, a ravishing work that has neither lost its power nor its pertinence no matter what one does with it. (If you think you’ve seen Cabaret because you saw the movie, you don’t know this show.) With a book by Joe Masteroff, music…
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Theater Review: SORDID LIVES (Palm Canyon Theatre in Palm Springs)
HEARTBREAK AND HILARITY IN FULL DISPLAY Palm Canyon Theater has launched into 2024 with a revival of Del Shores’ uproarious and heartfelt Sordid Lives. The playwright himself introduced the show on Saturday evening, graciously acknowledging Palm Springs and recognizing the city’s integral role in the tremendous success of both the play and the movie adaptation….
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Theater Review: MIRIAM AND ESTHER GO TO THE DIAMOND DISTRICT (World Premiere at Magic Theater)
ANDREA GORDON’S NEW PLAY IS A DIAMOND In Andrea Gordon’s lovely and engaging play Miriam and Esther Go to the Diamond District — which opened last Friday at Magic Theatre — two estranged sisters meet at their wealthy stepfather’s house 45 years after their opera singer mother’s death to go through her possessions and clean out…
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Theater Review: WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME (Dezart Performs in Palm Springs)
WHAT A GREAT SHOW CAN MEAN TO YOU Dezart Performs kicked off 2024 this past Friday with a compelling production of Heidi Schreck‘s What the Constitution Means to Me. When I saw the direct-from-Broadway production at Mark Taper Forum in 2020 it stood as a profoundly relevant tour de force. Astonishingly, since then, we have…
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Theater Review: KATE (Pasadena Playhouse)
OFFBEAT AND OFF TRACK In the often-unpredictable world of theatrical comedy, Kate Berlant‘s Kate promised to be a groundbreaking foray into the realm of absurdist humor. Yet, in its execution, the show — which opened last night at the Pasadena Playhouse — treads a precarious line between pioneering artistry and sheer incomprehensibility. The opening scene…
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Theater Review: THE COCKTAIL HOUR (Trinity Theatre in Mission Valley)
THE HOUR HAS COME The Trinity Theatre in Mission Valley is currently presenting a too-brief revival of A. G. Gurney‘s comedy-drama The Cocktail Hour. The show originally debuted in 1988 at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre and went on to a run in New York City. The Cocktail Hour has been labeled a comedy of…
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Theater Review: TROUBLE IN MIND (Lyric Stage, Boston)
GOOD TROUBLE The Lyric Stage production of Trouble in Mind, directed by Dawn M. Simmons (co-producing artistic director, The Front Porch Arts Collective), is well worth seeing, if only for the wonderful Patrice Jean-Baptiste (recently memorable as Petruchio in Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s Taming of the Shrew). Jean-Baptiste’s dry wit and emotional insight, as well as…
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Theater Review: THE CRUCIBLE (Lamplighters Community Theatre in La Mesa/San Diego)
KNOWING WHICH IS WITCH The word “crucible” has two very different meanings. One is a pot in which substances are heated to high temperatures. Another is a situation in which people are severely tested. Which definition is The Crucible based on? A case could easily be made for either and likely both for playwright Arthur…
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Theater Review: MERCURY (Road Theatre in North Hollywood)
ECLIPSING NORMALITY: THE DARK ORBIT OF STEVE YOCKEY’S MERCURY Steve Yockey‘s work in the theatre world undeniably polarizes audiences, eliciting fervent admiration from some and equally passionate disdain from others. As for myself, I am firmly ensconced in the camp of his admirers. His unique approach to storytelling, marked by an intricate blend of the…
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Theater Review: EVERY BRILLIANT THING (Center Repertory Company at The Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek)
EVERY BRILLIANT PLAY Now playing at Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek through Jan. 28 is the fantastic one-man show Every Brilliant Thing. Written by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahue, this show combines humor and pathos with audience participation for a night of riveting theater. Originating in London and made into an HBO…
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Theater Review: LOVE, LOVE, LOVE (Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C.)
IS LOVE REALLY ALL YOU NEED? “Love” appears three times in the title of this three-act play, and there are three separate time periods and settings, all of which are directed with solid, assured focus by David Muse, impressively in his 14th year as Studio Theatre Artistic Director. Written by the prolific British playwright Mike…
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Off-Broadway Review: ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE: HOW SHAKESPEARE INVENTED THE VILLAIN (Patrick Page at DR2)
WICKED GOOD THEATER Patrick Page was exposed to Shakespeare as a toddler in the mid-sixties; since then he seems to have been deeply feeling, researching, analyzing and performing every word the Bard wrote. All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain, his solo show at the DR2 Theater, written by him and directed…
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Theater Review: INTIMATE APPAREL (North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach)
THE THREADS THAT BREAK The African-American playwright Lynn Nottage sits atop the honor role of American playwrights from the first two decades of the 21st century — she has written a dozen full-length plays, two of which (Sweat and Ruined) won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, and she wrote the book for the hit MJ The Musical….
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