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Theater Review: TICK, TICK… BOOM! (Cygnet Theatre)
NOT LARSON’S BIGGIE, BUT IT PAID THE “RENT” One of the great heartbreaks of theater history is that Jonathan Larson, the author and composer of the rock opera Rent, his modern telling of Puccini’s La Bohème, died suddenly at 35 of an aortic aneurysm on Jan. 25, 1996, 10 days before his 36th birthday and…
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Theater Review: BYE BYE BIRDIE (Palm Canyon Theatre)
HELLO HELLO BIRDIE! Waxing nostalgic about the 1950s is never out of style as Palm Canyon Theatre ably proves with their current production of Bye Bye Birdie running through July 14. Bye Bye Birdie is a classic musical, famous for its satirical take on rock ‘n’ roll and its takeover of pop culture in America…
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Theater Review: UNBROKEN BLOSSOMS (East West Players)
A TIME-TRAVELING UNBROKEN BLOSSOMS REVEALS BIGOTRY AND MISOGYNY Before seeing the world premiere of Unbroken Blossoms by Philip W. Chung at East West Players, I had never heard of the 1919 American silent film Broken Blossoms, directed by D. W. Griffith starring Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess, in which a frail waif is abused by her…
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Theater Review: FUNNY GIRL (National Tour at Kennedy Center)
KATERINA MCCRIMMON IS INDEED THE GREATEST STAR Funny Girl is a beloved musical that first premiered on Broadway in 1964, with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Bob Merrill, and a book by Isobel Lennart. The original production starred Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice, a role that catapulted her to stardom and earned her critical…
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Theater Review: ZAC EFRON (Token Theatre at A Red Orchid)
ZAC IS ON THE INSIDE TRACK Token Theatre’s world premiere production of Zac Efron by David Rhee — co-written by Wai Yim and directed by Alan Muraoka — is not about Zac Efron at all, beyond recognizing that he’s a cookie-cutter hot white man. The play spotlights a gay Asian-American love story and the pair’s rise to…
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Theater Review: DESIGN FOR LIVING (Odyssey Theatre)
MEET NOËL COWARD’S THROUPLE OF ARTISTS IN THE 1930s Design For Living is one of Noël Coward’s less performed plays but it fair crackles with bons mots — you know you’re in good hands when delightfully old-fashioned words like “horrid,” “bloody,” “cheap,” and “vulgar” are tossed around with, well, gay abandon. Odyssey Theatre Ensemble is…
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Theater Review: MRS. DOUBTFIRE THE MUSICAL (National Tour at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco)
MRS. DOUBTFIRE IN GOOD HANDS WITH ROB McCLURE In Mrs. Doubtfire The Musical, a familiar San Francisco-based plot meets with the Tony-nominated actor Rob McClure, who makes Robin Williams’ classic ‘drag’ character come to life in an entirely new way. But the road from the 1987 Anne Fine novel that inspired the franchise on its…
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Theater Review: EXPATRIATED (The Broadwater Second Stage as Part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival)
A NICE EXPAT ON THE HEAD Now, here’s a fascinating show. Two former lawyers (the best kind I say) and whip-smart writers, Dominique Roberts and Candace Leung, wrote and starred in Expatriated at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. In a dizzying series of vignettes, we meet a white lawyer sent to Hong Kong and a Hong…
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Theater Review: THERE’S SOMETHING SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH CYRUS: HOW I WENT FROM A HOT MESS TO A HOT BITCH (Zephyr Theatre as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival)
THERE MAY BE SOMETHING WRONG WITH CYRUS, BUT NOT SO MUCH HIS SHOW Meet Cyrus Deboo. An adult actor who, against all the odds and ends of a traditional Persian upbringing, blossomed into an out gay man in a loving relationship, and with the eventual acceptance from his dad. In There’s Something Seriously Wrong with…
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Theater Review: CHESS (Jaxx Theatricals)
ALL THE RIGHT MOVES I’m rather certain that most folks in the U.S.A. have no idea that Chicago is one of the best theater towns in the world. The reason for this is storefront theaters, which have given birth to amazing companies such as Steppenwolf. Los Angeles used to have these but, especially with Equity…
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Theater Review: THE ADDAMS FAMILY (Long Beach Playhouse)
IT’S SILLY BUT NOT KOOKY (SNAP, SNAP) Every generation, there is an iconic TV family that defines the era. From the perfect clan of The Donna Reed Show to the trashy hellscape of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, American audiences have always been enamored by family drama. After all, is anything more universal than having…
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Theater Review: MOTHER ROAD (Berkeley Rep)
ROUTE 66 WAS ONE MOTHER OF A ROAD Now playing at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, Mother Road is an epic journey of self-discovery and family — a sequel to the famous 1939 John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath in which we follow the sad travels of Tom Joad and his family, who flee the…
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Theater Review: BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE (Backyard Renaissance at Tenth Avenue Arts Center in San Diego)
MOMMIE McDEAREST Irish playwright Martin McDonagh quickly makes it abundantly clear that dysfunctional mother/daughter relationships are not just the stuff of Hollywood. In the tiny town of Leenane in Western Ireland in the 1990s, Maureen is in a situation many families can relate to: she is the only daughter out of three willing to be…
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Theater Review: NINE (Coronado Playhouse in San Diego)
IN THIS CASE, NINE IS A PERFECT SCORE In Nine, the musical adaptation of Federico Fellini’s 1963 film 8 ½ now playing at Coronado Playhouse, Guido Contini (William Henry Schneider), an internationally famous film director of the 1960s, is turning forty and is at an impasse in several ways. After three critically and financially successful films, his…
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Theater Review: PSYCHO BEACH PARTY (The Matrix Theatre)
CAMPING ON THE BEACH Psycho Beach Party, a totally campy creation written by Charles Busch, is not your typical 50s and 60s beach blanket movie with Frankie and Annette innocently dancing and singing in the sand. With several cross-dressing cast members, mischief, madness, and the passionate pursuit of the perfect wave — or man —…
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Theater Review: REEFER MADNESS (The Whitley in Hollywood)
AN EVENT TO MAKE YOU HIGH No doubt spurred by William Randolph Hearst’s yellow-journalism against pot (he invested in wood-pulp newsprint because he didn’t want paper made from hemp), a church group in 1936 sponsored a film aimed at warning young people about the dangers of marijuana. One of the worst films ever made, Reefer…
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Theater Review: LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD (World Premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago)
LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD IS A BRIGHT STAR IN OUR VAST UNIVERSE Steppenwolf’s world premiere production of Little Bear Ridge Road by Samuel D. Hunter lays bare the reality of two people who feel so much yet are stubbornly unwilling or unable to tear down their walls and allow connection. Laurie Metcalf and Micah Stock This…
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Theater Review: FEMMINA SUPER (Broadwater Main Stage at the Hollywood Fringe Festival)
SUPER FEMMINA SUPER To say that I was fascinated with Femmina Super is an understatement. The show is subtitled, “A New Opera,” which normally has me running in the other direction, as newer operas tend to be atonal and opaque and pretentious. Writer-composer-performer Bethany Hill offers just the opposite. I fear that subtitle may scare…
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Theater Review: A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC IN CONCERT (David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center; World Premiere of Jonathan Tunick’s Orchestrations for Large Ensembles)
A SUMMER NIGHT THAT SMILES THREE HUNDRED TIMES Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s delightful musical A Little Night Music is is an adaptation of the Bergman’s 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night, a droll story of sexual musical chairs among the middle- and lower-classes in provincial Sweden at the turn of the last century….
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Theater Review: STRAIGHT TO THE HEART — A TRIBUTE TO THE LEGACY OF RODGERS & HART
A REVUE THAT GOES STRAIGHT TO THE HEART AND SOUL This past weekend, one of our boldest theater companies in the Coachella Valley, Dezart Performs (Dezart), launched a new program called Cabaret at the Pearl with the revue Straight to the Heart – A Tribute to the Legacy of Rodgers & Hart at the Pearl…
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