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Theater Review: SEX TIPS FOR STRAIGHT WOMEN FROM A GAY MAN (Margaritaville Resort in Palm Springs)
TIPS AND TITS Bus Stop Productions LLC is a new entertainment company in the Coachella Valley focusing on lively and unique experiences appealing to all that enjoy local nightlife. Their current production, Sex Tips for a Straight Woman from a Gay Man (Sex Tips) runs through May 27, 2023 at the Margaritaville Resort in Palm…
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Theater Review: FUTURE THINKING (Desert Ensemble Theater at the Palm Springs Cultural Center)
TRAGI-COMIC CON Desert Ensemble Theater’s (DET) current production, Eliza Clark’s Future Thinking, closing on April 23, is the final play in their season of “West Coast Originals.” The company dedicated the 12th season to new work by under-produced West Coast playwrights, which included two world premieres, one California premiere and the current play, which appears…
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Theater Review: HAIRSPRAY (National Tour)
THIS HEAVYWEIGHT TAKES THE PRIZE Can you ask for a more perfect pairing than a drag queen and the high camp of musical theater? In this national tour production of Hairspray, Tracy Turnblad and friends turn up the heat with their dance movies on the stage of Segerstrom Hall. The band is tight, the movements…
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Theater Review: LOCUSTS HAVE NO KING (New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco)
A GAY PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS From the Book of Proverbs: Locusts have no king. But they all move forward in formation. Rough translation: Locusts have no king so they lead a life of smallness and conformity — a crowd mentality. It’s also a metaphor for The West Coast premiere of Queer, Puerto Rican and Dominican…
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Theater Review: 1776 (National Tour)
2023 COMES TO 1776 The founding of the United States of America has always been largely misunderstood, even by its own citizens. Fifty landowners got together in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and debated for two years on the efficacy of declaring a rationale for Independence; they needed sensible reasons for breaking away from the mother country, Great…
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Theater Review: EXOTIC DEADLY: OR THE MSG PLAY (World Premiere at The Old Globe in San Diego)
ANNA MIKAMI ALREADY WELL-SEASONED IN HER THEATRICAL DEBUT For theatergoers who have been waiting impatiently for a new play about monosodium glutamate, your wish has been answered. Check out the world premiere of Keiko Green’s new work at the Old Globe, called Exotic Deadly: Or The MSG Play. Anna Mikami as Ami and Eunice Bae…
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Theater Review: PRESENT LAUGHTER (Cygnet Theatre in San Diego)
VISITING THE PAST FOR PRESENT LAUGHTER If you’re looking to expose yourself to the plays of Noël Coward, this is where to start. Not only did he write Present Laughter (in six days!) to amuse himself AND create the main character based on himself, but he even chose to play Garry in the original London…
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Theater Review: JUST FOR US (Alex Edelman at the Calderwood Pavilion and Colonial Theatre in Boston)
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE WHITE SUPREMACIST MEETING If you’re looking for great night of humor about white supremacy and anti-Semitism (and who isn’t?), this is the show for you. Alex Edelman, Boston-born and -bred but now located in New York, brings his one-man show to the Calderwood Pavilion at the…
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Theater Review: ANGELS IN AMERICA, PART ONE: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES (Arena Stage in D.C.)
AN ANGELIC PRODUCTION Arena Stage’s Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches begins with the Angel (rapturous Billie Krishawn) grooming a sand-swept stage into a giant spiral. As soon as her zen garden is complete, Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz (stoic Susan Rome) sinks his foot into the stage, telling the story of the emigration of Jews…
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Theater Review: COLONIALISM IS TERRIBLE, BUT PHỞ IS DELICIOUS (Chance Theater in Anaheim)
MANY PARTS ARE EDIBLE It’s fascinating to watch a new generation of Asian playwrights — Mike Lew, Qui Nguyen, Lauren Yee, Dipika Guha, Christopher Chen — writing about the quest for identity as it pertains to traditional upbringing, here or abroad, and current frustrations as modern Asians in America, often addressing race within a meta,…
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Theater Review: IT’S ONLY A PLAY (Theatre 40)
IT’S ONLY A FLOP There’s a glaring contradiction in It’s Only a Play: Written by the usually crafty Terrence McNally, a 20-time Broadway playwright, this two-act love letter to Broadway theater and its “plays of fools” ’” depicted in full fratricidal frenzy at an opening night party ’” utterly mocks its message. The joke is on…
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Theater Review: MENSTRUATION: A PERIOD PIECE (Big Little Theatre Company at the L.A. LGBT Center)
I CAN’T GET THAT TASTE OUT OF MY MOUTH Get ready for a show that is all vagina and no vulva. This bloody awful musical by Big Little Theater Company is of the women, by the women and for the women, especially lesbians — there are lesbians on stage, in the audience, and behind the…
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Theater Review: GRIEF: A ONE MAN SHITSHOW (Theatre Row’s Studio Theatre, Off-Broadway)
WHERE’S THE GRIEF? A LOT OF GOOD SHIT, BUT WE NEED MORE SHOW Grief. It almost seems to come on a daily basis. You hear people grieve over politics, a lost job, a breakup, the weather — grieving which, in many ways, manifests itself in complaining (misery loves company, yes?). As Colin Campbell tells us…
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Theater Review: CORIOLANUS (Actors’ Shakespeare Project in Boston)
MAMA’S BOY, FOR BETTER OR WORSE When I think of Shakespeare’s women, many names come to mind: Gertrude, Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Beatrice, Portia, Helena, Titania, Rosalind, Juliet, Desdemona. Going forward, thanks to the powerful performance of Jennie Israel in Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s modern verse translation by Sean San José of Coriolanus, I will always include Volumnia,…
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Theater Review: HAND TO GOD (Coachella Valley Rep)
TAKING HOLD OF EVIL Robert Askins’ 2011 two-act Hand to God is both an existential, insightful commentary on religious hypocrisy and a hysterical dramedy about Tyrone, a possessed sock puppet with a raunchy mouth, violent tendencies, and an overactive sex drive. Given the religious right’s current/ongoing tirade against art, books, sensible gun laws, women’s autonomy…
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Theater Review: CLYDE’S (Huntington Theatre, Boston)
A SATISFYING MEAL OF TASTY THEATER You might call Clyde’s the other piece of bread in Lynn Nottage’s sandwich about Reading, Pennsylvania, where the playwright spent two years conducting interviews with residents of what was then named the poorest town in America. The first result of those interviews was Sweat, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer…
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Theater Review: ROCK OF AGES (Wildsong Productions in Ocean Beach, San Diego)
WE BUILT THIS SILLY ON ROCK AND ROLL Most musicals start with a premise, develop a plot, and then write songs to fit the themes. Rock of Ages flips the process by starting with classic rock songs of the 1980s (Styx, Journey, Bon Jovi, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Steve Perry, Poison, and more) and tying…
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Theater Review: JIMMY BUFFET’S ESCAPE TO MARGARITAVILLE (Desert TheaterWorks in Indio)
ESCAPE TO MARGARITAVILLE IN THE DESERT Entering the theater at Desert TheatreWorks in Indio (between Palm Springs and the Salton Sea), it sure didn’t feel like the desert. I was greeted by Jimmy Buffet’s Escape to Margaritaville cast members who placed a Hawaiian lei around my neck while at the same time I was awestruck…
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Theater Review: THE HUMAN COMEDY (Actors Co-op)
HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN There is a world premiere now playing at Actors Co-op in Hollywood that is both ambitious and successful. The Human Comedy, set in the fictional California town of Ithaca in the San Joaquin Valley (think Fresno area), was first written as an MGM screenplay by Armenian-American William Saroyan, who was also…
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Theater Review: LET ME IN (Theatre 68 Arts Complex)
LET ME IN, OR GET ME OUT? In writer/director Brynn Thayer‘s Let Me In, now running at the newly and spiffily remodeled Theatre 68 Arts Complex in North Hollywood, actor Jorge Garcia of Lost fame gives a moving, funny, and incredibly nuanced performance as a New York cop on the day of his retirement. Mr….
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