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Theater Review: A RECIPE FOR DISASTER (Petterino’s Restaurant)
WHILE NOT A DISASTER, SOME INGREDIENTS NEED FIXIN’ In 2012 and 2014 the famous Chicago chef Rick Bayless and the Lookingglass Theatre Company joined to present a food-and-show production called Cascabel, which combined music and circus acts with a full meal served to the audience in their seats. Now Bayless is working with the Windy…
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Theater Review: IT’S JUST LIKE COMING TO CHURCH (Black Ensemble Theater in Chicago)
DAWN BLESS A BLESSING IN SCALED-DOWN CHURCH After an almost two year pandemic break, the Black Ensemble Theater BET) is back in business and doing a necessary check in on everyone’s mental health. The first show in “The season of healing and joy” celebrates faith, joy, self-esteem and self-worth. It’s Just Like Coming to Church…
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Theater Review: A PUBLIC READING OF AN UNPRODUCED SCREENPLAY ABOUT THE DEATH OF WALT DISNEY (Odyssey)
M-I-C-K-E-Y (WHY-OH-WHY-OH-WHY?!) When I saw Lucas Hnath’s name attached to A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney – a boldly-titled play now getting its West Coast Premiere at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles – I jumped at the chance to review it. The playwright’s been on my radar…
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Theater Review: THE BEST FRIGGIN’ SONGS OF THE SECOND CITY: SING OUT! (UP Comedy Club)
COMEDY SET TO A BEAT Tina Arfaee, Cat McDonnell, Uri, Teagan Earley, Breanna Ghostone, Preston Parker Often referred to as the crown jewel of sketch comedy, The Second City is unveiling its latest, The Best Friggin’ Songs of The Second City: Sing Out! on their UP Comedy Club stage. Over the last six decades, The Second City has cultivated a…
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Theater Review: KING JAMES (Steppenwolf Theatre Company)
WINNING ASSIST Back in business after a near two year hiatus, Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s winning new dramady, King James, is a must see for more than just rabid sports fans. Truth be told, I had many a friend snicker when I told them I was going to see a new sports themed play debuting in…
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Theater Review: CAN’T PAY? DON’T PAY! (The Actors’ Gang)
A PLAY THAT’S A RIOT WILL MAKE YOU WANT TO RIOT While loading items into my trunk after shopping at a Fortune 500 store recently, I realized that an item had gone unchecked by the cashier. My instinct, naturally, was to make a 360 and go back into the store. Then I halted. This item…
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Theater Review: THE GIN GAME (Starring JoBeth Williams and Joe Spano at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura)
DEADWOOD OR GIN? Fine actors of stage, television, and film, JoBeth Williams and Joe Spano unite their decades of work and talent to kick off a national tour of The Gin Game at the Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura. Yet even with such names filling the stage in this intimate two-hander, D. L. Coburn’s tragicomedy…
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Theater Review: GOOD NIGHT, OSCAR (Goodman Theatre)
THE BEST OSCAR GOES TO SEAN HAYES From the late 1930s to the early 1950s, Oscar Levant was one of the most popular and versatile figures on the American entertainment scene. Levant was a pianist, composer, radio and television personality, motion picture actor, and raconteur known and enjoyed for his caustic wit. Levant also was…
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Theater Review: TRAYF (Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles)
SCHISM BUDDIES “Are you Jewish?” Spoken by the leading players in playwright Lindsay Joelle’s Trayf, the question could also be relevant for the audience itself. Before you walk away dejected, know this: if you’ve never greeted anyone with “shalom” or heard of a “Mitzvah tank,” you’re probably (surprisingly) the play’s target audience – or at…
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Theater Review: ASSASSINS (East West Players)
THANKS TO SONDHEIM’S SONGS, THIS MUSICAL WILL NEVER DIE The cast is quite terrific with some extraordinary standouts in East West Players’ revival of Assassins, but it is Snehal Desai‘s awesomely inventive staging (and Preston Mui & Jasmine Rafael‘s movement direction) that betters John Doyle and his recent Off-Broadway outing. Not withstanding the company’s incredible…
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Theater Review: THE PLAY YOU WANT (Road Theatre)
THE PLAY WE NEED What starts as a joke ends in a laugh — all the way to the bank! — in The Play You Want, a world premiere comedy by Bernardo Cubría. Directed by Michael John Garcés, the play is a product of The Road Theatre Company’s playwriting workshop, Under Construction. I don’t know…
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Theater Review: THE GREAT KHAN (San Diego Repertory)
GREAT KAHNCEPT! Jayden (Jerome Beck) doesn’t have it easy. He and his mother Crystal (Brittney M. Caldwell) have recently transplanted themselves in a new town and school district. The move was to protect Jayden from boys whom he prevented from sexually assaulting Ant (Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew), a girl in his class. Starting over at sixteen…
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Theater Review: SLAVE PLAY (Mark Taper Forum)
MORE LIKE POWER PLAY THAN SLAVE PLAY Boy, if you want audacious theater — even one with higgledy-piggledy results — than I’ve got one for you: Slave Play, which opened last week at the Mark Taper Forum after a Broadway run. Frankly, I can’t even say that I recommend it. The show is messy and…
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Theater Review: THE LEHMAN TRILOGY (Ahmanson Theatre)
DON’T MISS AT ANY COST… BANK ON IT Recently I saw a play which forced me to ask: with the amount of stellar entertainment available to us at home, why would anyone spend this much money to trek across town and see this drivel? Whatever “supporting the arts” or “supporting live theater” means shouldn’t feel…
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Theater Review: WIFE OF A SALESMAN (World Premiere at Writers Theatre in Glencoe)
PAYING ATTENTION TO THE WOMEN Eleanor Burgess’s new play Wife of a Salesman is a riff on Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Burgess (The Niceties) has adapted the Miller original into an intimate revision, placing two women as adversaries in their competition for a man, Willy Loman, the central character of Miller’s 1949 play…
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Theater Review: MARVIN’S ROOM (Actors Co-op)
A ROOM OF THEIR OWN Actors Co-op is reviving Scott McPherson‘s extraordinary play Marvin’s Room. While it has always been one of my favorite plays, it’s a daunting choice for any company. The play requires a delicate touch so the sentiment doesn’t turn into bathos and the black humor stumble into vulgarity. Under Thomas James…
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Theater Review: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (San Diego Musical Theater)
CATCH THIS, IF YOU CAN! Take the incredible life story of con-man Frank Abagnale, Jr., give it to Steven Spielberg to make a mulit-award winning film (Oscar nomination for best actor for Christopher Walken), and then give it to Terrence McNally to create the book for the musical? How could that not yield four Tony…
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Theater Review: ON THE OTHER HAND, WE’RE HAPPY (Rogue Machine at The Matrix Theatre)
THERE IS NO OTHER HAND: ROGUE MACHINE HAS A WINNER Another one of Los Angeles’s best theater groups got back on the boards last week, as Rogue Machine Theatre kicked off its first post-pandemic season in a new home at the Matrix on Melrose Avenue. Always a reliable importer of significant new plays to Los…
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Theater Review: NEXT TO NORMAL (Chance Theater)
FINALLY: NEXT TO PERFECT The first three times I saw Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s Next to Normal, it never truly floored me. There are many ingredients that validate the 2009 musical’s popularity: it is to be commended for a bold and daring new way of communicating the kind of subject matter that you would…
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Theater Review: HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD (Curran Theatre in San Francisco)
A MAGICAL TREAT Going into San Francisco’s famed, 100-year-old Curran Theater for the opening night of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, theatergoers must have felt like Harry did when he stepped on board the Hogwarts Express in 1997, bound for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was the…
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