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Theater Review: THE REALISTIC JONESES (Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach)
NOTHING IS MORE REAL THAN NOTHING — Samuel Beckett Dramatist Will Eno doesn’t make it easy on the audience in his 2012 play The Realistic Joneses at the Laguna Playhouse. Viewers are asked to decide whether the play is primarily a comedy or a sober view of the human condition salted with bits of the…
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Theater Review: BOYS IN THE BAND (The Bent at Camelot Theatres in Palm Springs)
A BAND TO BEAT THE BAND Coachella Valley’s new queer theater company The Bent — in partnership with the Palm Springs Cultural Center — closes its wildly successful inaugural season with Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band, running through May 7. Artistic Director Steve Rosenbaum and Managing Director Terry Ray moved quickly to fill…
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Theater Review: COLEMAN ’72 (South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa)
A LOVE LETTER TO AN IMMIGRANT FATHER Coleman ’72 is getting a fantastic world premiere production from South Coast Repertory. It is a melodrama about nostalgia, the immigrant experience, cross-generational trauma, and familial love. Told through the unreliable accounts of three siblings, this trip down memory lane brings up complicated family dynamics between each sibling…
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Theater Review: SCINTILLA (Road Theatre Company)
SCINTILLATING Every generation has its gap. Currently millennials are annoyed that baby boomers wrecked the planet and baby boomers are annoyed that millennials are, well, annoying. Add to the mix the annoying offspring who see their role as having to be the boss of an aging parent and you have the ingredients for the new…
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Theater Review: THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG (Desert Theater Works in Indio)
GOES WRONG GOES RIGHT The Play That Goes Wrong running through Sunday, April 30 at Desert Theater Works (DTW) in Indio is the only comedy to ever win both a Tony and Olivier award. It is a hilarious, farcical masterpiece of human and technical stage malfunction — by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields…
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Theater Review: MURDER ON THE LINKS (North Coast Repertory Theatre)
THIS SHOW IS MURDER The latest production at North Coast Rep is a stage adaption of Dame Agatha Christie’s 1923 detective novel Murder on the Links. Originally titled The Murder on the Links, it was the second novel to star the Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot. The eccentric Poirot became one of the most popular…
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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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