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Theater

  • Theater Review: I DECIDED I’M FINE: A ROACH PLAY (The Attic Collective at Studio/Stage in Hollywood)

    By Marc Wheeler | February 11, 2020
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    PASS THIS ROACH After a convoluted build-up, there’s a late scene in I Decided I’m Fine: A Roach Play that actually works. In it, Ellen (Veronica Tjioie), a trauma-stricken hoarder, exposes her “dirty secret” by welcoming outsiders into her shockingly cluttered home. If one can get past the improbability of such a willing invitation, the…

  • Theater Review: LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR & GRILL (Ebony Rep)

    By Tony Frankel | February 10, 2020
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    AT DAY’S END Thanks to Lanie Robertson’s bedrock-basic script, Wren T. Brown’s dedicated staging, Karole Foreman’s extraordinarily vulnerable performance, and Stephan Terry’s elegant piano playing, Ebony Rep’s 90-minute revival of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill pays full homage to Billie Holiday’s heroism and heartbreak. Unlike her famous “God Bless the Child,” Lady Day…

  • Theater Review: EMMA (Chicago Shakespeare Theater)

    By Lawrence Bommer | February 7, 2020
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    EMMA PLOTS, THIS TIME IN SONG Nobody knew better than Jane Austen how love could get lost in the social maze of Regency England, where social distinctions quickly become psychological barriers. Any successful matrimony required sexual politics and emotional intrigue. There were too many artful simulations of actual affection for the real deal to compete…

  • Theater Review: BUG (Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago)

    By Lawrence Bommer | February 6, 2020
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    BUG GETS UNDER YOUR SKIN Nineteen years ago, A Red Orchid Theatre launched the Midwest premiere of  Bug by Pulitzer-winner Tracy Letts. It unleashed a ferocious Michael Shannon and a self-destructing Kate Buddeke in the title roles. Back then I thought the play just an excuse for excess — the shock effects of wacko lovers dissolving…

  • Theater Review: RIVERDANCE (25th Anniversary Tour)

    By Lawrence Bommer | February 5, 2020
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    STILL STEPPING This Irish extravaganza is celebrating its 25th  anniversary, a quarter century of Celtic thunder as thousands of feet have pounded countless floorboards. What  Stomp offered to percussive street-dancing and Forever Tango did for Argentina’s national cooch dance, Riverdance breathtakingly delivers to Irish dance and its cultural spin-offs. Wowing rapt crowds in a tour to mark…

  • Theater Review: RED BIKE (Moxie Theatre Company)

    By Milo Shapiro | February 4, 2020
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    WHERE WILL THIS RED BIKE TAKE YOU? Red Bike immediately presents a huge challenge to a director. Caridad Svich’s script contains no stage directions (and little punctuation, even) and reads like a lengthy poetry slam. This creates both a tremendous burden and glorious opportunity for a director to bring her verse-like prose to life. Moxie…

  • Theater Review: THIS SIDE OF CRAZY (Zephyr Theatre)

    By Marc Wheeler | February 3, 2020
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    HYMN-DINGER Sweet lovin’ Jesus, Del Shores is back, and he’s brought a band of gospel singers with him. In This Side of Crazy, writer/director/producer Shores introduces us to a Southern family comprised of the Christian singing trio, The Blaylock Sisters, and their gospel legend momma, Ditty Blaylock. These Christian ladies — well, one’s now an…

  • Theater Review: ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (La Mirada)

    By Tony Frankel | February 3, 2020
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    THERE’S ARSENIC AND LACE; BUT IT DOESN’T FEEL OLD Serial murder, euthanasia, slasher psychopaths, bodies buried in a crawl space, face-lifts for people trying to change their images, the cyanide poisonings of innocent strangers — it’s a click-bait tabloid-rotten world we live in. Not like the good old days, when crime didn’t pay and virtue…

  • Theater Review: DO YOU FEEL ANGER? (A Red Orchid)

    By Lawrence Bommer | February 2, 2020
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    I DON’T FEEL YOUR PAIN Lately a chronic lack of empathy–sensitivity to the feelings of others–threatens to become a liability as great as any budget deficit. Compassion has never felt less contagious. So maybe it’s time for Do You Feel Anger? No indignant expose of sociopathic alienation, this 2019 drama by Mara Nelson-Greenberg, now in…

  • Theater Review: UNTIL THE FLOOD (Center Theatre Group at the Kirk Douglas Theatre)

    By Tony Frankel | February 1, 2020
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    AFTER THE FLOOD Until the Flood lasts only 70 minutes. But its concentrated running time delivers a devastating drama. A ton of truth-telling now on tour at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, this 2016 one-act is the creation of actor, poet and oral historian Dael Orlandersmith. She becomes the partisans, witnesses, survivors and, above all, inhabitants…

  • Theater Review: SOPHISTICATED LADIES (Porchlight Music Theatre at Ruth Page Center for the Arts)

    By Lawrence Bommer | February 1, 2020
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    SOPHISTICATED SWING FROM KING  ELLINGTON Some shows are just pure pleasure, delivering unpretentious delight with no plot to process or points to proclaim. Much like  Ain’t Misbehavin’, an infectious romp that salutes the music and mirth of Fats Waller,  Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies  is a 1981 confection conceived by Donald McKayle that enthralls audiences with two dozen hit numbers…

  • Theater Reviews: RED INK (Playwrights’ Arena) and EARTHQUAKES IN LONDON (Rogue Machine)

    By Tony Frankel | January 30, 2020
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    YELLOW JOURNALISM, BLUE PLANET — UNCERTAIN FUTURES Propaganda has always existed. It’s when people promote and publicize their agenda utilizing biased or misleading information, a perfect tool for predomination, profit, and/or political power. With the advent of the internet, propaganda such as yellow journalism — which uses scandal-mongering, sensationalism and exaggeration of news events to…

  • Theater Review: KILLER’S HEAD & THE UNSEEN HAND (Sam Shepard One-Acts at the Odyssey)

    By Joan Alperin | January 30, 2020
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    SHEP IN TIME When I think of the late Sam Shepard, his plays Fool for Love, True West, Buried Child and Curse of the Starving Class usually come to mind. I was totally unfamiliar with Killer’s Head and  The Unseen Hand now playing as a double bill at the Odyssey in celebration of the theater’s 50th…

  • Theater Review: FOR THE LOVE OF A GLOVE (Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan Theater in Los Angeles)

    By Marc Wheeler | January 29, 2020
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    IF THE GLOVE FITS… On the heels of Leaving Neverland — the jaw-dropping 2019 documentary that explores the sexual abuse allegations against Michael Jackson — comes the world premiere of a musical that posits a bizarre, untold story of the King of Pop. For the Love of a Glove is a ribald, lampooning satire that…

  • Theater Review: IF/THEN (Brown Paper Box Co.)

    By Lawrence Bommer | January 27, 2020
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    MANY FORKS IN MANY ROADS “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: “It might have been!” John Greenleaf Whittier’s bittersweet couplet is echoed in If/Then, a 2014 chamber musical. This sprawling, 160-minute speculation of a show wonders whether there are any accidents in life. Is chance just “probabilities playing…

  • Theater Review: THE LAST SHIP (National Tour)

    By Tony Frankel | January 24, 2020
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    A SHIP THAT REMAINS DOCKED Sting’s musical The Last Ship has been in a shakedown cruise since it opened in Chicago six years ago. Based on last night’s star-studded opening night at the Ahmanson in Los Angeles, this retooled version sadly remains docked. Sure, it’s got a decent new book that jettisons jetsam from the…

  • Theater Review: ONCE ON THIS ISLAND (Nat’l Tour)

    By Lawrence Bommer | January 23, 2020
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    A TREE GROWS IN THE ANTILLES In 1990, eight years before he wrote  Ragtime, Stephen Flaherty composed an eclectically exotic score for this one-act fairy tale. It’s the forthright story of a French Antilles peasant girl and the rich boy whom she adores to the unreciprocated end. Well-cooked in Lynn Aherns’ supple lyrics, Flaherty’s warm “Margaritaville”…

  • Theater Review: VOLTA (Cirque du Soleil)

    By Tony Frankel | January 22, 2020
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    PLENTY OF WATTAGE, EVEN WITH AN OBSCURE STORY Cirque du Soleil is back with its latest touring show, which opened last night, January 21, at Dodger Stadium. At its best, Volta provides all the pleasures of a Cirque production — knockout acts of grace, athleticism, skill, creativity, and danger. The show does have difficulties associated…

  • Theater Review: NOWHERE ON THE BORDER (Road Theatre Company in North Hollywood)

    By Marc Wheeler | January 21, 2020
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    BYOC: BRING YOUR OWN CANTEEN In an effort to spark dialogue on Trump-era immigration, The Road Theatre Company has mounted a revised version of Carlos Lacámara’s Nowhere on the Border, a play that premiered at The Hayworth Theatre in 2006 during the presidency of George W. Bush. While this partially-rewritten work is a testament to…

  • Theater Review: WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME (Mark Taper Forum)

    By Tony Frankel | January 21, 2020
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    WHAT WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME MEANS TO ME Given the barrage of nasty nightly news, I don’t doubt that Americans are champing at the bit for a large slice of patriotism as they watch America seemingly evolving and devolving at once. And there isn’t a document that represents our constantly changing America more…

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