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Theater Review: BOMBSHELL IN CONCERT (streaming)
IT’S DA BOMB! The best set of new Broadway-style songs I’ve heard in years. Marc Shaiman and Scott Witman deserve a standing ovation for creating the spectacular score, the songs of which came from the cancelled TV show Smash. These are the tunes that were from Bombshell, the musical-within-the musical that was about Marilyn Monroe…
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Virtual Theater: TO MASTER THE ART (Timeline Theatre, Chicago)
STARVING FOR THEATER? FEAST ON THIS! It’s not just for Chicagoans anymore. Time and again, we have trumped that Chicago theater is the most exciting in the country. Not just because of the array and number of companies, but the affordability. Theater artists in Chicago do theater for theater’s sake — and for ours. Case…
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Theater / Virtual: SONDHEIM @ 90 ROUNDTABLE (Porchlight Music Theatre Virtual Series)
CELEBRATING A PASSION FOR SONDHEIM Welcome to a new, free virtual series to celebrate Stephen Sondheim as an American icon while celebrating his 90th birthday year. Sondheim @ 90 Roundtable, created and hosted by Chicago’s Porchlight Music Theatre Artistic Director Michael Weber, gathers talents from Chicago, Broadway and the world of theater to offer episodes…
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Theater : AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE CENTER’S BLKFRSTV (Blackfriars Playhouse / Staunton, VA)
CAUGHT ON TAPE It was an unprecedented and timely decision. It was March 15, 2020, and the American Shakespeare Center — which operates the fantastic Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, VA — had just enough time to digitally capture two of their ensembles performing six shows just before the shutdown due to COVID-19. These thrilling experiences…
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Theater: 9 FANTASTIC SCHOLARSHIPS FOR THEATER STUDENTS
We all want so that our dreams come true. It is a beautiful notion that seems to come straight from fairy tails. However, it is quite possible and there are definitive steps towards this “dream” becoming a reality. The first and major step is education. If you dream of becoming anybody the proper start is…
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Theater: SETTING THE STAGE FOR LEARNING (L.A. Theatre Works)
AN EDUCATION VIA STREAMING THEATER As schools are turning to at-home learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, many teachers are struggling to find relevant, high-quality distance learning resources. Stage and Cinema is hoping you’ll spread the word to let teachers know about L.A. Theatre Works’ Setting the Stage for Learning educational arts program, which harnesses the…
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Theater Review: A BODY OF WATER (Actors Co-op)
PARTS OF A BODY Part Albee, part Ionesco, part mystery thriller, part Doubt, part Groundhog Day and — sadly — all red herrings, Lee Blessing’s 2005 A Body of Water can’t decide what it wants to be in the end — which is a shame because individual parts of this body are bracing. (Actor Co-op’s…
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Theater Review: ALICE IN WONDERLAND (A Noise Within in Pasadena)
WHAT A WONDER Childhood whimsy is seen through the looking-glass of adult sophistication at A Noise Within. Based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871), this 1932 stage adaptation — co-written by Eva Le Gallienne and Florida Friebus — faithfully honors its source materials,…
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Theater Review: HOME (On Tour at The Broad Stage)
A HOME RUN What do you think of when you think of home? Is it the place where you were born? Is it where you are living now? Is it where you followed your growth by measuring yourself against one of its walls? Is it the home you built? Is it the home you inherited…
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Theater Review: THE HEALING (formerly titled LEGENDS) (Black Ensemble Theater)
SINGING AGAINST HATE If it takes a village, the Black Ensemble Theater creates one nightly. Actually, it’s a “healing circle” that’s literally at center stage and figuratively at the heart of Legends the Musical: A Civil Rights Movement, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Written and directed by founder Jackie Taylor, this generous new work departs from…
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Theater Reviews: GHOSTS, NEVER SWIM ALONE and LANDSCAPE (Inkblots “A” &”B” of Open Fist’s Rorschach Fest)
OUR INKBLOT INTERPRETATIONS: SPLAT, SPLAT, SPLAT, SPLAT, SPLENDID Theater isn’t just what it brings to us, it’s also what we bring to it. At least, that’s the general idea behind Open Fist Theatre Company’s Rorschach Fest, a series of five experimental one-act plays from risk-taking playwrights: John O’Keefe, Harold Pinter, Daniel MacIvor, and Caryl Churchill….
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Theater Review: GLORIA (A.C.T.’s Strand Theater)
GLORY GLORY GLORIA I don’t know if Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has ever worked in a Manhattan publishing house but he sure knows his way about the workplace. In Gloria, he paints an extraordinary portrait of the workings of an office whose conflicts revolve around some writers with their own agendas, a sense of emotional intensity on…
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Theater Review: THE BOOK OF MORON (Tour)
STAND-UP MEETS SELF-HELP It’s a singular solo show: Creator of The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron, satirist Robert Dubac now delivers Book of Moron, an 85-minute riff on reality and all its threats. Delivering rapid-fire, hit-and-run observations about contemporary consciousness, this driven lecturer imagines himself coming out of the coma of everyday existence to embark on…
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Theater Review: SHE LOVES ME (San Diego Musical Theatre at Horton Grand Theatre)
SHE LOVES ME:AND WITH GOOD REASON! Ah, love. As hard to find as ever, but so satisfying when it is. But what did the ancients (20th-century people) do to find love before Tinder, eHarmony, and the like? Joe Masteroff’s book takes us to the simpler days of Lonely Hearts Clubs, when people exchanged letters (on…
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Theater Review: DEX & ABBY (Pride Films and Plays)
PUPS ‘N’ STUFF MAKES A DOGGONE DRAMA “Love me, love my dog. [Then I’ll love you:}” That’s the operating assumption between Dex & Abby, a cross-species comedy/love play. At 130 minutes of industrial-strength sentimentality, this Chicago premiere from Pride Films and Plays will test your tolerance for anthropomorphized antics. It’s the feel-good story of comfort…
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Theater Review: HUMAN INTEREST STORY (Fountain)
HERE’S SOMETHING THAT WILL INTEREST YOU This is the second show this year in L.A. to take head-on the insanity of modern journalism (the insanity being that while newspapers deliver so-called news, they gotta make a buck, so sensationalism often wins out [ask Hearst], but now we have the interenet to contend with, where any…
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Theater Review: FOUND (IAMA Theatre Company)
LOST … AND FOUND Found: A New Musical is determined to find its way. After a run off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theatre Company in 2014, this reworked West Coast premiere — now playing at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in Downtown L.A., stumbles through its first act with vague ambitions, disconnection, and cloying clichés, only…
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Theater Review: FRANKENSTEIN (Four Larks & Wallis)
MONSTER MASH In an effort to strip away the centuries, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has gone under the knife. Revitalizing the 200-year-old classic is the Beverly Hills-based performing arts center, The Wallis, which has commissioned a reimagining by Four Larks, an innovative L.A.-based theater company known for their interdisciplinary stylings. In this intimate world premiere production…
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Theater Review: REVENGE SONG (Geffen Playhouse)
IT’S THE HIGH SCHOOL SHOW THAT I WISH I WROTE IN HIGH SCHOOL The thing that looks like a high school vanity project at the Geffen Playhouse is actually a world premiere with a lot of bucks behind it. While I certainly appreciate that Qui Nguyen of the self-described “geek” theater company Vampire Cowboys in…
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Theater Review: THE BOOK OF MORMON (Tour)
I CAN ALWAYS USE MORE MEN Well, here’s a national tour that isn’t resting on its laurels. Somewhat tighter with impeccably glorious performances, a golden angel high above at the center of a light-filled proscenium arch seems to trumpet, The Book of Mormon is here to douse your doldrums with a delirious, dandy delight. It…
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