Areas We Cover
Categories
-
Theater Review: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (The Old Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre)
AND NOW, WITH FURTHER ADO… Not only is it one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, but Much Ado About Nothing contains a favorite character: Dogberry. This bumbling constable arrives much later in the play than the famous sparring couple Beatrice and Benedick, and adds an enormous amount of comic energy to a play that is already awash…
-
Theater Review: PARADISE – A DIVINE BLUEGRASS MUSICAL COMEDY (Ruskin Group Theatre)
THE ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF A FOR-PROFIT PROPHET There are many pleasures on display in the newest incarnation of the bluegrass musical Paradise, which has been in development for over five years. Now at Ruskin Group Theatre, this is the third version I’ve seen in the show’s journey, and the most fully staged. The story is…
-
Theater Review: NIGHTMARES AND NIGHTCAPS: THE STORIES OF JOHN COLLIER (Black Button Eyes Productions at The Athenaeum Theatre)
A WAY TO GHOUL OFF THIS SUMMER It’s not easy for a frightfest to work (or play) just as well as a laff-fest, let alone to be both: A delightful exercise in creepy-crawly quirkiness, Nightmares and Nightcaps: The Stories of John Collier pays hilarious homage to a British-born master of the macabre. Collier (1901-1980), a long-time New Yorker contributor…
-
Chicago Theater Review: ANYTHING GOES (Music Theater Works in Evanston)
LOVE ON A LINER, OR COLE PORTER’S SHIP OF FOOLS It’s still “de-lovely,” but, steeped in bon-vivant euphoria and Roaring 20s’ hedonism, this 1934 musical is so silly it’s hard to believe it came out of the sobering Depression. But that was probably the point. A comforting throwback to such Jazz Age obsessions as goodtime…
-
Theater Review: A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE (Coronado Playhouse in San Diego)
A STORY OF IMPORTANCE Unlike manipulative Broadway machines such as Priscilla and Kinky Boots, which shove issues down our throats, the societal consequences for a homosexual in A Man of No Importance resonate more because the story follows a closeted man who compensates for his restrictive 1964 Dublin atmosphere by taking pride in other areas of his life — namely…
-
Theater Preview: WASHED UP ON THE POTOMAC (San Francisco Playhouse)
LOOKING FOR PROOF Proofreading: It may be a lost art. As an editor, I have become accustomed to scanning copy everywhere for mistakes, either in grammar or with facts. But lately, the effects of having computers think for us is starting to do irreparable harm to language and communication. Just today, after catching a typo…
-
Theater Review: END OF THE RAINBOW (Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach)
THE LEGEND THAT GOT AWAY No, this show isn’t how fans want to remember Judy Garland at the bittersweet end. End of the Rainbow, Peter Quilter’s sardonic salute to a star on the skids, is a sometimes-sadistic portrait of an imploding diva. A festering production at Laguna Playhouse, Quilter’s retro take on “Little Girl Blue”…
-
Theater Review: HAIRSPRAY (San Diego Musical Theatre at Horton Grand Theatre)
EVEN WHEN YOU’RE HAIR CAN’T HOLD UP, THIS MUSICAL CAN To say you like Hairspray really doesn’t cut it. Do you mean the 1988 John Waters film starring Devine and newcomer Ricki Lake? Or maybe you mean the 2003 Tony winner for “Best Musical,” which also yielded Harvey Fierstein a Tony for his role as…
-
Concert Preview: GREGORY PORTER AND SAVION GLOVER (with Vince Mendoza at the Hollywood Bowl)
OLDIES AND TAP: YOU’D BE NUTS TO MISS THIS CONCERT Jazz singer Gregory Porter certainly has amassed an impassioned and appreciative audience of all ages and races. But ever since double Grammy-winning composer, actor, and soul, jazz, and gospel song stylist released his latest Blue Note recording, Nat “King” Cole & Me, he cemented himself…
-
Theater Preview: ANNIVERSARY! STORIES BY TOBIAS WOLFF AND GEORGE SAUNDERS (Word for Word)
WORD FOR WORD’S PERSONAL VICTORY LAP MAY BE THE BEST DEEP KISS YOU’VE EVER HAD San Francisco’s Word for Word has been transforming classic and contemporary fiction into amazing theatrical experiences by performing short stories in their entirety, preserving the authors’ language and honoring their literary intent. Now, Word for Word celebrates its 25th season…
-
Film and Music Review: STAR WARS IN CONCERT (Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl)
MAY THE HORNS BE WITH YOU As difficult as it may be to tear your eyes away from the giant screen at the Hollywood Bowl, try to espy the LA Phil brass section during the climactic battle scene of Star Wars: A New Hope, which plays this week in rep with Empire Strikes Back. Bring your…
-
Chicago Theater Review: HOLDING THE MAN (Pride Films and Plays at the Pride Arts Center)
HOLDING OUR ATTENTION Playful and powerful, hilarious and anguished, Tommy Murphy’s Holding the Man is a 2006 drama based on an immensely successful 1995 memoir. The author was apprentice Australian actor Tim Conigrave, who died in 1995, as did his lover John Caleo in 1992, of AIDS. (The 2015 film version, starring Geoffrey Rush and Guy Pearce,…
-
Theater Preview: THE MOST HAPPY FELLA (Musical Theatre West in Long Beach)
ABBONDONZA If ever there was a reason to say, “Absolutely, positively, do not miss this event,” this is it. For one night only on Sunday August 19 at 7pm, Musical Theatre West’s Reiner Reading Series offers the final show of its eighth and final season, Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella. While it’s been an incredible…
-
Theater Review: BAREFOOT IN THE PARK (The Old Globe in San Diego)
THE GLOBE MAKES IT LOOK LIKE A WALK IN THE PARK Barefoot in the Park, Neil Simon’s second Broadway hit after Come Blow Your Horn, played a staggering 1,530 performances in its initial run, winning a Tony Award for director Mike Nichols. It’s somewhat inconceivable that a play this frothy, containing less pathos than Simon’s…
-
Chicago Theater Review: HURRICANE DAMAGE (Pride Films and Plays at the Pride Arts Center)
DAMAGE CONTROL Sometimes everything old is just — well — old again: The fourth entry in Pride Films and Plays’ five-show PAC Pride Fest, Hurricane Damage is a bittersweet world-premiere by New York playwright Kevin Brofsky that wants to engage us more than it does. A group portrait of two aging gay lovers, a long-separated friend, and…
-
Theater Review: WAITRESS (National Tour)
SWEET AS PIE, FLAKY AS CRUST, OR BOTH? If the heat in the kitchen is getting you down, you may want to head on over to Hollywood, where the Broadway hit Waitress arrived last night for a limited four-week at the Pantages Theatre August 3-26, 2018, and then continuing on tour after that through the…
-
Dance Preview: ISADORA (Segerstrom in Costa Mesa)
DUNKIN’ INTO THE WORLD OF DUNCAN On September 14, 1927, dancer and San Francisco native Isadora Duncan was strangled in Nice, France, when the enormous silk scarf (“which she had worn since she took up communism,” one newspaper reported) somehow blew into the well of the rear wheel on the passenger side of the sportscar she…
-
Theater Review: ANNIE (Hollywood Bowl)
SHE’S BA-A-A-ACK For those who think the sun won’t come up until 2020, here comes another Annie, that 1977 optimistic spitfire of a musical — based on the Harold Gray comic strip Little Orphan Annie — which insists that simply thinking about a brighter tomorrow will perk you right up. Although a national tour just wrapped…
-
Theater Review: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM (North Coast Rep in San Diego)
A FUNNY THING’S HAPPENING AT NORTH COAST REP Only in Ancient Rome! Pseudolus, the wise-cracking slave (Omri Schein), can earn his freedom if he can somehow get the pretty, bubble-headed virgin (Noelle Marion) staying next door to become the beloved of his twenty-something master, Hero (Chris M. Kauffmann). Alas, she is promised to uber-masculine Army…
-
Theater Review: UNDER MILK WOOD (Open Fist Theatre Company at Atwater Village Theatre)
THE PLEASURES OF WEBFOOT COCKLEWOMEN AND MINCED CAT Under Milk Wood is a vivid combination of poetry, drama, and music that was first performed as a radio play in 1954, and it is squarely rooted in language. Set in a seaside town in Wales called Llareggub (“bugger all” backwards), it is described as a place…
Search Articles
Please help keep
Stage and Cinema going!
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
Find beautiful trendy gowns for girls' special events.
Need to order an essay? Hire our top writers to complete the most challenging papers at an affordable rate.
For professional writing support, hire essay writers at Edubirdie for high-quality help.
Discover top-rated Australian online casinos with fair games, fast payouts, and generous bonuses for every type of player.
Explore the best paying pokies Australia games with high RTP and clear bonus terms
