Areas We Cover
Categories
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: PETER PAN: THE BOY WHO HATED MOTHERS (The Blank Theatre)
THE NEVERLAND AFTER DARK This ain’t Mary Martin’s Peter Pan. Or Walt Disney’s. Or Stephen Spielberg’s. With Peter Pan: The Boy Who Hated Mothers, playwright Michael Lluberes has his own take on the familiar story, at once faithful in spirit to Barrie’s original tale yet also interested in exploring Victorian attitudes about both children and…
-
Chicago Theater Review: THE LAKE EFFECT (Silk Road Rising at Chicago Temple)
SQUALL IN THE FAMILY In meteorology, the phenomena known as Lake Effect occurs when a cold system glides over the warmer water of a large lake and dumps huge amounts of precipitation, usually snow, in the surrounding area. This weather pattern can occur anywhere, but it is especially hard-hitting in the areas around the Great…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: FALLING FOR MAKE BELIEVE (Colony Theatre in Burbank)
BEWITCHED, BEGUILED AND THRILLED Mark Saltzman is one smart cookie. He approaches his new bio-musical of the legendary Lorenz Hart with a passionate curiosity about the great man’s life and career: intellectual curiosity about what was and imaginative curiosity for what might have been. Rodgers’ collaboration with Hart may be somewhat dwarfed in the public’s…
-
Chicago Theater Review: PLOUGHED UNDER: AN AMERICAN SONGBOOK (House Theatre at Chopin)
PLOUGHED UNDER BY GOOD INTENTIONS AND BAD SONGWRITING What a great idea: Create modern folk songs to represent Americans whose voices have been given short shrift (or ploughed under) by history. There are boundless unsung heroes who can attain mythical stature through inspirational ditties. Given the little we know factually about the subjects, there is room for…
-
Film Review: SIX ACTS (directed by Jonathan Garfinkel / North American premiere at Tribeca Film Festival)
WHO’S USING WHOM? A formidable debut film by director Jonathan Garfinkel, Six Acts follows the exploits of Gili (Sivan Levy) – a poor, rube-ish, and not very beautiful teenage girl who’s just transferred to a hip new high school – as she is manipulated by the rich and popular boys into becoming a sex toy…
-
Film Review: A SINGLE SHOT (directed by David M. Rosenthal / North American premiere at Tribeca Film Festival)
JUST A FLESH WOUND Starring the always brilliant Sam Rockwell, the noirish backwoods thriller A Single Shot, directed by David M. Rosenthal, follows a down and out John Moon (Mr. Rockwell) as his life spirals into an abyss after he accidentally kills a young woman and finds a case full of money. The film starts…
-
Chicago Theater Review: CORE OF THE PUDEL (Trap Door Theatre)
FAUST IN SPACE Just because I recommend Trap Door’s latest production doesn’t mean that I understand it. Core of the PUDEL (pronounced “poodle”) is an Avant Garde/Experimental/Movement Theater production conceived and directed by Thom Pasculli, who draws from Goethe’s Faust to present a one-hour rendering that is practically impossible to follow for those unfamiliar with…
-
Los Angeles Theater Review: ANNAPURNA (Odyssey)
A ROCKY ROCKY MOUNTAIN ROMANCE In mountaineering lingo, “committing†refers to forcing yourself into a place of no return leaving nowhere to go but forward; and so it is with life, loss and love in Sharr White’s (The Other Place*) two-hander, Annapurna, making its Los Angeles premiere courtesy of the Odyssey Theatre. A drama with…
-
Los Angeles/Regional Theater Review: THE PARISIAN WOMAN (South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa)
THE PETITE POLITIQUE Few playwrights have it as good as Beau Willimon at the moment; he’s a critical and commercial success on all three major platforms’”stage, screen, and stream. His play Farragut North was so successful and praiseworthy that George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio both bought the rights to adapt it to film; George Clooney…
-
Chicago/Tour Theater Review: ANYTHING GOES (Palace Theatre)
PORTER IS THE ONE WHO CARRIES THIS SHOW H.M.S. Titanic, they say, was unsinkable, but the S.S. American ’” the setting for Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, his biggest hit before Kiss Me Kate ’” actually is unsinkable, and has been sailing strong since 1934. Roundabout Theatre Company’s triumphant 2010 revival, a Tony-winning smash on Broadway now on tour in Chicago,…
-
Chicago Theater Review: YELLOW MOON (Writers’ Theatre in Glencoe)
ALMOST A FULL MOON The theater has been sorely affected by electronic communication. Since the advent of the internet, at least, the cumbersome amount of news bits and twittering has infected storytelling like a cancer. Modern playwrights must be so caught up in instant missives and self-promotion on Facebook (or some such nonsense) that even…
-
Los Angeles Music Review: LE SALON DE MUSIQUES: Season 3, Concert 7 (Dorothy Chandler Pavilion)
AFTERNOON DELIGHT Some people indulge in “culture” because they think that’s what they are supposed to do. They will slog their way through hours of highbrow offerings on PBS, slumber through a symphony or sit stupefied by a Shakespearian epic all because it makes them feel intellectually superior. The only problem is they aren’t having…
-
Chicago Theater Review: PAJAMA GAME (The Music Theatre Company in Highland Park)
WHEN UNIONS RULED THE EARTH Outrageously overdue for revival (the last one was at Marriott Theatre in 2004), this irresistible 1954 Broadway classic harks back to a time when producers could actually pin a plot on a threatened strike by union workers in the Sleep Tite Pajama Factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Solidarity, alas, isn’t…
-
Film Review: RAZE (directed by Josh Waller / World premiere at Tribeca Film Festival)
SNUFF PORN, BUT WITHOUT THE SEX Zoe Bell (of Death Proof fame) plays Sabrina, an ex-soldier forced to fight for her life in Josh Waller’s Raze, which, except for a clever little twist at the beginning and generally well-orchestrated fight sequences, is pretty much as idiotic as movies get. The premise of Robert Beaucage’s inane…
-
Film Review: ALÌ BLUE EYES (directed by Claudio Giovannesi / International premiere at Tribeca Film Festival)
NATURALISM AT ITS BEST There seems to be a tendency for fledgling directors making their first narrative features to limit themselves to low-key realism. But whereas so many of these creations end up being dull, flat, and redundant statements, Claudio Giovannesi’s Alì Blue Eyes, though awash in realism, is a captivating, insightful and truthful portrait of…
-
Chicago Theater Review: PAL JOEY (Porchlight Music Theatre at Stage 773)
CHICAGO CAD MAKES BAD LOOK GOOD Sassy and brassy Pal Joey is a wondrous rouser that spins the tale of a roué gone rotten in Depression-era Chicago. Porchlight Music Theatre gained the exclusive rights to Rodgers and Hart’s original 1940 version of their masterwork, and is staging a glorious revival at Stage 773 (they’ve even restored “I’m…
-
Chicago Theater Review: THE HAPPIEST SONG PLAYS LAST (Goodman Theatre)
SEVEN CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF A PLAY Undernourished as this commissioned play may feel, it is, in fact, the last of the “Elliot Trilogy” by Quiara Alegría Hudes (bookwriter for In the Heights). The saga depicts how wars shaped three generations of a Puerto Rican family: The first was Elliot, a Soldier’s Fugue and the…
-
San Diego Opera Review: AIDA (San Diego Opera)
EYEING AMNERIS IN AIDA In this well-loved 150-year-old Guiseppe Verdi classic of Grand Opera, it may be heretical to question the relationship of the principle characters and their so-called “love triangle.” But in the San Diego Opera production it is Amneris, the Pharoah’s love-sick daughter, who seems more the protagonist. After all, it is Amneris’ world…
-
Film Review: THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST (directed by Mira Nair / US premiere at Tribeca Film Festival)
THE RELUCTANT FILMMAKERS Director Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist tells of how Changez (Riz Ahmed), a young Pakistani, goes from being an ambitious, pro-American executive at an elite Wall Street financial firm to a college professor at a Pakistani university who criticizes US policy and may possibly be involved with terrorists. This thriller disguised as…
-
Film Review: BLUEBIRD (directed by Lance Edmands / World Premiere at Tribeca Film Festival)
BACKWATER BLUES Lesley (Amy Morton), a school bus driver, gets distracted by a bluebird while inspecting her bus at the end of her shift and fails to notice a little boy asleep in one of the rear seats. The ramifications of this are the subject of Lance Edmands’ feature directorial debut Bluebird. Grim, cold and…
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
