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Theater Review: reprint of BREWSIE AND WILLIE (now at RADAR L.A.)
Editor’s note: Brewsie and Willie is currently running as part of the Radar L.A. Theater Festival. This review is reprinted from an earlier production of the show in July 2010. We are printing the text only. To see the review as it originally appeared, visit http://old.stageandcinema.com/brewsie_and_willie.html The current production ends June 26, 2011. For tickets,…
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Theater Review: BLACKBIRD (Rogue Machine in L.A.)
LEARNING TO FLY WITH BROKEN WINGS “Blackbird singing in the dead of night/Take these broken wings and learn to fly/All your life/You were only waiting for this moment to arise.” Â Would it have been too obvious to play the haunting Beatles song either before the start of David Harrower’s unsettling Blackbird (which is receiving a…
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Theater Reviews: SOTTO VOCE, ANTIMAN, VOICE LESSONS (Los Angeles)
GOING, GOING…GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN One of the pitfalls of being a theater reviewer in Los Angeles is that it is impossible to see more than the smallest amount of the cascade of plays that open here in a single week; it is probably a source of great frustration as well to the many performers…
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Theater Review: 100 SAINTS YOU SHOULD KNOW (L.A. – Hollywood)
WE OF LITTLE FAITH Kate Fodor’s 100 Saints You Should Know is a mildly interesting play, given heft by its author’s obviously sincere attempt to deal seriously with the nature of faith, but, despite its basic decency, it doesn’t really provide one with particularly fresh insights, nor does it probe with great depth its central…
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Film / Theater Review: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST: LIVE IN HD (Screening of the Broadway production)
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING BRIAN BEDFORD Lady Bracknell (arguably the greatest creation of Oscar Wilde’s surpassingly fertile comic imagination) is the aristocratic and imperious dowager who could make single words like “Found!” and simple questions like “In a handbag?” sound like the essence of wit – received its juiciest interpreter in Dame Edith Evans in…
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Theater Review: ARMISTEAD MAUPIN’S TALES OF THE CITY: A NEW MUSICAL (ACT in San Francisco)
PLENTY OF TALE – VERY LITTLE CITY The much-anticipated Tales of the City just opened at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Although the libretto (by Avenue Q’s Jeff Whitty) splices together the first two of Armistead Maupin’s famous books about a mélange of San Francisco denizens in the anything-goes sexual revolution of 1976, the…
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Movie Review: THE TREE OF LIFE directed by Terence Malick
ABSENCE GROWS MYSTERY If Terrence Malick is a saint of cinema, then this is his holy lesson. Over a four-decade career, the mercurial American visionary has mastered absence and flowered a daunting mystery. After making one of the most impressive debuts in American film history, 1973’s Badlands, he quit talking to the press. After the…
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Movie Review: MIDNIGHT IN PARIS directed by Woody Allen
WOODY AS WILSON, OWEN AS ALLEN Yes, you can believe what you’ve been reading – Midnight in Paris really is the best Woody Allen film in a long time. It’s a love letter to Paris, an ode to the Jazz age and the writers of the Lost Generation, and a romance with the past. It’s…
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Movie Review: KUNG FU PANDA 2 directed by Jennifer Yuh
PACKED WITH ACTION, BEREFT OF LAUGHS Kung Fu Panda 2 breaks new ground in the history of cinema.  Everyone knows you can’t use 3-D in the second movie in a series. You have to wait until the third one. Breaking the 3-D sequel custom appears to be Panda’s lone innovation. Otherwise, this is one of…
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Theater Review: KRUNK FU BATTLE BATTLE (L.A. – Downtown)
WHAT THE FUNK? When giving feedback at High School theatre competitions, adjudicators are reminded to encourage, not discourage young performers: negative criticism, however accurate, may dampen the spirit of gung-ho newcomers to the theatre. It is the judge’s task to support thespian tenderfoots by accentuating the positive, lest they become dismayed and give up on…
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Theater Review: LET ME DOWN EASY (Tour)
SHE MAKES IT LOOK EASY With Let Me Down Easy, Anna Deavere Smith’s powerful, engrossing and resonant solo outing, you may feel inspired to have a meaningful conversation with friends and family, as Ms. Smith has crafted a series of portrayals based on her own interviews that is at once scary, funny and life-affirming. On…
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53 Years Ago in Stage and Cinema…
Our July 18, 1958 issue, from back before we existed.
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Theater Review: JUAN AND JOHN (L.A. – Culver City)
THE EPIPHANIES THAT COME TO US AFTER BEING HIT IN THE HEAD BY A BASEBALL BAT Among the happiest of theatergoing experiences is entering the theater, without any expectations whatsoever, and, upon exiting, feeling that your life has been upended to a degree, perhaps even altered.  Roger Guenveur Smith’s soul-stirring Juan and John provides just…
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Movie Review: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES (nationwide)
WHO PIRATES OF THE CARES? The thing about Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – if anyone still cares – is that it’s an improvement for the series. But that’s just it…no one still cares. Of course, the box office will argue with me. A disturbing number of dollars will pile into the bank…
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Movie Review: INCENDIES (in limited release)
AND THE NOMINEE WAS… The thriller Incendies, a 2010 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film, is a Canadian product spoken in French about events that took place, fictionally speaking, in Lebanon during its infamous civil war. The death of a Canadian immigrant with a secret past, Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal), places the burden of discovery…
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Theater Review: FOUR CLOWNS and STANDING ON CEREMONY: THE GAY MARRIAGE PLAYS (L.A. – Hollywood)
ONCE-A-WEEK Monday nights at 8:00 p.m. at the L.A. Gay and Lebian Center’s Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Center (The Renberg Theatre): If you’d like to take a pleasant leisurely stroll down a very narrow path abloom with fresh wildflowers and strewn with patches of weeds, I recommend Standing On Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays….
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San Diego Theater Review: LIFE OF RILEY (Old Globe)
BY GEORGE, I THINK THEY’VE GOT IT; THE SCRIPT, HOWEVER’¦ A friend of mine is an Alan Ayckbourn fanatic, owning dozens of the prolific playwright’s scripts, yet he can count on one hand the productions he has seen to date. For him, American productions are never as good as the scripts. Therfore, he says, he’d…
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San Diego Theater Review: AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY (Old Globe)
HOT AUGUST PLAY NEEDS EVEN MORE HEAT It was impossible not to have any expectations prior to The Old Globe’s production of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize and Tony © Award-winning three-act black comedy, August: Osage County. When a surreal amount of hype is bestowed on a new work, especially one where critics praise the playwright as…
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Theater Review: John Fleck’s MAD WOMEN (L.A. – Los Feliz)
THE OBSESSIVE PURSUIT OF ARTISTS There are few things funnier than watching John Fleck, sweating and crazed, walk perilously close to the edge of a high cliff, teeter towards falling off, and, by the neatest trick of balancing himself at the pivotal moment, catch himself from what seemed like inevitable disaster. There are few things…
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Theater Review: VOICE LESSONS (L.A. – Hollywood)
IT’S NOT THE SIZE OF THE PLAY THAT MATTERS Say what you will about Voice Lessons, Justin Tanner’s shockingly uproarious one-act play, now receiving an encore presentation at Sacred Fools Theatre, but you will never forget that you attended it. Still emblazoned in my hippocampus is Tanner’s 1994 hit,  Pot Mom, which remains one of the…
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