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Los Angeles Theater Review: HAMLET, PRINCE OF PUDDLES (L’Enfant Terrible at Bootleg Theater)
A PRINCELY PRODUCTION Once in a great while, a play will have me floating off the ground as if I had just been licked by God; a play that makes me feel better for having been alive; it encompasses great writing, acting, direction, and a triumphant technical team. Examples this past year are Cousin Bette…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: PIPPIN (DOMA Theater Company at the Hudson Backstage)
BEST BE SKIPPIN’ PIPPIN I need to stop reading press releases and just go to review a show. A recent  production of Oklahoma! announced a darker, grittier version which intrigued me enough to see it for the umpteenth time. The corn-fed musical turned out to be as dark as Deanna Durbin. Now comes the 1972 musical…
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Off-Broadway Theater Review: CRITICAL MASS (The Lion Theatre at Theatre Row)
A CRITIC’S CRITIQUE OF CRITICISM A critic’s words can sting like a wasp or soothe like a balm. When it stings, a bad review can turn the tables on the critic and make him or her the target of hate mail, death wishes, and even physical harm. Â Critic Joanne Sydney Lessner’s farcical Critical Mass takes…
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WHEN GARBO TALKS! by Buddy Kaye and Mort Garson– International City Theatre – Los Angeles (Long Beach) Theater Review
DIDN’T GARBO SAY THAT SHE WANTED TO BE LEFT ALONE? Any great auteur will tell you that the opening number of a show should let the audience know what they’re in for: Jerome Robbins asked the Fiddler team, and they came up with “Tradition.†He asked the Forum team, and Sondheim came up with “Comedy…
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A LIFE IN THE THEATRE by David Mamet – with Patrick Stewart and T.R. Knight – Broadway Theater Review
VINTAGE MAMET LACKS ROBUST FLAVOR Last year, T.R. Knight left a lucrative TV role on the high profile Grey’s Anatomy because he wasn’t fulfilled as an actor. Â The world has been waiting to see if he’ll fall flat on his face ever since. Â David Mamet’s unsatisfying A Life in the Theatre may not be the…
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Broadway Theater Review: LA BíŠTE (Music Box Theatre)
A LEGENDARY PLAY’S SECOND CHANCE AT BROADWAY LIFE Were David Hirson’s La Bête not  burdened with history, this review would simply say that Matthew Warchus’s production includes Mark Rylance’s tour de force performance of an immensely entertaining half-hour-long monologue and solid comic performances by David Hyde Pierce and Stephen Ouimette, but is one-note and overlong,…
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MEASURE FOR MEASURE by William Shakespeare – A Noise Within – Los Angeles (Glendale) Theater Review
IN FULL MEASURE In A Noise Within’s production of Measure for Measure, there is no doubt that laws which dictate morality are a reality, and The Duke (Robertson Dean) is concerned that he is too lax regarding the licentiousness of Vienna; he goes undercover as a Friar so that he may secretly observe his Deputy,…
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DIVING NORMAL by Ashlin Halfnight – SFS Theatre – Los Angeles Theater Review
CREATIVE TEAM SWIMS BEAUTIFULLY, BUT SCRIPT TAKES A DIVE SPOILER ALERT: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS INFORMATION THAT MAY SPOIL YOUR EXPERIENCE IF YOU PLAN TO SEE IT After a particularly challenging conversation with my theatre companion, it became clear that neither one of us could figure out why a play with so much potential could leave…
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EVERYTHING WILL BE DIFFERENT: A Brief History of Helen of Troy by Mark Schultz – Zephyr Theatre – Los Angeles Theater Review
EVERYTHING IS DISTURBING AND FUNNY Acned, awkward, ambitious, angry, alienated, angst-ridden adolescent Charlotte (a must-see performance by Alana Dietze) is having a bad go at it (more so than the normal discomfiture of pubescence): her beautiful mother has recently passed on, and her father Harry (a moribund Christopher Fields) is drinking and lashing out at…
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Theater Review: FDR (with Ed Asner at The Pasadena Playhouse)
HOW DO YOU SPELL RELIEF? William S. Burroughs said, “Perhaps all pleasure is only relief.†Well, what a relief it is to see the venerable Pasadena Playhouse open for business again after a financial housecleaning. There are indeed angels in our midst that came to the rescue after the Playhouse closed on February 7 and…
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Theater Review: THE TRAIN DRIVER (Fountain Theatre)
WHERE GRIEF GOES TO DIE There is a Turkish expression: “He that conceals his grief finds no remedy for it.” A train driver named Roelf (Morlan Higgins) is doing everything he can to remedy his all-consuming trauma caused by the death of a black woman and her baby, whose faces he saw immediately before they…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: OF GRAPES AND NUTS (Victory Theatre Center in Burbank)
AMIABLE PARODY AMBLES AND RAMBLES I agree with director Paul Stroili that the mythical regard for John Steinbeck, Nobel Prize-winner for literature, makes his novels ripe for parody. Of Grapes and Nuts (the melding of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men) was written 20 years ago by Doug Armstrong, Keith Cooper and…
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Tour Theater Review: THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR (Shakespeare’s Globe at the Broad)
A  BLOODY GOOD MERRY A delightful, rollicking, and imaginative production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, famous for Falstaff (the Renaissance Homer Simpson, if you will), appeared at Shakespeare’s Globe in London and, through the magic of benefactors and angels in the art world, has arrived in North America; more specifically (and luckily) for us, in…
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Film Review: CONVICTION (Directed by Tony Goldwyn)
A PRETTY GOOD FILM JUST OPENED. HELLO? IS ANYONE LISTENING? Why are so few people talking about Conviction? Is it boring to talk about Hilary Swank being very strong in a quintessentially awards-style role? Over-awarded or not, it shouldn’t stop talk of how real and involving she is as Betty Anne Waters, a Massachusetts waitress…
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RED – with Bruce Willis, directed by Robert Schwentke – Movie Review
VIOLATED CINEMA RULE PROVES PROPHETIC TO ENSUING MEDIOCRITY “Roger that.†They were trying to sneak that one past me. The first Bowen Rule of the Cinema: There has never been a good movie that contains the phrase “Copy that.†But what if they say, “Roger that,†instead? What then? Does the rule apply? Let’s face…
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Theater Review: J.M. BARRIE’S PETER PAN (National Tour at the OC Performing Arts Center)
NEVERLAND NEVER LANDS – NOR DOES THIS PETER PAN TAKE OFF. In 2003, Universal Studios released a version of Peter Pan, J M Barrie’s beloved tale of childhood imagination that is threatened by burgeoning adulthood. The film used mind-boggling CGI effects to enhance the story of Peter, the boy who refuses to grow up, and…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE GOAT, OR WHO IS SYLVIA? (Chance Theater in Anaheim)
ALBEE SEEING YOU IN ANAHEIM HILLS [Reviewer calls his mom:] “Hey, Mom! I just saw Edward Albee’s The Goat at The Chance Theater in Anaheim Hills. The body of work this company has produced in the last year is seminal to the small theatre scene in Los Angeles. OK, Ma, Los Angeles adjacent. “What is it about?…
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DEAR HARVEY – Lee Strasberg Center – Los Angeles (West Hollywood) Theater Review
MILK AND SYMPATHY Dear Harvey Milk: After you were assassinated in 1978 (along with San Francisco’s Mayor Moscone) the gay community responded with a peaceful candlelight march instead of a violent demonstration. It spoke to a population’s ability to deal with grief in an elegant, eloquent, and loving style – not unlike the current production…
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NIGHTMARE: SUPERSTITIONS – Off Broadway Haunted House Review
BE UNAFRAID … BE VERY UNAFRAID No, the spooky kid from Nightmare: Superstitions‘ print ad campaign isn’t part of the installation, but almost every out-of-respectable-work actor is. The latest creation from the demented mind of Timothy Haskell, the 7th in a series of haunted houses, may be AOL Cityguide’s No. 1 rated haunted attraction in…
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TAKE ME OUT by Richard Greenberg – Celebration Theatre – Los Angeles Theater Review
“ANOTHER THING I LIKE IS THE HOME-RUN TROT†It is not so much that time has been unkind to Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out but that we were perhaps too kind to it in the first place. Now, stripped of its self-importance and with enough time having elapsed since it won all its prizes and…
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