Rob Stevens – Haines His Way “I Like Ike” appeared on a political campaign button in 1952 as the decorated general and political neophyte Dwight D. Eisenhower ran for the office of President of the United States as the Republican candidate. Fortunately for him and unfortunately for the Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson, most of America … Read more
Terry Morgan – ArtsBeatLA When Harper Lee wrote her novel To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960, she didn’t think it would be a big success. Sixty-two years later, the book has been taught to millions of students in schools, was the source of a classic 1962 film of the same name, and recently inspired a theatrical version … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw When the young artists of the newly formed company The Actors’ Gang did a midnight show of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu the King in 1982, informed by punk rock and an anger against the Reagan administration, I doubt that any of their number imagined that the troupe would be doing a fortieth anniversary … Read more
Harker Jones – BroadwayWorld The world premiere of Arlene Hutton’s ACCORDING TO THE CHORUS is a lively slice-of-life look at the backstage antics of an unnamed Broadway show (that’s been running longer than CATS) in 1984. Set in a quick-change room devoted to six chorus girls and their three dressers, the makeshift family squabbles, complains, … Read more
Jonas Schwartz-Owen – Theatermania The final five minutes in Part 1 of Matthew Lopez’s epic Tony-winning The Inheritance, now running at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, are some of the most gut-wrenching moments in theater. At the performance I attended, the entire audience sat connected — some teary-eyed, some crying — but it seemed everyone was … Read more
Dana Martin – Stage Raw The Chance Theatre is pulling nothing but power moves this season. Kristoffer Diaz’s 2009 Pulitzer Prize Finalist, The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, is masculinity on overdrive. Macedonio Guerra, or The Mace (Rudy Solis III) knows his wrestling history. What’s more, he reveres the form as high art worthy of praise and … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Before becoming a playwright and screenwriter, Beau Willimon worked as a political operative, toiling behind the scenes on the campaigns of Chuck Schumer, Hilary Clinton, Bill Bradley and Howard Dean. Willimon left politics in 2004, subsequently translating his experiences as a ringside player in Washington into plays, film and TV, … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw A young Nina Simone never aspired to be a singer. Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon, the sixth of eight children, she studied classical piano as a child, her training paid for by the white employer of her mother, a Methodist minister who worked part-time as a housekeeper. Later she attended Juilliard … Read more
Don Shirley – Angeles Stage Plus ‘Desert Stories for Lost Girls” at LATC, ‘Babe’ and ‘To the Bone’ in Atwater. Dan Sullivan, the former LA Times theater critic who ushered LA readers into the modern theatrical world, died last week at the age of 86. It’s time to remember him, before moving on to current … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Writer/director Catherine Butterfield’s women-centered dramedy is set in a working-class community south of Boston, where two sisters of Irish-Catholic extraction, Kelly (Tisha Terrasini-Banker) and Maureen (Amanda Weier), share a house once owned and occupied by their grandmother. The place is a throwback to a distant past, its walls replete with … Read more