Jonas Schwartz – TheaterMania
The model for Bernard Weinraub’s play Above the Fold, premiering at the Pasadena Playhouse, is Tom Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize winner Bonfire of the Vanities. Though parallels can be seen between both works, the indictment of politicians, the press, and Caucasian and African-American leaders for instigating and celebritizing the racial divide, Weinraub’s work also maintains a ripped-from-the-headlines feel. Read more…
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter
Once upon a time journalism, at least as depicted on stage and film, looked like fun: crusading underpaid reporters uncovered dark secrets while wisecracking one another in fierce, playful competition. The 24-hour news cycle has leached much of the joy, and romance, from the profession, replacing it with celebrity, vanity and rhetorical cat-calling. Read more…
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA
A toothless drama, Bernard Weinraub’s Above the Fold takes an inflammatory crime ‘ripped-from-the-headlines’ (based on the 2006 Duke University Lacrosse team rape case) and fails to convert it into compelling theater. Ambitious newspaper reporter Jane (Taraji P. Henson) flies from New York to a Southern university where three white fraternity boys have been accused of raping a young African-American woman. Read more…
Now running through February 23.