Bob Verini – Arts In LA First things first: Dirty is by no means dirty, at least insofar as habitues of Melrose Avenue’s Zephyr Theatre might expect. That particular venue has hosted more than its share of full-frontal nudity and simulated sex…
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly If ever there were a writer dedicated to society’s subversion it was Joe Orton. Orton despised the status quo and made it his mission to wreak havoc on its precepts as thoroughly and flamboyantly as…
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA It takes a highly talented actor to emulate a real-life theater legend. Born 1856, Gabrielle Réjane (her stage name) was a remarkable French actress and innovative theater impresario who altered French culture, its fashion and socio-politics…
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA Traditional fairy tales begin with characters who have far to travel, while the promise of adventure perfumes the story. And at the conclusions of these tales, the righteous get their rewards, while the wrongdoers…
David C. Nichols – LA Times A high degree of skill and individuality accompanies “Takarazuka!!!” at East West Players. In its elegant West Coast premiere, Susan Soon He Stanton’s very promising albeit still-forming play with music uses the famed all-female…
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Master marionettiste Ronnie Burkett pays homage to vaudeville and its indefatigable performers in his latest piece, which played all too briefly this past week as part of UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance Program.…
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw One of my seminal experiences in 40 years of Los Angeles theatergoing was the single performance in 1977 at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre of the first local exposure to the work of Robert Wilson, I was…
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Apparently playwright Tom Yewell wanted to provide a male variation on The Vagina Monologues. The title might suggest that the show is a bit of pornography or an exercise in sensationalism, but the play is neither,…
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw Oscar Wilde’s satire of English upper-class society has solemn and feminist undertones to it, making a precursor of the “dramedy of manners.” After all, it was first performed in 1893 at London’s Haymarket Theatre. The…
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA Widely considered the best of writer Neil Simon’s well-made plays, Brighton Beach Memoirs—about a Jewish family in 1930s Brooklyn—has landed in the South Bay through Dec. 19 at Torrance Theater Company. But can this Southern…