Myron Meisel – Stage Raw While institutions and their procedural processes may be the backbone of our social organization, they can also tend to compound the dysfunctions they confront with systemic failings of their own, whether they be the police,…
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw What follows the “happily ever after” conclusion of most fairy tales? That’s what composer-songwriter Stephen Sondheim and book-writer James Lapine examine in their sophisticated 1986 Broadway musical based on Grimm’s fairy tails and composed expressly…
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly As in Aaron Posner’s beguiling Stupid Fucking Bird, which played at Boston Court earlier this year, David Bucci’s Possum Carcass riffs on The Seagull, transporting Chekhov’s story into the 21st century while holding on to the fundamentals of character, theme…
Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. Gifted New Zealand-based actress Lucy Lawless, known for her larger-than-life television roles, steps into yet another this December, courtesy of the Pasadena Playhouse. In the theater’s annual holiday season panto extravaganza, Sleeping Beauty and Her Winter…
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Levy Lee Simon’s play celebrates the life and times of The Dunbar Hotel, on Los Angeles’s Central Avenue. As a luxury hotel serving the African-American community at a time when poverty and discrimination made most…
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Most people familiar with theater history have heard of Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse. Fewer recognize the name Gabrielle Réjane, a French actress and international megastar whose career spanned 1874 to 1920, during which time she…
Margaret Gray – LA Times Henry Jaglom’s “Train to Zakopané,” premiering at the Edgemar Center for the Arts, is based on an incident in the life of his father: a rich, complex, heartbreaking story of doomed lovers in Poland between…
Bob Verini – Stage Raw Jerome Kern, no mean tunesmith, had a famous retort when asked about Irving Berlin’s place in American music. He has none, the Show Boat composer replied; “he is American music.” In a similar vein, one might say that Hershey…
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Bekah Brunstetter’s newest play is about brothers: what it means to live with a sibling you’re not compatible with, and what it’s like to long for one who may not exist. Read more… Now running through…
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw In the middle years of the 20th century, Terrence Rattigan (1911-1977) was perhaps England’s most important playwright. (Noel Coward was in a state of temporary eclipse, though he would experience a triumphant resurgence a few years…