Margaret Gray – LA Times Son of Semele Ensemble has selected two startlingly different short plays for “Woman Parts,” a double bill planned, according to the program, as a corrective to the underrepresentation of women in the theater. The first…
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA If you have never seen a musical and hoped you never would, perhaps it’s time to venture into the world of The Drowsy Chaperone, a charmer of nonstop pep. If, however, you are mad for…
David C. Nichols – LA Times Highly promising talent bounces through “Pray to Ball” at the Skylight Theatre. Amir Abdullah’s tersely entertaining examination of Islam, college basketball and friendship has some new-play issues, but it’s undeniably heartfelt and thought-provoking. Played…
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw In 1981, a musical adaptation by Andrew Lloyd Webber of British poet T. S. Eliot’s collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats took London’s West End by storm. Cats was immediately transferred Stateside, where the Tony Award-winning musical still…
Sharon Perlmutter – Talkin’ Broadway I confess that a quick look at Esther Vilar’s Wikipedia page gave me a bit of insight into the production of Sjalusi (or Jealousy, or, perhaps Celos), having its U.S. premiere in a very brief run at [Inside] the…
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw In the 1974 Broadway comedy My Fat Friend, Lynn Redgrave played a zaftig young woman thrilled that a man has shown an interest in her. When he’s called away for a time, she resolves, with the…
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Come late to a performance of Impro Theatre’s Shakespeare Unscripted and you’ll likely be greeted with an ironic round of applause from the audience members who have been waiting for you to arrive. Latecomers react with good-natured…
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter Porgy and Bess (the lamentable and disingenuous branding title will not be employed again by this writer) is one of those incomparable works of art that necessarily is always somewhat imperfect in performance. It is…
Hoyt Hilsman – Huffington Post Over the past couple of decades, Australia has produced a bumper crop of movie icons, from Mel Gibson and Nicole Kidman to Hugh Jackman and Cate Blanchett. But what most fans don’t realize is that…
Hoyt Hilsman – Huffington Post A Coffin in Egypt, a rarely produced 1980 play by Horton Foote would seem an unlikely subject for an opera, but in the hands of the marvelous Frederica von Stade and the talented composer and…