Keith Mills, Anton Chekhov, and Seven Spots on the Sun Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Keith Mills was an actor. He was other things, too. He ran, or was part of, a soft-water company in the San Gabriel Valley. He was a husband, father and grandfather. But mainly, he was an actor, from Toronto. He … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times My wife is waiting at our front door for me to finally come home from the war,” says Simon Wiesenthal as he leaves his office for the last time in Tom Dugan’s beautifully written and performed one-man bio-play “Wiesenthal,” now at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. Read more… … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Dermot Davis’ dark comedy is set in the elevator of an urban hi-rise and performed on a proscenium 7-feet wide by 7-feet deep. That makes it unusually problematic to stage, though the challenge is ably met by director Tim Byron Owen and his game two-person ensemble. Read more… David C. … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw When Tim Kelly died in 1998, a Playbill obituary noted that he was probably the most published playwright in America, having written over 300 works for the “stock, amateur and educational” market. With amateur and/or stock being the operative words, it’s no surprise that Kelly’s adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the … Read more
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw “There’s a danger with one-man shows. What if you don’t like the performer? You’re screwed.” I’m paraphrasing, but this is a sentiment that Orson Bean articulates early into his own one-man show. The ironic implications just hang in the air, unanswered. Before and after this line, however, Bean’s efforts indicate … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Playwright Martin Zimmerman Discusses ‘Seven Spots on the Sun’ In Seven Spots on the Sun (Boston Court Performing Arts Center through November 1), a doctor in a war-torn country discovers that, with a laying on of his hands, he can cure a plague. One question in Martin Zimmerman’s play is, given the … Read more
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA Originally characters in 1930s single-panel cartoons and then the basis of a 1960s television sitcom, the Addams family consists of the bizarrely gothic, macabre, but close-knit clan created by cartoonist Charles Addams. Read more… Now running through October 26.
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA It cannot be said that Rajiv Joseph’s West Coast premiere Guards at the Taj is entertaining. Neither is it cheering, inspiring nor pleasantly distracting. But it thoroughly provokes thoughts and emotions like few other “entertainments” do. Read more… Now running through November 15.
Jenny Lower – LA Weekly Boredom is contagious in Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, now receiving an energetic revival at the Antaeus Company. The locus of the ennui is Yelena (Linda Park), the gorgeous, restless young wife of Serebryakov (Lawrence Pressman), an elderly professor who has retired to his family’s provincial estate. Read more… Margaret Gray … Read more
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net Having a dual passion for baseball and Broadway isn’t necessarily a prerequisite to enjoying the golden-age musical classic, “Damn Yankees,” but it certainly helps. This 1955 stage hit reteamed most of the illustrious creators of an earlier Broadway smash “The Pajama Game.” Read more… Now running through October 25.