Paul Birchall – Stage Raw I Like Mondays. What is nicer than a Monday night show? If I were a theater producer I would always slip a Monday night performance into the schedule, just on principle. For one thing, all the critics will come, as they really won’t have anything else to do that night, except … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times No Prince Charming — or any other man, for that matter — appears onstage in the revival of “Real Women Have Curves” at the Pasadena Playhouse. Nevertheless Josefina López’s crowd-pleasing play is a Cinderella story, with a touchingly pure faith in the power of a makeover. Read more… Jonas Schwartz – … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – Stage Raw The Marsh, in San Francisco, is the Bay Area’s answer to Son of Semele’s Solo Creation Festival in L.A. The San Francisco venue, however, is a year-round breeding ground of solo performances. Echo Brown’s Black Virgins Are Not for Hipsters was supposed to run through August, and has been extended through … Read more
Dany Margolies – The Daily News Each year for the past decade, the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades has commissioned a Los Angeles theater company to adapt an Ancient Greek play for the Getty’s outdoor amphitheater. This year, the Pasadena-based Theatre @ Boston Court sets the Euripides tragedy “Medea” in modern-day Boyle Heights. Enter “Mojada: … Read more
Dany Margolies – The Daily News Theatergoers are rarely able to observe characters growing up over the course of several plays. Shakespeare’s Prince Hal provides one notable exception. Playwright Neil Simon offers another. In his Brighton Beach Memoirs, we met Eugene Jerome, the hilariously genial youngster in 1940s New York, torn between becoming a professional baseball … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Sometimes staging Shakespeare in a period piece setting adds color and spark. Other times, this sort of stage dressing proves either a distraction and/or irrelevant to the production as a whole. Both is the case with director Ellen Geer’s current mounting of As You Like It, which is set in mid … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw So, nobody does it better. Makes me feel sad for the rest. Nobody does it better. Baby, baby, you’re the best. We are talking about James Bond, ruthless British secret agent 007, who, along with Doctor Who and the dear old Queen Liz, are some of the best things to … Read more
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw Ellen Geer directs a large ensemble of actors and, together with the design team and crew, the Theatricum Botanicum company delivers an endearing stage version of one of the most beloved novels in American literature. Read more… Now running through Sept. 27.
Dany Margolies – Press-Telegram A performance of Charles Busch’s campy “Psycho Beach Party” should be great fun — for the audience, that is. The actors should have their fun during rehearsals, getting the giggles out of the way and figuring out the innuendo so they don’t realize it on opening night in front of an … Read more
From Paul Verdier to Dakin Matthews to A. Jeffrey Schoenberg to Stephen Sachs Paul Verdier (contributed by Steven Leigh Morris) Steven Leigh Morris – Stage Raw Yet another passing of another era was marked September 6, when actor-director-playwright-producer Paul Verdier died of complications from Parkinson’s Disease while under hospice care in West Hollywood. Read more… … Read more