Margaret Gray – LA Times The world-premiere play “The Missing Pages of Lewis Carroll,” at Boston Court Performing Arts Center in Pasadena, was inspired by a historical mystery: Three entries from June 1863 were cut out of the diaries of Charles Dodgson, the Oxford math professor who wrote “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” under his pen … Read more
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw Philip Ridley, whether as playwright (The Fastest Clock in the Universe, Mercury Fur, Tender Napalm) or filmmaker (The Mysterious Skin, Heartless), remains ever distinctively individual, and this revival of his first play, 1991’s The Pitchfork Disney, produced locally in 2006 by Company of Angels (and subsequently in 2011 at Next Stage), … Read more
Jenny Lower – Stage Raw If its Pulitzer Prize nomination is any indication, Howard Korder’s Boys’ Lifemust have caught something in the zeitgeist when it debuted on Broadway in 1988. Read more… Now running through March 7.
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw One element that’s always appealed to me in the Tristan and Yseult story [this version, anyway] has to do with how King Mark – a betrayed ruler and cuckolded husband – declines to violently avenge himself on the erring lovers. Although the opportunity is there, he forbears from plunging a dagger … Read more
Bob Verini – Stage Raw For one more weekend, through Sunday Feb. 8, there’s an absolutely smashing revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s 1970 Company in town. If you detect a note of surprise in that announcement, no offense is meant to the Cabrillo Music Theatre, which presents it, and especially not to Nick DeGruccio, who … Read more
Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze Mr. Parliament has forgotten his 32nd wedding anniversary. Big oops? Perhaps not. His faux pas allows his wife the chance for growth and happiness in Norm Foster’s comedy “Mrs. Parliament’s Night Out” —Read more… Now running through February 12.
Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze Farce. It’s that theatrical plot in which a character — apparently always male — tells a lie and gets wound up in it. Then, somehow, over the course of two hours, he manages to unwind himself and earn the forgiveness of his fellow characters. Read more… Now running through February … Read more
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw Backed by a top-notch trio of jazz musicians, petite and pretty vocalist Maria Elena Infantino takes to the stage in a plain black dress and dark wig. Channeling “the little sparrow” — Édith Piaf — Infantino devotes the first third of her hour-long performance to the famous French songbird. Read more…Now … Read more
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw Those who tend to be consistently disappointed in new musicals could profitably explore new opera as a more reliable alternative, where the creative energies appear to have been more vibrant so far in this latest century. Read more… Now running through February 1.
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw One of the pleasures of attending theater is witnessing the rebirth of a classic play through a vital new production. There’s something profoundly satisfying in realizing that the concerns of the past aren’t that different from our own; that art, when well done, resounds down the corridors of time like … Read more