David C. Nichols – LA Times The title of “Flower Duet,” in its West Coast premiere at the Road Theatre on Magnolia, refers to Leo Delibes’ celebrated “Lakmé” air for soprano and mezzo. It is being rehearsed by two Vermont-based frenemies, for a mutual friends’ wedding, though the musical component is at best a device. … Read more
Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. A new theatre company called Queer Classics lives up to its name with its unabashedly gay adaptation of the classic Oscar Wilde farce The Importance of Being Earnest, premiering at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. As with most of Wilde’s plays, there is something intrinsically queer about the sensibility of the original … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Tarell Alvin McCraney’s tender, poetical drama The Brothers Size (Fountain Theatre) and Billy Van Zandt & Jane Milmore’s meta-theatrical farce Drop Dead! (presented by Theatre 68, at North Hollywood’s NoHo Arts Center) share one salient commonality: Each production has moments when the actors recite stage directions about their own characters. Tarell Alvin McCraney’s … Read more
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA Shakespeare’s King Lear has its potencies. Simply described, it follows the downfall of a once-powerful leader and the dysfunction of his family. Pondering his retirement, the monarch asks his three daughters to avow their love. The elder two, Goneril and Regan, lavish empty words on papa. The youngest, Cordelia, refuses to … Read more
Jonas Schwartz – Arts In LA In one of the famous lines from The Godfather, Don Corleone tells his eldest son, “Never tell anyone outside the family what you are thinking again.” The don would have burst a gut if he had seen what Brooke Wyeth, the protagonist of Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities, has written about her family in … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Zombies From The Beyond, which premiered off-Broadway in 1995, takes place in the Eisenhower Years, that era of dull certitude when the Soviet Union was America’s arch-enemy and the possibility of creatures from outer space invading the planet haunted American popular culture. Read more… Jonas Schwartz – Arts In LA The … Read more
Neal Weaver – ArtsInLA When this modest little musical, with book and lyrics by Tom Jones and music by Harvey Schmidt, first opened Off-Broadway in 1960, no one could have predicted the astonishing success it would achieve. It ran for a grand 42 years, racking up an astronomical 17,162 performances, and has since been performed … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA “So that’s where American Idol contestants go to die: non-Equity tours and Indian casinos.” So sniffed my companion as we approached the Pantages Theatre and its proud marquee announcement of Ace Young (seventh place, Season V) and Diana DeGarmo (second place, Season III) in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The skepticism … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Nate Rufus Edelman’s slick and funny comedy has an unexpected sting in its tail. Larry (Leon Russom) and Wally (Garrett Michael Langston) are a pair of hit-men who’ve been sent to Las Vegas to commit a murder. Larry is earnest, disciplined, professional, and resolutely impersonal. But there must be a … Read more
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw Playwright-performer Lynn Downey Braswell was apparently so taken by Shauna Niequist’s 2007 memoir/short story collection that she adapted it to become her stage vehicle. Portraying Shauna, the show’s narrator, Braswell’s frank, confessional and sometimes amusing style of performance serves the material well. Read more… Now running through June 29.