Neal Weaver – LA Weekly Writer-director Steve Sajich’s play consists of four tenuously interrelated scenes, centering on the murder of a hooker. For reasons best known to Sajich, the four scenes are juggled in performance, with the audience deciding what their order will be. But this seems like a mere gimmick, designed to keep us … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly As Bottom, performer Katherine Griffith may be the best reason to see this amusing but somewhat quotidian presentation of Shakespeare’s seasonal classic. Cast across gender by directors Melora Marshall and Willow Geer, Griffith’s likable blowhard garners a plurality of the laughs, along with his proletarian colleagues, whose presentation of Pyramus … Read more
Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly Each of two average, kitchen-sink tragedies, with some levity throughout, take as their focus the troubled relationship between adult daughters and their wayward, alcoholic parents. In You’ll Just Love My Dad, written by Stephanie Jones and Peter Schuyler, an old homeless guy breaks into a home and starts snooping around … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day was first presented as a workshop in 1985 at New York’s Theatre 22, before receiving its premiere at San Francisco’s Eureka Theatre in 1987, directed by Oskar Eustis — who runs New York’s Public Theater. It’s no coincidence that in 1990, Eustis … Read more
Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. The works of veteran playwright-actor Sam Shepard (True West, The Curse of the Starving Class, A Lie of the Mind) are largely thought of as brooding portraits of severe family dysfunction in America’s heartland. His characters often face an inescapable legacy of decline and despair. Their psychological baggage leads them … Read more
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net A favorite pastime of Broadway musical fanatics is sharing stories of infamous musical flops. Of course, the perception of a “flop” can reflect a box-office calamity or an artistic failure, or a combination of the two. The measure of artistic worth is subjective.Read more… Now running through September … Read more
Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. To borrow a lyrical phrase from Annie Get Your Gun, actor-producer Ryan O’Connor (aka Ryan LaConnor) spends his Monday nights doin’ what comes naturally. For O’Connor that doesn’t mean packing a pistol or crooning an Ethel Merman ditty written by Irving Berlin. It means serving as the amusing and vivacious … Read more
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net How’re you gonna keep ’em down on the farm once they’ve illuminated the stages of Broadway? Actor-singer David Burnham who has forged an acclaimed and prolific career in such shows as “Wicked,” “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” and “The Light in the Piazza,” enjoys sharing his heartfelt … Read more
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA Dramatic lighting sets the mood at Rockwell Table & Stage, for the latest “For The Record” musical production (previously staged)—this time a tribute to the four feature films of creative Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann. The cabaret-style show smoothly segues from snippets from Romeo + Juliet to Moulin Rouge! to The Great Gatsby, with a little Strictly Ballroom occasionally thrown in … Read more
Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA It might be deduced, knowing painter Mark Rothko’s iconoclastic nature, that he might not applaud the news that a recent Christie’s auction of paintings included one by him that sold for $86.9 million. Considered one of the great postwar modern artists, in the latter years of his life he … Read more