Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly …With diamond studs in her horned-rimmed glasses, the purple-wigged, megalomaniac alter ego of 80-year-old Australian Barry Humphries spends much of the evening goading her Ahmanson Theatre audience. Read more… Bob Verini – Arts In LA Dame Edna! The mere title and name connote rapier wit, lightly off-color insults, and self-obsession, … 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
Paul Birchall – Stage and Cinema This fascinating drama by playwright Zayd Dohrn is set in the bizarre subculture of women who buy dolls that eerily resemble actual babies. Can this possibly be enough material here for a play? Read more… Bob Verini – Arts In LA Roger Ebert once opined, “It’s not what a movie … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA As surely as the Rockettes annually turn out to Occupy Radio City, Troubadour Theater Company uses December to command Burbank’s Falcon Theatre for a celebratory holiday mash-up of some sort of Christmas tale and a particular pop songbook. The Snow QUEEN, the sixth such expression of wassail I’ve encountered, is … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA Ill-advised, intrusive direction plagues the Chance Theater’s She Loves Me, and the casualty is the easy, unforced enjoyment traditionally associated with this jewel box of a musical, adapted from the 1940 Lubitsch classic The Shop Around the Corner. Read more… David C. Nichols – LA Times The three essential qualities invoked in … Read more
Bob Verini – Stage Raw Jerome Kern, no mean tunesmith, had a famous retort when asked about Irving Berlin’s place in American music. He has none, the Show Boat composer replied; “he is American music.” In a similar vein, one might say that Hershey Felder has no place among performers of musical biographical monologues. Read more… David C. Nichols – … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA First things first: Dirty is by no means dirty, at least insofar as habitues of Melrose Avenue’s Zephyr Theatre might expect. That particular venue has hosted more than its share of full-frontal nudity and simulated sex acts over the years. Read more… Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly In its rather earnest … Read more
Bob Verini – Stage Raw Rockwell Table and Stage, in Los Feliz, has long been the local locus of the interactive/immersive restaurant/musical. That means you eat and drink while the action is taking place all around you, and a pop diva is as likely to belt her showcase number in your lap, breathing on your … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA Diane Paulus’ circus-themed Pippin revival is every bit as good as you’ve heard, and then some. It invests the famously thin libretto (crafted by Roger O. Hirson in 1972) with so much conviction, and so bathes it in an overlay of gorgeous lighting (many thanks, Kenneth Posner), acrobatics, juggling, and gymnastics, … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times One of the few laugh lines in Dael Orlandersmith’s harrowing new solo show, “Forever,” in its world premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, comes in an exchange she describes with an attendant at the morgue after her mother’s death. She asks him if he’s afraid. His laconic reply: “The dead … Read more