Socks Whitmore – Stage Raw The term masochism (defined by the dictionary as “the tendency to derive pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from one’s own pain or humiliation”) is derived from the name of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, an Austrian author whose association with the subject stems from the plot of his best-known work, Venus in Furs. … Read more
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way Way back in the mid 1970s, when I was just a few years into my theatre-going and theatre-reviewing career, I made the acquaintance of the lovely Viola Heigi-Swisher, who at the time was the Los Angeles theatre reviewer for the glossy, artsy New York-based monthly magazine After Dark. She … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times Struggles over inheritance are always painful — unless, of course, they take place in a French farce, in which case they are endlessly prankish and ribald. Read more… Myron Meisel – Stage Raw David Ives’s“translaptation” of Jean-Francois Regnard’s 1708 farce The Heir Apparent (Le Legataire Universel), at International City Theatre, also involves a … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly David Ives’ Tony-nominated 2010 sexual comedy, Venus in Fur, is to eroticism what Yasmina Reza’s Art is to painting. Both are beguiling, erudite parlor games that keep fluttering around the issues they purport to investigate. Read more… Now running through Oct. 26.
Bob Verini – ArtsInLA This production is a buoyant treat from first to last. Full disclosure, this is coming from someone with a lifelong antipathy to mistaken-identity plots—you know, the ones in which one opportune word from a character would set everything right immediately, but that word is arbitrarily withheld until the 11th hour. That’s … Read more