Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Written by Bob Randall (nee Stanley B. Goldstein), 6 Rms Riv Vu opened on Broadway in 1972, with Jerry Orbach and Jane Alexander as strangers who meet in an empty apartment and cannot decide whether or not to have an affair. The production ran for 247 performances and earned Randall a Drama Desk … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Each of these brief one acts takes place around a bed. Otherwise, they vary in quality and style. In Brian Tanen ‘s The Optimist, directed by Amanda Saunders, a young British bobby (Parker Phillips) and a veteran female Chief Inspector (Tara Karsian) meet at a crime scene. Read more… Now running through … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Hollywood has a long history of hypocrisy when it comes to gay celebrities, so a musical that sheds light on their closeting is a production one wants to praise – if only one could. The story in The Max Factor Factor, now at Noho Arts Center, unfolds in the 1930s. … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw A playwright and a well-regarded translator and adapter of Moliere’s work, Freyda Thomas found inspiration for her The Gamester in Le Joueur, a late 17th century play by Jean-Francois Regnard. Read more… Now playing through August 24.
Steven Leigh Morris – Stage Raw That David Melville should bring La Dolce Vita into his family-friendly outdoor staging of Shakespeare’s knotty Italian comedy makes sense. Italian comedies of the 1960s are no less dodgy, regarding their sexual politics, than the amused brutality towards a defiant spouse found in Taming of the Shrew’s central story. Independent-minded, embittered Katherine (Melissa … Read more
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw Louise Munson’s meandering and nostalgic family drama is set in Italy during a summer holiday. Two American siblings touch base with their Italian mother’s parents and brother, discussing poetry and philosophy while drinking and dining, reading, playing board games, singing songs and telling stories. Much of the conversation is in … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw In Irish playwright Billy Roche’s family drama, Peadar (John McKenna), a gentle man in a rough and unforgiving world, reminisces to his friend’s daughter, Emer (Kristen Kollender), about his encounter with her mother, Joy. In his story, Joy had just been abandoned by the girl’s callous dad, Theo (Andrew Graves), … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly In Elizabethan England, the twelve days of Christmas were festivity days – none more so that the twelfth when the partying could get really crazy and masters and servants, in a frenzy of masquerade, would sometimes exchange roles. It’s from this tradition that Shakespeare is assumed to have derived the … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Playwright/director Jonas Oppenheim’s attempt to cast light on the problems of infertile couples while making comic hay in the fashion of a British sex farce is a sore disappointment. Missing the crisp humor abundant in the work of Ayckbourne, Frayn and Orton, the show’s on-stage antics along with much of … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Land Line, a world premiere play by Stephen Dierkes, is about a dying man and his efforts to marshal his courage and his sanity through a relationship with his life-long friend. Read more… Now running through July 21.