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 – 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 – Frontiers L.A. During the 1970s, dinner theaters were popular throughout the nation, offering least-common-denominator entertainment served alongside overcooked roast beef and weak cocktails. It wasn’t as much about going to the theater as a quest for chuckles that didn’t tax the brain. Yuppie patrons dined on semi-digestible grub while getting buzzed.Read more… … Read more
Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1993 musical adaptation of writer-director Billy Wilder’s legendary 1950 film classic Sunset Boulevard is perhaps as well known for its behind the scenes melodrama as its Gothic-flavored narrative about faded Hollywood glamour and unrequited love. Read more… Shirle Gottlieb – Gazette Newspapers It’s no wonder that “Sunset … Read more
Les Spindle – Frontiers Veteran playwright-screenwriter-director Del Shores (Sordid Lives, Yellow) dons a producer’s hat for an encore production of Matthew Leavitt’s raucous sex comedy, The Boomerang Effect. This episodic play, charting the subtly interrelated lives of five couples in five separate bedrooms, premiered at the Odyssey Theatre in April 2012. Read more Now running through July … Read more
Bob Verini – ArtsInLA The first extended run of the tuner A Man of No Importance is a matter of some importance, as it inaugurates—in this era of folding companies and theaters in transit—a new enterprise: the Good People Theater Company, under the direction of the gifted veteran stager-choreographer Janet Miller. Taking on the countervailing winds (money … Read more
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA It’s not every day you get to be heavyweight champion of the world—for a professional sportsman it’s a once in a lifetime event, at least the first time is… In 1964, at the tender age of 22, boxing legend Cassius Clay (soon thereafter known as Muhammad Ali) ascended to the pinnacle … Read more
THE CRUCIBLE by Arthur Miller. Neal Weaver – LA Weekly Arthur Miller’s play, first produced on Broadway in 1953, was Miller’s impassioned response to McCarthyism and the witch-hunts launched by the House Un-American Activities Committee. But the fact that it has become an oft-produced American classic and the basis for two films (including a French version with … Read more
DYING CITY by Christopher Shinn. Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly When Peter (Burt Grinstead) unexpectedly shows up at Kelly’s (Laurie Okin) Lower Manhattan apartment, the mood is prickly and awkward. It’s understandable; Peter is the identical twin of her husband Craig, a hard as nails soldier who recently died in a military accident in the Gulf. But … Read more