Jonas Schwartz-Owen – Theatermania The East West Players production of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s brilliant, jagged pill of a musical Assassins is thought-provoking and harrowing. Read more… Rob Stevens – Haines His Way The Stephen Sondheim one-act musical Assassins has gotten mixed reviews and heated pro and con reactions since it debuted in 1990. What else would you expect … Read more
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way In 1980, while appearing in the company of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd on Broadway, performer, and later playwright, Craig Lucas used his friendship with the composer to get him to open up his trunk of cut songs from his earlier musicals.Read more… Now running through February 27
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way For 50 years beginning in 1950, cartoonist Charles M. Schulz drew a daily comic strip entitled Peanuts which featured the mis-adventures of a young boy named Charlie Brown and his friends. Read more… Now running through September 12
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way In Jack Rushen’s new play, Taming the Lion, currently playing at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40, the playwright looks at a short time frame in 1933 when Haines’s relationship and his scandal-ridden extracurricular escapades could no longer be tolerated by studio boss Louis B. Mayer. Even though the script has … Read more
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way A middle-aged couple wake up one morning naked in bed. The woman gently removes his hand from her breast, dons a handy silk robe and is off to the kitchen to make coffee. The man soon follows.Read more… Now running through March 15
Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen Perspective is crucial to the understanding of both life and theater, and in the Pasadena Playhouse production of The Father, which opened this week, an intentionally disorienting point-of-view offers a dramatic and moving look at late-stage dementia. Written by Florian Zeller, the play premiered in 2014 and many consider … Read more
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way “Well, what family doesn’t have its ups and downs?” Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine famously opines after a particularly vicious family squabble in James Goldman’s The Lion in Winter. I’m sure Ditty Blaylock, the matriarch in Del Shores’ latest play This Side of Crazy would gladly exchange the trio of crown-hungry Plantagenet princes … Read more
Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen When playwright Heidi Schreck was in high school, she traveled the country participating in Constitutional debate competitions. It was primarily a scheme cooked up by her mother to pay for college tuition with prize money (it worked), and she became an expert at defending or opposing various amendments … Read more
Lovell Estell III — Stage Raw On May 10, 1940, Iceland was invaded by the Royal Navy and Royal Marines because the British government feared the possible Nazi takeover of the country. A little over a year later, defense of the country was transferred to the United States. Against this backdrop, Cailin Maureen Harrison tells … Read more
Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen Key Largo was first a 1939 Broadway play, then a 1948 film starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and finally, it is now at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles in a new world premiere adaptation. Adapted by Andy Garcia and Jeffrey Hatcher, this play shifts some of the … Read more