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
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw This Mel Brooks musical, adapted from the film by Brooks and Gene Wilder, somehow manages to be both a send-up and homage to Mary Shelley’s original novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, and James Whale’s 1931 movie Frankensteinand its 1935 sequel Bride of Frankenstein. Read more… Margaret Gray – LA Times Underpinning much of … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times Michael Wilson’s revival of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful,” which has just opened at the Ahmanson Theatre, premiered on Broadway in 2013 to a bounty of praise and nominations, especially for Cicely Tyson, who won the Tony Award for her portrayal of Mrs. Carrie Watts. Originally written as a … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times Let’s Make a Deal’s” Wayne Brady as the lead in a revival of “Kiss Me, Kate”: It almost sounds like an especially wacky draft in some fantasy stunt-casting league for theater directors. Sheldon Epps of the Pasadena Playhouse has not only made it happen, he has used it as the … Read more
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net Also known as “Cockfight Play,” a perhaps less threatening title preferred in some media outlets, Mike Bartlett’s Olivier Award winning British play, “Cock,” makes its L.A. debut in a taut and terrific staging. Read more… Margaret Gray – LA Times “We’re just going around in circles,” a character accurately observes in … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times It may sit uneasily with our notion of Shakespeare to imagine him tackling the hot-button issues of his era like a Jacobean David Mamet. But Bill Cain’s “Equivocation” at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum takes a scholarly theory — that “Macbeth” is a coded chronicle of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw “Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them.” –Usually attributed, possibly inaccurately, to Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1894) in “The Voiceless” Irish playwright Ross Dungan might have had this quote in mind -– for sure he had the sentiment –- when he wrote this … Read more
Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA A theatrical reminiscence by Joanna McClelland Glass about a time when she served as secretary to Judge Francis Biddle gets a standout production at International City Theatre. Its casting choices—Tony Abatemarco playing Biddle, Paige Lindsey White as his assistant Sarah “with an h”—make the very literate and demanding script a thoughtful … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times J.B. Murray, the outsider artist and subject of the musical hagiography “Visionary Man” at the Hudson Mainstage, was an illiterate Georgia farmer who at age 70, after receiving a message from the Holy Spirit, began painting pictures of unbelievers in hell, was taken up by the art world and died … Read more
Neal Weaver – Arts In LA Playwright Neil LaBute is so prolific, and has created in so many different and varied media, that it’s virtually impossible to generalize about his work. (His program bio is downright intimidating.) But in many of the scripts for which he is best known—Fat Pig, In the Company of Men, … Read more