Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw. In Manuel Puig’s stage play, Kiss of the Spider Woman, two fundamentally different personalities — a gay man accused of sexual relations with a minor, and a political prisoner-slash-macho straight guy working to overthrow a repressive regime — are housed together in a dingy cell with wretched food, dim lighting, … Read more
Plus a merry but muddled ‘Windsor’ at the Theatricum, ‘King James’ and two new musicals on opposite poles of the gender discussion. Don Shirley – Angeles Stage Angeles Stage first appeared a year ago, as masked audiences were beginning to return to LA stages in person, after more than a year of mostly virtual-only activity. … Read more
Terry Morgan – ArtsBeat LA As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Technology zooms forward, but human nature remains stubbornly persistent. Thus a play such as Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, which premiered in 1899, can still speak to us today, can still cause us to laugh or cry at its … Read more
Terry Morgan – Talkin’ Broadway Often, when classic plays are “updated” or “reimagined,” the implication is that the work needed such treatment to remain relevant to a modern audience. In my experience, this rarely is the case, and such reinventions are generally more of a way for a director to stamp his or her stylistic … Read more
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA In a tiny church, a battle wages. That battle has been nearly settled by American law, it seems to be settling in large urban areas. But in the hearts and minds of the congregation at Kandota Lutheran Church in Little Sauk, Minn., it’s still a stubbornly fought war. Read … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Sometimes a play registers as up front and personal; one’s immediately drawn into the experience of its characters, heartrending or comic or both as the case may be. Read more… Now running through June 5
Bob Verini – Stage Raw Talk about your call of the wild! The atavistic urge – the impulse to fall in with nature in its most primitive state – is an old standby in drama and literature, and it’s now being applied to strong effect in My Barking Dog, Eric Coble’s startling two-hander at the Theatre @ … Read more