Les Spindle – Edge on the Net Michael Urie proves to be a virtuoso clown, a consummate actor, and a force of nature, all rolled into one, in his tour de force solo turn in Jonathan Tolins ‘ irresistible showbiz comedy, “Buyer & Cellar.”Under the crackling direction of Stephen Brackett, Tolins’ sassy and inventive concoction provides a … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times In its basic contours and execution, Ian MacAllister-McDonald’s “The Sexual Life of Savages” at the Beverly Hills Playhouse is an edgy dramedy of postmillennial eroticism that certainly keeps us watching. Read more… Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter A couple planning on romance is instead waylaid by argument, a fundamental … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter If I pale at writing this review, it’s because I’ve just seen a Ghost. Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin won an Oscar for the 1990 film as did Whoopi Goldberg, supporting Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. The film was also nominated for best picture back when there were only five a … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw People are always doing things to Chekhov. At least since the 1950s, when Joshua Logan reset The Cherry Orchard to the post-Civil War American South in a short-lived adaptation called The Wisteria Trees, the Russian playwright has been adapted, spoofed, satirized, de-constructed, re-conceived, re-thought, re-written and plagiarized. Chekhov Derivatives and Recycling has become … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter If you feel that the Oedipus myth starts with the riddle and ends with the cathartic revelation, that’s just the beginning: here Oedipus (Ramon de Ocampo) blinds himself with Jocasta’s (Rhonda Aldrich) earrings barely an hour into a nearly three-hour evening. Read more… Terry Morgan – Stage Raw One of … Read more
Neal Weaver – Arts In LA This grimly hilarious dark comedy by Irish playwright Enda Walsh (The New Electric Ballroom, The Walworth Farce) puts a snarky, post-modern spin on the Greek myth of Penelope, faithful wife of Odysseus. Odysseus sailed away to fight in the Trojan War and hasn’t been heard from since. Read more… Myron … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter Given the omnipresent influence of Anton Chekhov on the theater of the past century, it seems surprisingly irresistible for playwrights to frankly filch his templates and spin their own variations. After Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, and mere weeks before the opening of Stupid Fucking Bird! at the Boston Court, … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter If one cares about the movies, and about comedy (and what can life be without them?), the soul of Buster Keaton (played here by French Stewart) needs must be spliced into one’s DNA. One cannot help but feel proprietary about one’s personal relationship to the bottomlessly expressive, impassive Keaton, … Read more
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA Most Westerners of a certain age, certainly most Catholics, recall the startling day in 1978 when we learned that Pope John Paul I had died 33 days after the puff of white smoke announced his election to the papacy. Very few people, if anyone, knew the exact cause of … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Tarell Alvin McCraney’s tender, poetical drama The Brothers Size (Fountain Theatre) and Billy Van Zandt & Jane Milmore’s meta-theatrical farce Drop Dead! (presented by Theatre 68, at North Hollywood’s NoHo Arts Center) share one salient commonality: Each production has moments when the actors recite stage directions about their own characters. Tarell Alvin McCraney’s … Read more