Neal Weaver – Stage Raw What happens when you construct a mashup of Shakespeare with a Quentin Tarantino movie? The result is a convoluted plot, with pseudo-Elizabethan dialogue, and masses of violence, throat-cuttings, and general death and destruction, delivered via blunderbus, sword, dagger, or in one case by an overdose of cocaine. Read more… Now running … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw The church referred to by playwright Allen Barton in his play is never identified, but the details of his story evoke the horror stories told by disillusioned former Scientologists: accounts of demands for total conformity, hefty financial contributions, total commitment, and a willingness to declare all-out war on any member … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Photo-journalist Sarah (Prescilliana Esparolini) and foreign correspondent James (Aidan Bristow) are a cracker-jack team, who have travelled the world, covering its wars and hot-spots, and they are also lovers, who have been together for eight years. But a tour of duty in Afghanistan has shattered their world. Read more… Now running … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly In Serrano The Musical, book and lyrics writer Madeleine Sunshine plucks elements of Edmond Rostand’s iconic romance Cyrano de Bergerac and transposes them into a story set in New York City’s mob-infested Little Italy. Read more… Margaret Gray – LA Times Serrano the Musical,” in its world premiere at the Matrix Theatre, relocates “Cyrano … Read more
Neal Weaver – Arts In LA Playwright Mac Rogers has written an oddball comedy about suicide. But his thinking is so muddled, it’s sometimes hard to tell if he’s for it or against it. Read more… Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly ….Rogers’ new comic drama, presented by Moving Arts at the Bootleg Theatre, is … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw On a small arched screen at center stage is played out the tale of the imperious, fickle and slightly goofy Little Queen, represented by a stylized shadow puppet. At stage left is painter Eva Noelle, standing beside a small table with her paints, which she uses to depict all the … Read more
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw While it probably isn’t quite accurate to say that performer Salome Jens saved my life, I prefer to believe that it’s true. After an evening and morning of obliterative obsession, attending her one-woman show about Anne Sexton didn’t seem like the most propitious choice under the circumstances, but I already … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw English Professor Vivian Bearing, Ph.D. (Kelly Carlton), the central figure in Margaret Edson’s clever and provocative play, has won distinction in the academic world for her masterly critical edition of John Donne’s Religious Sonnets, but scholarship and fame can’t protect her from the ravages of terminal ovarian cancer. Read more… Running indefinitely
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Joe Marshall’s zany farce zeros in on the inept and sometimes disastrous efforts of a small gay theatre company to present a Christmas pageant. The characters include the playwright Rod (Skip Pipo), who specializes in pirating the plots of better writers, the New York director Margie (Moremi Okoroh), who takes … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw John Cariani’s play is, in fact, a collection of nine short sketches, mostly duologues, and mostly comic with some serious overtones. Much of Cariani’s comedy is rooted in the notion of taking figures of speech literally. In “Her Heart,” a woman (Natalie Avital) had her heart broken by her recently … Read more