Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Levy Lee Simon’s play celebrates the life and times of The Dunbar Hotel, on Los Angeles’s Central Avenue. As a luxury hotel serving the African-American community at a time when poverty and discrimination made most black-oriented hotels shabby and lacking in even basic amenities, it soon became a revered institution … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw In the middle years of the 20th century, Terrence Rattigan (1911-1977) was perhaps England’s most important playwright. (Noel Coward was in a state of temporary eclipse, though he would experience a triumphant resurgence a few years later.) Rattigan specialized in genteel, conventional well-made plays, but his skill and his talent for … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Apparently playwright Tom Yewell wanted to provide a male variation on The Vagina Monologues. The title might suggest that the show is a bit of pornography or an exercise in sensationalism, but the play is neither, despite a brief interlude of male nudity. It is, rather, a series of eight engaging … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw This play, written and directed by Javier Antonio Gonzalez, and presented as part of the Encuentro 2014 Festival, is set on a more or less bare stage, with two colorful grids painted on the floor. On the back wall and in the wings hang a multitude of costumes, and several … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw The name Johan Nestroy looms large in German-language theatre, but it probably doesn’t mean much to American theatre-goers, though perhaps it should: One of his plays, Einen Jux will er sich machen (He Wants to Go on a Spree), provided the basic plot for Thornton Wilder’s The Merchant of Yonkers, later developed … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw The Antaeus Company is well known for its facility with classical plays, such as King Lear and The Crucible. What may not be so well known is that the group often tries to spotlight excellent plays that are a bit less famous, such as Mrs. Warren’s Profession or The Liar. Following that tradition, Antaeus’ new presentation … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly “Things aren’t always what they seem” is the main theme of John Biguenet’s play about a strange old woman with magical powers. It’s a piece you want to praise, given how much and how cruelly old women with (or without) magical powers have been maligned over the centuries. Read more… Neal … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Vince Melocchi’s provocative, long one-act hinges on the death in Afghanistan of a young recruit named Danny, who’s from a small Pennsylvania town. His fiancée Amy (Connor Kelly-Eiding), who works in a local donut shop, is trying to cope with her grief over his loss, but she’s also angry on … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw This farce, written and directed by Sean Abley, belongs to that subset of gay theater which specializes in sending up (or cannibalizing) the plots and themes of more conventional works for its own deliberately trashy purposes. It’s set in the Susan B. Anthony School for Girls, and though all the … 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