Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly In Michael Kearns’ Bang Bang, there’s a psycho-sexual serial killer named Dr. JackL and MisterHide&Seek (David Pevsner in a bravely unrepentant performance) whose fetish is to stand nude with his head masked in leather, to make Internet contact with his hitherto unknown male victims before meeting them (ostensibly for a … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw “The whole world’s in a state of chassis!” said Jack Boyle, the iconic Irish lotus-eating blackguard of Juno and the Paycock, Sean O’Casey’s great drama about the tragic flaws of an Irish family. Read more… Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Corktown 57 unfolds entirely in the Irish-quarter grocery-shop basement of Frank Keating (John … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw Playwright David Grieg’s compelling drama is a sequel of sorts to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Given that just about everyone is dead at the end of Shakespeare’s play, one could well ask “what on earth can happen in a sequel to Macbeth?” Do the Three Witches move on down to Fort Lauderdale to get … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage and Cinema In his solo show, playwright Nicholas Guest describes his life and travels around the world. He’s accompanied by Hillary Smith on the cello and by Tony Carafone on the guitar (in the play, not his travels) – and they turn out to be a helpful pair, too, because Guest … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Al Pacino and Robert Duvall are among the performers who have played Teach, the deluded, out-of-control conman who spurs much of the seamy shenanigans in David Mamet’s American Buffalo. While I’ve never been privileged to see either in the role, I’d put money on the competitive excellence of Troy Kotsur, … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA The singular feature of this vest-pocket staging by the DOMA Theatre Company—and the most compelling reason for attending—is the timeless score by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice. Read more… Paul Birchall – Stage Raw A spirit of youthful rebellion suffuses director Marco Gomez’s delightfully earnest and powerful … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage and Cinema In playwright Stephen Karam’s touching and funny drama, characters are frequently spotted quoting the great Lebanese poet-philosopher Khalil Gabran. “All is well,” they say, often in the midst of the most odious adversity. Of course, all is not well at all: Indeed, all is rather, as the Yiddish expression … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw In today’s world of “Fifty Shades of Blech,” where young ladies of intelligence and means agree to be subjected to dominating brutes who whack them with neck ties and do terrible things with handcuffs and strings of beads, what a pleasure it is to be reminded of more civilized times, … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage and Cinema This fascinating drama by playwright Zayd Dohrn is set in the bizarre subculture of women who buy dolls that eerily resemble actual babies. Can this possibly be enough material here for a play? Read more… Bob Verini – Arts In LA Roger Ebert once opined, “It’s not what a movie … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage and Cinema After watching the roaring, sputtering, and cursing along with regretful descriptions of drug use and parental abuse back in the “bad old days,” I had to ask myself, “Wha’ kind of crazy fucking show is this?” Read more… David C. Nichols – LA Times “I was brought up by wolverines,” says … Read more