Jonas Schwartz – TheaterMania Alexi Kaye Campbell’s The Pride juxtaposes homosexuality in both the repressed world of 1958 London and the more liberated 2008. Whether people are trapped by society’s morality or by their own self-sabotaging instincts, love proves to be a true test of wills. Though the script can be didactic and overlong, the new production … Read more
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
Bob Verini – Variety Writers of crime fiction are rarely as brutal or twisted as the characters they create. But meet Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995), by general agreement a foul-mouthed misanthrope who spent decades detailing the psychotic narcissism lurking in humanity’s dark heart. Read more… Hoyt Hilsman – Huffington Post Crime novelist Patricia Highsmith was renowned for her intense … Read more
Sharon Perlmutter – Talkin’ Broadway There are two things that doom A Noise Within’s production of The Threepenny Opera. The first is enunciation. The cast seems so concerned with keeping up their British accents throughout the proceedings, they don’t go a good job actually putting the dialogue and lyrics across. At intermission and after the show, … 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
Neal Weaver – Arts In LA This show is an exuberant, enthusiastic, unabashed homage to the rock group Queen and its lead singer, the late Freddie Mercury. It is also splashy, a little bit silly, and loud enough to rattle your ribcage, with a rock-concert-style light show that is occasionally blinding. Read more… Sharon Perlmutter – … Read more
Terry Morgan – Talkin’ Broadway Theatre has many functions, and sometimes its job is to remind or teach people about history. The trick, of course, is to do it in such a way that the piece still works as theatre, so it isn’t essentially a PowerPoint presentation with actors instead of graphics. Playwright has an … 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
Neal Weaver – ArtsInLA When this modest little musical, with book and lyrics by Tom Jones and music by Harvey Schmidt, first opened Off-Broadway in 1960, no one could have predicted the astonishing success it would achieve. It ran for a grand 42 years, racking up an astronomical 17,162 performances, and has since been performed … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA Steven Drukman’s Death of the Author is, hands down, one of the very best plays of the year. A mystery wrapped within a psychological portrait gallery within a stinging critique of academic politics, it satisfies on every level during its completely gripping 90 minutes. Angelenos lucky enough to catch it at … Read more