Hoyt Hilsman – Huffington Post Carolyn Hennesy gives a powerful and transcendent performance as Maria Callas in playwright Terrence McNally’s Master Class in the debut production of the inaugural season of the Garry Marshall Theatre. Hennesy seizes this role by the throat in a riveting display of emotions – both humor and pathosRead more…
Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze There’s not much difference between creating a monster and creating a monster hit. Take for example “Young Frankenstein,” the musical currently in the hands of 3-D Theatricals.Read more… Hoyt Hilsman – Huffington Post 3D Theatricals offers another solid Broadway revival with Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein…Read more… Now running through October … Read more
Jonas Schwartz – TheaterMania In Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, the Stage Manager guides audiences through the fictional New Hampshire town of Grover’s Corners. She confides in the audience, shares secrets, and points out revelations. Which is why the casting of Jane Kaczmarek in Pasadena Playhouse‘s production makes sense. Read more… Frances Baum Nicholson –The Stage Struck Review When … Read more
Hoyt Hilsman – Huffington Post There can be no doubt that the amphitheater at the Getty Villa is a spectacular venue for the presentation of any play, but most especially a play by one of the ancient Greeks.Read more… Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze Ancient Greek dramatist Euripides’ play “Iphigenia in Aulis” could seem … Read more
Hoyt Hilsman – Huffington Post In the finest tradition of the theatrical two-hander, British playwright Simon Stephens (adapter of the Tony-award winning Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night) has imagined a random encounter between a forty-something eccentric woman and a very ordinary seventy-five year old butcher. Read more… Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly British playwright Simon … Read more
Hoyt Hilsman – Huffington Post Dutch performance group Hotel Modern, along with sound designer and composer Arthur Sauer, have created a fascinating, innovative and riveting miniature reenactment of World War I, using an imaginative mix of toy soldiers and tiny landscapes, along with a mélange of media and soundscape. 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 If ever there were a writer dedicated to society’s subversion it was Joe Orton. Orton despised the status quo and made it his mission to wreak havoc on its precepts as thoroughly and flamboyantly as possible. In What the Butler Saw, he went after authority figures, psychoanalysis, which he regarded as … Read more
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw Set entirely in the confines of the office of the British Consul in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, during the first day of the annual Hajj pilgrimage, Zealot, by the well-established and prolific Theresa Rebeck (Seminar, Mauritius, Bad Dates, Spike Heels), cannot avoid being a presumptuous play, satirizing and exposing obtuse Western perceptions that … Read more