Tuesday, November 26, 2019
NOT AS KEYED UP AS IT SHOULD BE The Geffen Playhouse has really been on a roll under the newest Artistic Director Matt Shakman. There are many more interesting scripts, and many more chances…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:41PMMonday, November 25, 2019
CYNICS UNITE These days when directors revive a classic, they have to decide whether their approach will be either to modernize the play or mount it as a period piece, true to the spirit of …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:45PMFriday, November 8, 2019
MIND YOUR MANOR Now camping through November 24 is Ravenswood Manor, a much-needed send-up of all things soap, perhaps even the one you dropped in the shower. You never know with funnyman Ju…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:08AMThursday, November 7, 2019
THE MIGHTY MISSISSIPPI JUST GOT MIGHTIER Do whatever you can. Take a raft, pretend you’re a duke, toss pig blood around your lean-to so everyone thinks you’re dead, but get to Rubicon Th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:52PMMonday, November 4, 2019
A PENNY DREADFUL SAVED ISN’T ALWAYS EARNED Back in the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing in merry ole England. The working class was becoming more educated and printing wa…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:42AMSunday, November 3, 2019
IN TROUSERS William Finn’s musical masterpiece Falsettos is a melding of two one-acts: March of the Falsettos — debatably one of the best scores of the 1980s — which opened Off-Broad…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:20AMWednesday, October 30, 2019
50 YEARS SINCE ITS BIRTH AND JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR FINALLY RISES AGAIN Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar is given the rock concert treatment for its 50th Anniversa…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:04PMMonday, October 21, 2019
ONCE AGAIN, PLEASE Ironically, the real-life love affair between collaborators Glen Hasard, an Irish singer-songwriter, and Markéta Irglová, a Czech songwriter, fizzled after John Carney�…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:25PMSaturday, October 19, 2019
IT JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER In 1994, 5-Star Theatricals (formerly Cabrillo Music Theatre) produced its first show: Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, which opened on Broadway in 1957 and b…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:05PMMonday, October 14, 2019
ON ANASTASIA, AMNESIA, AND ANESTHESIA First came the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, who was murdered in 1918 just after the Bolshevi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:25PMCINDERFELLA The best play on any L.A. stage right now, Daniel Pearle’s 2013 A Kid Like Jake couldn’t be more relevant. The parents of a four-year-old boy are applying for a private prima…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:41PMSaturday, October 12, 2019
SHEPARDING OUT THE TRUTH Sam Shepard’s domestic disruption True West hasn’t left the theatrical landscape since it first premiered with Peter Coyote at San Francisco’s Magic Theater in…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:55PMTuesday, October 8, 2019
ON THE BORDERLINE What do a Latino cop, a black vet in the Bronx, a Saudi Arabian without a country, a gay pagan goat rancher, and a homeless HIV-positive man have in common? Dan Hoyle. SF�…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:24PMWHAT LIES BURIED Actor Hamish Linklater’s funny, sharp and tender play The Vandal begins on a cold winter night as a down-on-her-luck middle-aged woman waits for a bus on a deserted street…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:15AMMonday, October 7, 2019
THE CORE IS THERE, BUT THE POSE IS OFF Not only is yoga a gentle exercise and a Hindu spiritual discipline, it’s also an $83 billion international industry. Meet Joan (Susi Damilano), a ne…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:57PMThursday, September 26, 2019
YOU’RE THE TOP, GIRLS For the most part, Joyce, a working class Englishwoman in Ipswich is not a sympathetic or likeable person: She is annoyed by her teenage daughter Angie (who admittedl…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:42AMSaturday, September 14, 2019
A PRODUCTION WITH SOLID LIFE Phil and Alice are in love, the kind of messy, well-known, commonplace love that many couples are familiar with. They meet cute in a post office when a package f…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:36PMFriday, September 13, 2019
CHANGE IS NOW We hear that that the only thing constant is change, yet we struggle against change, we fight against change, and some are even willing to succumb to the unyielding stress of d…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:23AMMonday, September 9, 2019
MORON THAT NOW One-man stage phenom John Leguizamo, who has popularized the stories of his Columbian/Puerto Rican/Bronx Ghetto peeps and their culture in semi-autobiographical shows Mambo Mo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:50PMWednesday, September 4, 2019
A PITCH FOR THIS RICH WITCH Written by Jen Silverman and directed by Marti Lyons, Witch is inspired by William Rowley’s Jacobian 1621 play Witch of Edmonton. The classic story follows Eli…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:10PMSunday, August 11, 2019
SHREK IS A SHRUG OF A MUSICAL; BUT THIS PRODUCTION IS SURE AND SHARP Shrek The Musical is a mystifying experience. The whole thing is rather inane, versus the sophisticated silliness of Funn…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:46PMThursday, August 1, 2019
GIVE US A SECOND ACT WE DESERVE; ALL WE END UP WITH IS SCRAPS The angry young man syndrome is nothing new — think Protestant reformer Martin Luther! — but it sure found a home in the the…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:58AMTuesday, July 30, 2019
A RESONATING STORY It rarely happens. “The Broadway Chill” I call it. That moment when an already amazing show is given the perfect and unexpected staging which heightens emotion, induci…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:58PMSaturday, July 27, 2019
THRIVING WOODS Somewhere between “Once Upon a Time” and “Happily Ever After” there is a very adult world of tests, losses, disappointments, and grief. Despite this, we assert our age…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:52PMWednesday, July 24, 2019
LESSER LOESSER Well, here’s a jukebox musical just bursting at the seams with promise. And North Coast Rep’s production of Another Roll of the Dice is definitely kinda cute, a far cry fr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:52PMSaturday, July 20, 2019
IT USED TO BE A MISS; NOW, THE HEAT IS ON IN SAIGON Infinitely stronger than the original Broadway outing, this national tour of Miss Saigon overcomes a still strangely muddled plot, some aw…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:59AMFriday, July 19, 2019
DESPEREAUX TIMES CALL FOR DESPEREAUX MEASURES More precious than profound, this new family musical is pure children’s theater with multilayered storytelling and plenty of songs that aid in…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:55AMSunday, July 14, 2019
THE PLAY ABOUT THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG GOES WRONG The title of this play is brutally honest — and you can’t say you weren’t warned. In the style of Monty Python and Michael Frayn’s …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:17PMThursday, July 4, 2019
NO SHIT, SHERLOCK As with Good Boys playing across town, Mysterious Circumstances doesn’t quite give us an ending the material deserves, but hoo-boy what a ride this is. Directed by Matt S…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:11AMTuesday, July 2, 2019
THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A DAMES When Dames at Sea opened in 1966 at the Caffe Cino, a small coffee house and performance space in New York City’s Greenwich Village that was at the heart of t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:49PMWednesday, June 12, 2019
FOUL AND FAIR Shakespeare’s Macbeth, or The Tragedy of Macbeth, is typically dated to the years immediately following the coronation of James I as King of England in 1603. James, who was…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:04AM 
