Thursday, October 9, 2014
Underpinning much of Mel Brooks's comedy is the assumption that people constantly yearn to break into tightly choreographed, vaudeville-style song-and-dance routines.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:30PMSunday, September 28, 2014
Michael Wilson’s revival of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful,” which has just opened at the Ahmanson Theatre, premiered on Broadway in 2013 to a bounty of praise and nominations…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00PMTuesday, September 23, 2014
“Let's Make a Deal's" Wayne Brady as the lead in a revival of "Kiss Me, Kate": It almost sounds like an especially wacky draft in some fantasy stunt-casting league for theater directors.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00PMTuesday, September 16, 2014
“We’re just going around in circles,” a character accurately observes in British playwright Mike Bartlett’s “Cockfight Play,” having its L.A. premiere at Rogue Machine Theatre. (…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00PMTuesday, September 9, 2014
It may sit uneasily with our notion of Shakespeare to imagine him tackling the hot-button issues of his era like a Jacobean David Mamet.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 05:08PMThursday, August 14, 2014
J.B. Murray, the outsider artist and subject of the musical hagiography “Visionary Man” at the Hudson Mainstage, was an illiterate Georgia farmer who at age 70, after receiving a message…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:30PMFriday, August 8, 2014
New York is only three hours ahead of L.A., but in theatrical time, the distance often seems greater. Broadway events, like starlight from distant galaxies, can take years to reach us.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:01PMThursday, August 7, 2014
Sometimes I wish Shakespeare had written a different version of “The Taming of the Shrew” — one in which the shrew is “tamed” with, say, empathy and affection instead of torture.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00PMThursday, July 17, 2014
A divorced couple and their new partners meet for a dinner that shakes up their lives in Peter Lefcourt’s romantic comedy “The Way You Look Tonight,” premiering at the Odyssey Theater …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:12PMFriday, June 13, 2014
The Fountain Theatre follows up its award-winning 2012 production of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s “In the Red and Brown Water” with a vibrant incarnation of “The Brothers Size,” the sec…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:25PMFriday, May 23, 2014
Whenever I read about the artistic scandals of the past — the near-riot provoked by Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” for example — I glumly conclude that we have grown so jaded t…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:39PMThursday, May 1, 2014
Son of Semele Ensemble has selected two startlingly different short plays for “Woman Parts,” a double bill planned, according to the program, as a corrective to the underrepre…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:30PMTuesday, April 22, 2014
Among the revivals and West Coast premieres that dominate our theatrical offerings, the startling phrase “world premiere” implies an exhilarating, possibly risky novelty: You can…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:30AMWednesday, April 16, 2014
You may have seen your share of makeovers, but nothing like the one Sheila Callaghan inflicts on her heroine in “Everything You Touch,” her lushly written dark comedy world-premi…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:00PMFriday, April 4, 2014
I had never seen anything quite like it, and it grew on me slowly. But I can’t stop thinking about, and humming snippets from, La Mirada Theatre’s revival of “Floyd Collins…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:15PMThursday, March 27, 2014
Even the sparest account of the life of Paul Robeson, the lawyer, actor, singer and civil rights activist who died in 1976, has a mythic power: He accomplished more, against greater odds, th…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:45PMFriday, March 14, 2014
Theater review: Rae Gray and William Petersen of 'CSI' are a well-balanced odd couple discovering each other in the jungle.In Greg Pierce's "Slowgirl" at the Geffen Playhouse, 17-year-old Be…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMFriday, December 13, 2013
As irresponsible as it may be to encourage drinking at this time of year, you are more likely to enjoy “A Christmas Carol: Twist Your Dickens!” at the Kirk Douglas Theatre if you…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:50PMTuesday, October 29, 2013
Bruce Norris, whose “Clybourne Park” won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the 2012 Tony Award for best play, has a merciless ear for the hypocrisies we all helplessly reveal with ever…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:19PMThursday, October 24, 2013
If you’re craving the art and music of the late Walt Disney, you should go anywhere but the world premiere of the affectionate “When You Wish: The Story of Walt Disney” at …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 01:14PMWednesday, October 16, 2013
In Rogue Machine Theatre’s beautifully directed and acted West Coast premiere of Deanna Jent’s heartbreaking play “Falling,” teenaged Lisa Martin begs her mother, Tam…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 02:29PMThursday, October 10, 2013
In Susan Josephs’ new play, “The Interview,” premiering at Studio/Stage, couples must apply to the “U.S. Department of Parenting and Child Welfare” for permissi…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00PMFriday, September 20, 2013
Like most little girls, I loved the movie “The Wizard of Oz” even though, or maybe because, it left me with so many questions.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:45PMSunday, September 8, 2013
Thomas Wilkins, principal guest conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, had a tough show this weekend, when Blue Man Group was in town.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:05PMThursday, June 27, 2013
How the Supreme Court’s rulings on gay marriage will affect comedy may not have been the first question on everybody’s mind Wednesday. But for the audience at Judy Gold’s o…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:38PMFriday, June 7, 2013
Clattering typewriters, jangling telephones and a haze of cigarette smoke, once journalism's inalienable backdrop, can no longer be found in any newsroom on Earth. But those who crave a glim…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:28PMThursday, May 30, 2013
The 1994 movie “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” begins with a glimpse into the bleak lives of three struggling drag performers in Sydney, Australia, who have no…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:48PMTuesday, May 28, 2013
“What else is there for a woman but l’amour ?” wistfully muses a character in Clare Boothe Luce’s “The Women,” in a good-humored revival at Theatre West.…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:54PMThursday, May 23, 2013
Every element of Ingmar Bergman’s 1961 film “Through a Glass Darkly” — the performances, the plot, even the scenery in Faro, Sweden — seems to exist solely to e…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 02:36PMJackie Robinson never appears in Brian Golden’s “Cooperstown,” currently enjoying its West Coast premiere at the Road Theatre Company’s shiny new second stage, but th…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 01:26PMTuesday, May 7, 2013
Well, Peter Pan, I -- speaking as a mother -- never liked you much either. So I retorted, inwardly, upon hearing the title of Michael Lluberes' new play, "Peter Pan: The Boy Who Hated Mother…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:20PM 
