Friday, May 27, 2022
At this point, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a theatrical peak so frequently attempted that you can see, as on Everest, the frozen bodies of thespians who chanced and failed the perilous ascent …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 07:24PMMonday, May 2, 2022
Bitchiness, thy name is Albee. Has there ever been a play that reveled in so much in mean-spirited badinage as Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Sour wit courses through the…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 01:12PMTuesday, April 19, 2022
Plays that chart the course of a romantic relationship have long been a staple of theater. Stories told in a nonlinear way are less common but not unheard of. When you take the previous two …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 02:18PMFriday, April 1, 2022
I have a rule about avant-garde theater: if an artist chooses to deliberately obscure his/her/their meaning via unusual methods or flirts dangerously with pretentiousness, the play had bette…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 08:33PMTuesday, March 22, 2022
When I told people I was going to see a new production of Sarah’s Ruhl’s play, In the Next Room, I received a series of blank stares, but when I included its subtitle, or the vibrator pl…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 08:54PMMonday, February 28, 2022
Some theater locations seem to be blessed, and in Los Angeles, one of those lucky places is The Matrix Theatre on Melrose. It’s been producing and presenting high-quality shows for more th…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 11:42PMMonday, February 21, 2022
One of the core American principles is the right to free speech. However, this glorious principle runs into trouble when truly evil groups such as the Ku Klux Klan or Nazis wish to spread th…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 08:06PMMonday, February 7, 2022
It’s 1998 in midwestern U.S.A, and three rap-loving teens live in a suburb of The City called The Hill. Hank (E.E. Williams) wants to be a rapper but maybe doesn’t have the performance c…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 05:33PMMonday, December 20, 2021
It’s a Wonderful Life is now an undisputed holiday classic, but its road to perennial status was as long and difficult as its hero’s journey to happiness. It began as a short story calle…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 02:06PMWednesday, December 8, 2021
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…except for theatergoers. December is generally when every show except for A Christmas Carol or The Nutcracker shuts down for the holidays, but th…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 08:48PMTuesday, October 26, 2021
The discussion of wealth inequality has come up a lot in this young century, as the accumulation of massive fortunes goes to fewer and fewer people while millions suffer all over the world. …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 05:03PMSunday, October 10, 2021
Theatre is an amazing artform, but one of the things it does less well is genre storytelling. Drama, comedy, musicals – absolutely. Even fantasy or thrillers. But horror, action, westerns …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 11:06PMWednesday, September 15, 2021
So my first large audience theatre experience since being fully vaccinated featured women sporting two-foot-long phalluses singing Liza Minnelli songs in a Greek amphitheater on the grounds …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 07:18PMSunday, August 8, 2021
In 1970, journalist Studs Terkel released his book, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, in which he interviewed people about living through that desperate time and how they …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 04:18PMThursday, July 1, 2021
Once it became apparent that the Covid pandemic wasn’t going to be a short catastrophe, and theaters everywhere had to close their doors for more than a year, one thing was very clear to m…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 05:36PMTuesday, May 18, 2021
Plays that feature a series of short scenes with different characters whose relationships to each other become clearer as the story goes on have been popular since Arthur Schnitzler’s La R…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 06:36PMFriday, May 7, 2021
As the pandemic has worn on, artists have attempted to maximize the potential of streaming theatre, trying to make the experience more engaging for the audience. So far I’ve seen pre-taped…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 07:42PMMonday, May 3, 2021
For years now, film lovers in Los Angeles have enjoyed the yearly TCM Classic Film Festival held at the TCL Chinese Theatre complex in Hollywood. That area of town becomes the cinephile cent…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 12:18PMThursday, April 22, 2021
The standard definition for the term “pathetic fallacy” is “the attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals, especially in art or literature.” This is …
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 09:36PMTuesday, April 13, 2021
The thing about celebrity autobiographical one-person shows is that they’re bound to be interesting; if the subject in question hadn’t had a fascinating life, nobody would have put a sho…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 09:54PMMonday, March 29, 2021
As the world slowly begins to pull itself out of the abyss of the pandemic, the theatre world is following suit. The concept of outdoor productions is being discussed for this summer, and th…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 07:03PMFriday, March 12, 2021
The use of genre films to deliver a social or political statement has a long history. They’re a convenient delivery device – the audience knows the rules, and without hitting them over t…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 07:42PMThursday, February 25, 2021
Traditionally, the power of theater derives from it being a communal art form – a group gathers in person for a performance that is live and ephemeral. It’s the sense that the combinatio…
SOURCE: Arts Beat LA at 10:48PMWednesday, December 17, 2014
If this production hasn't already sold out, acquiring tickets to attend it would be one the best presents you could get or give this holiday season.
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 01:41PMFriday, June 20, 2014
Roger Crane's The Last Confession has a doozy of an opening statement: "Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. I have killed the emissary of God."
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 03:03PMWednesday, June 4, 2014
The domain of higher education has become more treacherous in unexpected ways, and Steven Drukman's clever new play Death of the Author charts the territory with pointed wit. It's unfortunat…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:45PMFriday, May 9, 2014
Although their marriage has withstood the test of time, Agnes (Susan Sullivan) still wants to repair some rather large damage in her relationship with Tobias (David Selby).
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:33AMFriday, April 11, 2014
A production of Midsummer that can't make Puck work has a serious problem.
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 01:31PMFriday, April 4, 2014
The Visceral Company, a group that specializes in horror and science fiction plays, is on a roll. Following the one-two punch of Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite and The Mystery Plays, the new pro…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 09:38AMFriday, March 21, 2014
... the Antaeus Company is doing the community a great favor in reviving the play�it's still smart and moving and funny, and the cast is terrific (the show is double-cast�this review is of t…
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 10:13AMFriday, February 14, 2014
Parents who were admirers of Chekhov named their children after some of his famous characters: Vanya (Mark Blum), Sonia (Kristine Nielsen) and Masha (Christine Ebersole).
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 02:27PM 
