Wednesday, March 21, 2012
ODD CASTING CHOICE NEARLY SINKS SHOW There is a perplexing and ultimately infuriating casting choice in the Old Globe's production of Anna Christie that nearly sinks Eugene O'Neill's 1921 ta…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:54PM[SHARE]Monday, March 19, 2012
OH WHAT A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE While Theatre Unleashed's cast and crew have a gloriously and unashamedly good time bringing The Spidey Project to the West Coast, it's a shame that their sour…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:25PM[SHARE]Saturday, March 17, 2012
AMERICAN NIGHT SUCKS, BUT IT SWALLOWS Juan José, a Mexican cop sick of being on-the-take, has crossed the border in search of citizenship, leaving his pregnant wife behind. Panicking over f…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:48PM[SHARE]Thursday, March 15, 2012
HATE THE MUSICAL, BUT LOVE, LOVE, LOVE THE PRODUCTION Whether you love or hate the musical version of The Color Purple, no one, and I mean no one, can or will deny that this is one of the fi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:00PM[SHARE]Friday, March 2, 2012
ALVIN AILEY " REMEMBER HIS NAME AIDS wreaked havoc on the theater world in all of its incarnations, and the crushing effects of its devastation remain with us today. So many ingenious cre…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:54AM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 22, 2012
THREE YEAR SWIM CLUB SWIMS UP STREAM Ever since mankind began telling tales, the "overcoming adversity" story has remained ever-popular. From cave wall pictures depicting a hunter's prowess …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:07PM[SHARE]A BLUEPRINT FOR ACTIVISM The Occupy Wall Street movement would do well to take a tip from the longest running show in Chicago, Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (TML). The event may tak…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:59PM[SHARE]Sunday, February 19, 2012
TO STAGE AN IMPOSSIBLE DREAM Now in its 60th season, Musical Theatre West (MTW)Â is currently reviving Man of La Mancha with the astronomical performance of Davis Gaines as its driving for…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:06AM[SHARE]Saturday, February 18, 2012
3-D THEATRICALS MAKES QUITE A SOUND The 70MM, Panavision aerial shot of Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer and entourage trekking over the border into Switzerland in The Sound of Music (1965…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:36PM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 15, 2012
PLAYWRIGHT AWARENESS With three produced plays under her belt, Annie Baker is quickly becoming THE playwright to watch in the American Theatrical landscape. Her first play, Body Awareness (o…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:58PM[SHARE]Monday, February 13, 2012
THE GREATEST STORY NEVER TOLD 18 year-old Jesus of Nazareth has heard some distressing news from his sucky carpenter of a father, so he bails Galilee with his whiny, Girl, Interrupted-like f…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:41PM[SHARE]Saturday, February 11, 2012
MIST OPPORTUNITY I was troubled after the opening of the West Coast Premiere of Chicago playwright Keith Huff's A Steady Rain at Marin Theatre Company. I couldn't shake the feeling that this…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:37PM[SHARE]Friday, February 10, 2012
ART OR NOT, IT'S A FUN PLAY Yasmina Reza's oft-produced Art (English translation by Christopher Hampton) may be singularly responsible for the current plethora of new plays today billed as "…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:16AM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 8, 2012
WHEN RECOMMENDATIONS DON’T TURN OUT AS HOPED FOR Aaron Feldman, the charismatic, bright, and privileged protagonist of Jonathan Caren's promising but highly unwieldy new play The Recom…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:58PM[SHARE]Saturday, February 4, 2012
THE SHOW ABOUT THE HAND THAT GIVES YOU THE FINGER I get a thrill when I think of the tourists who are milling about Old Town in San Diego. Exhausted from tchotchke shopping and sugary treats…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:13PM[SHARE]THE FEATS OF THE FOOTES America is preoccupied with an unstable economy, tax increases, oil profiteering, cash deficiencies, and the plummeting worth of real estate. Yet history does indeed …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:47AM[SHARE]EXCELLENCE VS. HOKUM With Lonesome Traveler, a compendium of the golden years of American folk music, writer/director James O'Neil has developed a long-winded and incoherent revue that is mo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:01AM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 31, 2012
HERE COMES MR. JORDAN Have you ever been to a sultry party that has the oppressive feel of a languid, humid day in the Deep South, only to have the energy shift dramatically when a raconteur…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:32PM[SHARE]Sunday, January 22, 2012
THE VALUE IN SIMPLICITY The purposefully simplistic proceedings of David Cromer's production of Our Town may seem bold and innovative to some, especially to those weaned on Broadway spectacl…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:12PM[SHARE]Saturday, January 21, 2012
OWNING HER INNER KVETCH In Michael Wex's treatise Born to Kvetch, he asserts that Kvetching (complaining) is not only a pastime for Jews " it's a way of life. Kvetching can be applied indiff…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:24PM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 18, 2012
BLACK COMEDY AND KITCHEN SINK DRAMA: AN IRISH STEW While the horror and suspense merely simmer in The Beauty Queen of Leenane " Martin McDonagh's 1996 black comedy " the dark humor, bleaknes…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:53PM[SHARE]Friday, January 6, 2012
GO TO THE DEVIL Within the manifesto of Kneehigh " an avant-garde, world-class theater company based in Cornwall, England " is a simple but mighty statement: Kneehigh tells stories. By r…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:58PM[SHARE]Friday, December 16, 2011
ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A GOOD STORY After winning two Tony awards in 2007 for book and lyrics of Spring Awakening, Steven Sater teamed up with the one-and-only Burt Bacharach to write s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:38PM[SHARE]Monday, December 12, 2011
SUITORS SUIT ILL-FITTING SUITS Enda Walsh, scribe of The Walworth Farce and The New Electric Ballroom, is one of the great polarizing writers in modern theater:Â his admirers love the Eng…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:37PM[SHARE]Thursday, December 1, 2011
UNAPPRECIATED MASTERPIECE OR ABJECT FAILURE? Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein began the Golden Era of Broadway with two musicals that reimagined the previous form of musical comedies " …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:55AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 15, 2011
AN ERROR IN COMEDY One of Shakespeare's earliest plays, The Comedy of Errors, is also his shortest and most farcical. In fact, while scholars argue over the classification of other Bard work…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:30PM[SHARE]Saturday, November 12, 2011
QUEEN OF THE GYPSIES It's a relief that Chita Rivera, one of the last great holdovers from the Golden Age of Broadway still performing today, told the audience in Costa Mesa that she doesn't…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:49PM[SHARE]Thursday, November 10, 2011
GET SOME FANNY There are many reasons to see the revival of Harold Rome's 1954 musical Fanny at the Alex Theatre, but you only have one shot. Musical Theatre Guild (MTG), an Equity company o…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:11AM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 9, 2011
SITTING VIGIL FOR THE CENTER THEATRE GROUP, OR LIVING ON BORROWED THEATER Vigil, which was first done in Canada in 1995, is an oft-produced play, having been translated into 19 languages. At…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:50PM[SHARE]YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN A trip to South Coast Rep is exactly what was needed to shake off the blues of this year's morass of over-produced and/or over-written theater. The Trip to Bountiful, H…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:36PM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 8, 2011
FALL FLAT My extreme reluctance to recommend Next Fall should not necessarily deter you from seeing it. Stay with me here. Geoffrey Nauffts' Tony-nominated play, which concerns a gay cou…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:32PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
