Wednesday, March 20, 2019
BRAIN CRAMPS One of the brainiest plays since, well, British playwright Nick Payne's other brainy play, Constellations, Incognito (2014) contains Payne's usual assortment of short scenes and…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:43PM[SHARE]TEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA I'm not really sure if director Alana Dietze could have done anything more with The Wolves, a dramatically inert slice-of-life one act that follows an al…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:37PM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 19, 2019
ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF A PLAY Anarchy is not chaos. The former means "without law" and the latter means "without form." This is an important distinction to consider in a play that intends to ma…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:55PM[SHARE]Monday, March 18, 2019
TOO BAD THEY DIDN'T RAISE THE RENT Rent has a romantic history: Jonathan Larson, its author and composer, died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm on Jan. 25, 1996, 10 days before his 36th birthd…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:29PM[SHARE]KITTY LITTER If I had my way, the slogan for Cats would be changed from "Now and Forever" to "Not Now, Not Ever." Even when I saw the show back in the early 80s and again in the early 90s, I…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:49PM[SHARE]Sunday, March 17, 2019
HARRY POTTER AND THE RECYCLED RECORDING ENGINEER Jack Thorne's immensely popular two-part play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, has taken up residence in London, New York, and Melbourne, …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:25PM[SHARE]Friday, March 15, 2019
A YES AND NO NANETTE When the 1925 musical No, No, Nanette was revised and remounted in 1971, it was predicted to be a flop by folks in the Biz, but it was the buzz of the season with nostal…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:58AM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 12, 2019
WE'RE STILL WAITING You're watching a play but you have no idea what's happening. There is no plot, the dialogue is gobbledygook, and characters are filled with despair, yet you are told tha…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:06PM[SHARE]Thursday, March 7, 2019
LOVE CONQUERS COMMON SENSE My takeaway about Oscar Wilde in David Hare's intellectually stimulating but overly static play of ideas, The Judas Kiss, now at Boston Court, is this: The literar…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:58AM[SHARE]Thursday, February 28, 2019
CRIPPLE THE FUN Funny and heartbreaking, Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan is nothing less than a slalom run of emotional ups and downs and plot twists and turns. Antaeus Theatre's …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:12AM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 26, 2019
WITNESSING UGANDA IS AMAZING, EVEN THOUGH THE SHOW NEEDS WORK Griffin is a young black New York actor in search of more than a career. When he is kicked out of his church choir because he's …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:36AM[SHARE]Thursday, February 21, 2019
UNFORGETTABLE AND FORGETTABLE AT THE SAME TIME Well, here's a show that, while it doesn't defy description, is nonetheless perplexing. As with Matthew Borne's Cinderella, now playing across …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:16PM[SHARE]Thursday, February 14, 2019
BOY OH BOYS With a fun and intermittently funny score by Hal Hackady (lyrics) and Larry Grossman (music), perky, adorable, enterprising direction by J. Scott Lapp, and some shining performan…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:12AM[SHARE]Friday, February 8, 2019
RUNNING ON FULL After producer Sophina Brown's celebrated production last year of King Headly II — one of ten dramas of the late August Wilson's 2oth-century chronicle The Pittsburgh C…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:37PM[SHARE]Monday, February 4, 2019
A MORE INTIMATE TITANIC MADE EPIC It’s telling that the 1997 musical Titanic won Tony Awards for each nomination — Best Musical, Peter Stone’s book, Maury Yeston’s sc…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:45AM[SHARE]Thursday, January 31, 2019
BUCKLEY BUCKLES A BIT, BUT DOLLY DEFINITELY DELIVERS To start with, let's agree to never say "Goodbye, Dolly." Thornton Wilder's genius for the common touch isn't just a golden legacy in …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:37PM[SHARE]Sunday, January 27, 2019
IT COULD HAVE BEEN MURDER Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a musical that never fails to impress, no matter how many times it’s been seen. It …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:56PM[SHARE]Friday, January 25, 2019
SAINT BERNADETTE Now that she’s hung up her late-Victorian hat after taking over for Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly! on Broadway last year, the inimitable Bernadette Peters has embarked …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:57AM[SHARE]Sunday, January 20, 2019
SOMETHING SWELL FOR MUSICAL LOVERS A studio recording of Cole Porter’s 1943 boisterously farcical musical Something for the Boys has just been released, and producer and PS Class…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:15PM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 15, 2019
YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION? How remarkable to have been a fly on the wall when the creators of 1776, the 1969 musical receiving a terrific La Mirada Theatre/McCoy Rigby revival, were d…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:29PM[SHARE]Friday, January 11, 2019
GREAT CHORUS, GREAT BRIDGE, GREAT INTRO WONKY SUPERSTRUCTURE A middle 8 is a section in song structure — usually in the middle and consisting of eight bars — that is used to a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:15PM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 26, 2018
SOCIETY UNDER CLOSE INSPECTION An Inspector Calls was first performed in 1945 at a time of great change — both World Wars were fresh in the minds of the people, women had become mor…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:20PM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 5, 2018
LITTLE SHOP OF HAPPINESS I'll be the first to admit that it may be impossible to create a bad production of the 1963 jewel-box musical She Loves Me. This perfect show, based on the 1937 play…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:58PM[SHARE]Monday, December 3, 2018
SOME ENCHANTED EVENING INDEED At about 8 am on December 7, 1941, Japanese planes filled the sky over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Bombs and bullets rained onto the vessels moored below on the Unite…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:42PM[SHARE]Friday, November 30, 2018
TIME TO SAY GOODBYE She stands on the cover of her latest album, Hymn, like a diva who just came down from Sinai with the word of God, but instead of 10 Commandments, the British Broadway, W…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:29PM[SHARE]Thursday, November 29, 2018
A NEWFOUND(LAND) WAY OF LOOKING AT MUSICAL THEATER This intimate ensemble piece may only have one stand-alone song, and it may not even be the best-crafted musical or have the emotional impa…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:05PM[SHARE]Friday, November 16, 2018
BEAUTIFUL DESPAIR BY A MASTER THESPIAN The river of lost souls can be found in Westwood, and your magnificent tour guide is Brian Dennehy. In this coupling of one-acts by Eugene O’Neil…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:54PM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 14, 2018
TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT An ill wind hit Disney Hall last weekend with this collaboration between LA Phil’s Guest Conductor Susanna Mälkki and Old Globe Theatre’s Artisitic Direct…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:52PM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 13, 2018
VALLEY OF THE HEART ON ITS SLEEVE Captivating stagecraft and a winning, although not always authentic, cast fuel this epic tale of war-time love. But the riveting aspects of a relationship b…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:38PM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 31, 2018
IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME In 2011, Playwrights Horizon Artistic Director Jon Lawrence Rivera staged Donald Jolly’s bonded, which explored the restrictiveness of gays based on their si…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:47PM[SHARE]Monday, October 29, 2018
IMAGINATIVE PHANTASMAGORIA DOESN’T PLUMB THE DEPTHS OF PLUMMER’S HISTORY One of the most bemusing, bewildering affairs in recent memory, Señor Plummer's Final Fiesta is an inc…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:49PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
