Lauren Yee’s wonderfully self-conscious play, King of the Yees, demolishes the stage convention of the fourth wall, utterly obliterates it. Shortly after the beginning of the show, Larry Yee (the irrepressible, effervescent Francis Jue) charges in from house left carrying signs for Leland Yee’s campaign for California state senator. Larry Yee’s avocation is his unwavering … Continue reading “King of the Yees” at the Kirk Douglas Theatre
Chicago—The Windy City, The City of Big Shoulders, Chi-town, Hog Butcher to the World. Chicago, a city famed for its murder rate, for its rough politics, for Mayor Richard Daley and his motto, “vote early—and often,” and for his infamous crack-down on anti-war activists during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Chicago is also the city … Continue reading “A Steady Rain” at the John Kirby Studio
Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, written in 1959, was produced on Broadway in 1961 with a powerhouse cast that included Eli Wallach, Zero Mostel, Anne Jackson, Morris Carnovsky, and Jean Stapleton. It garnered some glowing reviews and a few caveats. Many of us theatre types who went to college to become actors, directors and designers encountered the … Continue reading “Rhinoceros” at Pacific Resident Theatre
Anna (Marie Fahlgren), an attractive, brittle young woman, moves into a basement apartment, where her upstairs neighbor, Patrick (Zac Thomas), a big, friendly guy who is kind of shy, goes out of his way to make friends with her and help her to get settled. From this simple opening gambit, playwrights Daniel Arnold and Medina … Continue reading “Any Night” at Sacred Fools Theatre
Angsty times we live in these days, with Donald Trump in the White House. Some of my more conservative friends still cheer him on. One of my oldest friends thinks that his speech in Poland was magnificent. If it was, he was delivering words some one else wrote. No crime certainly, politicians have speechwriters. But … Continue reading “Welcome to Your Alternative Reality” at Open Fist Theatre Company
A family drama rife with emotional tension, relieved by moments of searing, hilarious black comedy, John Robin Baitz’ Other Desert Cities is a wonder. It tracks the angst of a divided family split by politics and the painful history of a young man’s tragic suicide in the tense time of the Viet Nam War. Set … Continue reading “Other Desert Cities” at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum
First let’s deal with the title, Heisenberg. Werner Heisenberg was a famed German physicist who came to prominence in the 1920s with his breakthrough papers on quantum mechanics that posit that there are limits to what can be known about the nature of atomic structure. This is often referred to as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, … Continue reading “Heisenberg” at the Mark Taper Forum
