While researching for this article, I discovered that Joe Orton’s life is an emotional conundrum. How a talented working class boy achieves a modicum of theatrical success with a couple of well regarded plays ends up bludgeoned to death at the age of thirty-four by his long time lover and collaborator, Kenneth Halliwell, in their … Continue reading “Loot” at Odyssey Theatre Ensemble
One of the most absorbing, original, and inventive shows now playing in the Hollywood Fringe Festival must be The Puckwit Gang’s In Conclusion, which is so much more than the conventional courtroom drama hinted at in the title. Those aware of early Twentieth Century crime will suss out a connection to a famous murder and … Continue reading “In Conclusion” at Hollywood Fringe
Grace Jasmine’s new short play, The Masher, takes on serious issues in a scattergun blast of emotion and comedy. In about an hour’s worth of performance by a cast of five, the play summons up, in no particular order, low wage desperation, management rigidity and hauteur, extreme spousal abuse, difficult lesbian love, government murder, ad … Continue reading “The Masher” at Hollywood Fringe
Two years ago, I saw playwright Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2 at South Coast Rep and wrote at that time that the playwright had “picked up the threads left behind by Ibsen and created an exquisitely compelling extension of Ibsen’s story.” It was an audacious enterprise, utterly fascinating and went on to earn … Continue reading “Dana H.” at Kirk Douglas Theatre
It’s the First of June and Theatricum Botanicum kicks off its 2019 season with a splendidly raucous, touchingly winsome, and furiously funny staging of William Shakespeare’s always-delightful Twelfth Night. Do I need to say that this timeless romantic comedy is set in the imaginary country of Illyria, where the lovesick Duke Orsino (Max Lawrence) pines … Continue reading “Twelfth Night” at Theatricum Botanicum
The opening scene in Theresa Rebeck’s 2012 play, Dead Accounts, reminds me, oddly enough, of the start of the Broadway show, 42nd Street. I was in attendance at the final preview of that show back in New York in 1980, and after the overture, the sound of the chorus beating out a time step could … Continue reading “Dead Accounts” at Little Fish Theatre
In A Streetcar Named Desire, thrilling theatre at its very best, one experiences vicariously a whole encyclopedia of feelings–desire, sexuality, secrecy, resentment, envy, disdain, yearning and more. The brilliantly loaded script in the hands of consummate stage artists, as is the case in this production now playing at the Odyssey Theatre, makes an audience lean … Continue reading “A Streetcar Named Desire” at Odyssey Theatre
