Produced on a shoestring budget in an intimate space at The Village at Ed Gould Plaza, the performance piece, Chimpskin is an exemplar of what the Hollywood Fringe Festival is all about, that is to say, a bold experimental, non-commercial show that can be seen nowhere else. With mostly mimed props, an old-fashioned portable record … Continue reading “Chimpskin” at Los Angeles LGBT Center
George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a classic piece of Twentieth Century literature that is de rigueur in classrooms, is a biting satire of the politics of revolution. Taking the Russian Revolution as a model, Orwell shows how the idealism of original revolutionaries gets co-opted by the unsavory and the ambitious. In Theatricum Botanicum’s staging of Peter … Continue reading “Animal Farm” at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum
In Little Fish Theatre’s The Good Doctor, The Writer (Daniel Gallai), a nameless Russian dressed as a fin de siècle gentleman, is modestly surprised to find himself surrounded by an audience. He immediately gushes about his artistic compulsion to write and write and write some more. When he suddenly gets an idea for a story, … Continue reading “The Good Doctor” at Little Fish Theatre
Ellyn Daniels needs to get it out there. The stand-up comic, writer, actor and model has a lot to say about her experiences in the biz. Trained as a ballet dancer as a youth, she was scouted by a Parisian modeling agent at the age of seventeen. The innocent, often bewildered teen had modeling gigs … Continue reading “Emotional Terrorism” at The Actors Company
Some articles about Beth Henley’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, Crimes of the Heart, call it tragi-comic. That is a mistake. The comic part is true enough—great hilarity pops up with delightful regularity—but the action doesn’t rise to level of Hamlet, say, with bodies strewn about the stage at the final curtain, or the grim visage … Continue reading “Crimes of the Heart” at International City Theatre
Unbound Productions, well known and well loved for its ever-popular Wicked Lit. adaptations of short stories that send shivers up the spine, explores new territory with their current production, Mystery Lit.–“Holmes, Sherlock and The Consulting Detective.” Breaking away from its formula of three short plays and three audience groups that move from place to place … Continue reading “Holmes, Sherlock and The Consulting Detective” at the Santa Anita Train Depot
William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice mixes romantic comedy with tense, emotional cruelty, prompting laughter in an audience as well as dismay at the outrageous usage that a Jewish moneylender, Shylock (Alan Blumenfeld in a terrific performance), must endure. It is difficult to watch the abuse that he must endure at the hands of Christian … Continue reading “The Merchant of Venice” at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum
