Here in urban and rural California, we, all of us, cross paths with people who are “undocumented,” those who entered the country through the back door avoiding the immigration service. Sometimes we know it, but mostly we don’t. My father-in-law learned of a young woman, the teenaged sister of a man that did some work … Continue reading “WET: A DACAmented Journey” at Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA
In the second series of Little Fish Theatre’s Best of Pick of the Vine, most of the delectable short plays are sillier and played more broadly than Series A. There is an enthusiastic go for broke feeling to them that gets the sold out audience (on the evening performance I attended) hooting with laughter. And … Continue reading “Best of Pick of the Vine—Series B” at Little Fish Theatre Company
Christopher John Francis Boone is an unusual fifteen- year-old boy. Self described as “a mathematician with some behavioral difficulties,” one can see that he is outside the realm of normal. He cringes violently if touched and has many sensitivities. Yet he is brilliant in his own way. Like the classic case of the blind men … Continue reading “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” at The Ahmanson Theatre
I love a festival of short plays. It is amazing how much story can be packed into a playlet of about ten or fifteen minutes in length. They can be screamingly funny, whimsical, thought provoking or touching. Little Fish Theatre’s latest offering is two evenings of what they have entitled Best of the Pick of … Continue reading “Best of Pick of the Vine—Series A” at Little Fish Theatre Company
Before Alan Menken became the go-to composer for big Disney animated musicals, he scored with a seldom seen, highly praised musical-comedy adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, which had a decent run off-Broadway in 1979. Then he and lyricist partner Howard Ashman hit it big time in 1982 with The Little Shop … Continue reading “The Dream on Royal Street” at Sierra Madre Playhouse
Chuck Faerber’s Ball Yards, a satirical look at the madness of American sports mania, takes the form of loosely related, comic sketches, that miraculously coalesce by the end. The tone is set in the opening piece when a grand kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan (John Marzilli) takes a golfing lesson given by a pro … Continue reading “Ball Yards” at Zephyr Theatre
If Alice Childress had been more amenable to producers’ suggestion that she amend the text of her brilliant play, Trouble in Mind, and make it a “heart-warming little story,” she would have been the first female African American playwright to debut on Broadway. Instead, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun broke that barrier in … Continue reading “Trouble in Mind” at Theatricum Botanicum
