Larry Shue’s The Foreigner has been convulsing audiences in laughter since it first opened in regional theatre in 1984 and then went on to a 686-performance run off Broadway. The show has become a perennial audience favorite ever since. Set in “the recent past,”a hapless, painfully shy, socially inept Charlie Baker (David Lawrence) gets installed … Continue reading “The Foreigner” at Little Fish Theatre
Put aside all expectations of an Aristophanes comedy. Eduardo Machado’s new play, Lysistrata Unbound, is no light-hearted romp about a bunch of Athenian women who cut off all sexual contact with men in order to bring a halt to the endless Peloponnesian Wars. No, this show, under the inspired direction of John Farmanesh-Bocca (Tempest Redux, … Continue reading “Lysistrata Unbound” at Odyssey Theatre Ensemble
Centuries before the time of the Caesars and empire, Rome was but one city state in the Italian Peninsula. In Shakespeare’s telling of the old story of Caius Martius Coriolanus, the Volsces, Rome’s dire enemies, were a people living south of Rome. According to legend, Martius distinguished himself in battle, vanquishing the Volsces and taking … Continue reading “Coriolanus” at Theatricum Botanicum
The story of Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Nazi hunter, is by now legendary. Born on the last day of December, 1908, in Buczacz in what is now Ukraine, he, like millions upon millions of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, untold numbers of children, as well as the infirm, disabled, and others deemed undesirable, were swept up and … Continue reading “Wiesenthal” at Theatre 40
A. A. Milne was far more than the author of Winnie-the-Pooh and all the other beloved characters based on the toys of his young son, Christopher Robin. He also wrote poetry, magazine articles, political pieces, novels and plays. Shortly after mustering out of the British Army in 1919, he wrote the drawing room comedy, Mr. … Continue reading “Mr. Pim Passes By” at Theatre 40
Part autobiography, part political satire, part romantic comedy, and very much a smart, rollicking, entirely original “play with a musical,” David Henry Hwang’s new theatrical extravaganza, Soft Power, now in its world premiere run at the Ahmanson Theatre, keys in on two characters, a Chinese state film producer, Xue Xing (Conrad Ricamora) and an American … Continue reading “Soft Power” at the Ahmanson Theatre
Two fools in a neutral space inevitably conjure up the memory of Vladimir and Estragon, the heroes of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Didi and Gogo are so stuck in their loop waiting for Godot, that they do nearly the same thing in the second act. In Bernardo Cubría’s new play, The Giant Void in … Continue reading “The Giant Void in My Soul” at Ammunition Theatre Company
