“My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.” Job 19:20, The King James Bible “Oh, oh, oh! Six o’clock and the master not home yet.” Anyone who has ever experienced a performance of Thornton Wilder’s seriocomic masterpiece, the Pulitzer Prize winning 1942 play, … Continue reading “The Skin of Our Teeth” at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum
“The course of true love never did run smooth.” The Filigree Theatre out of Austin, Texas, brings Lila Rose Kaplan’s new play, 100 Planes, to The Broadwater’s intimate Black Box Theatre in Hollywood for its West Coast Premiere. This ambitious show boasts a cast of four and a story line that includes romance, light comedy, … Continue reading “100 Planes” at Broadwater Black Box
After a restless period of uncertainty, Open Fist Theatre Company is on a roll, clearly hitting its stride with a recent series of smashing shows—Under Milk Wood, Anna in the Tropics, and now Dancing at Lughnasa. Brian Friel’s award winning play is set in Ireland, County Donegal, in the small rural village of Ballybeg around … Continue reading “Dancing at Lughnasa” at Open First Theatre
If you have expectations of Henrik Ibsen, Norway, and a five-act play, put that out of your minds. Over the decades, An Enemy of the People has been adapted in many ways, perhaps none as freely as Ellen Geer’s version, now running in repertory at Theatricum Botanicum. Set in South Fork, South Carolina in the … Continue reading “An Enemy of the People” at Theatricum Botanicum
It was decades ago as a student in the drama department of my college that I first heard the name Bertolt Brecht. The great German playwright and his works have been in my theatrical lexicon ever since. He was amazingly productive, writing no less than fifty plays between 1918 and 1955, many of which are … Continue reading “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” at Antaeus Theatre Company
Playwright Larry Shue’s fame rests on the success of his two over-the-top comedies, The Nerd and The Foreigner, two hit shows that are perennially revived all over the country and probably overseas as well. Little Fish Theatre mounted a smashing production of The Foreigner around this time last year. The company’s current production is The … Continue reading “The Nerd” at Little Fish Theatre
Bold, timely, hot-blooded, and bewildering, Geraldine Inoa’s new play, Scraps, is all these things and more. What an audience sees upon entering the intimate, semi-circular auditorium of the Matrix Theatre is John Iacovelli’s terrific rendering of a section of street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn with a three–step-up apartment house adjacent to a store … Continue reading “Scraps” at The Matrix
