The secrets in Sarah Treem’s intriguing intellectual drama, The How and the Why, reveal themselves with tantalizing slowness. Into the office of an academic busy at her work, a young woman enters softly, tentatively. We eventually learn that her name is Rachel (Natalie Beisner), and the academic is Zelda (Mary Wickliffe), an evolutionary biologist. It … Continue reading “The How and the Why” at Little Fish Theatre
Playwright Gina Gionfriddo makes feminist theory dramatic in her cunningly titled play, Rapture, Blister, Burn, now running at Little Fish Theatre. Smart people with the not-terribly-unusual angst of modern-day, everyday life, deal with regret, ennui, alcoholism and desire couched in terms of the ancient conundrum of gender, its dynamics, expectations and reality. Three college chums … Continue reading “Rapture, Blister, Burn” at Little Fish Theatre
One of the many remarkable things about the stage version of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 spy thriller, The 39 Steps, is that the entire thing is utterly faithful to the movie. All the salient plot points are there and four intrepid actors who play all the roles recreate all the action. Of course this is not … Continue reading “The 39 Steps” at Little Fish Theatre
Table Manners (now in production at Little Fish Theatre), the first play of Alan Ayckbourn’s trilogy, The Norman Conquests, is a six-character comedy that takes place entirely in the dining room. The other two plays are Living Together, which is set in the living room, and Round and Round the Garden, in the garden. The … Continue reading “Table Manners” at Little Fish Theatre
Peter Shaffer’s Sleuth premiered at the Music Box Theatre in New York in 1970 and closed nearly three years later after 1,222 performances. While it was still running in New York, the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco produced it with Ken Ruta and Peter Donat in the leads. I saw that production when I … Continue reading “Sleuth” at Little Fish Theatre
Playwright Rich Orloff lampoons the idealized 1950s America with his wacky play, Domestic Tranquility, now playing at Little Fish Theatre in San Pedro. Think of it as a cracked Father Knows Best with a dad who drives off to the office every day, a stay-at-home mom who cooks and dusts, and a teenaged daughter about … Continue reading “Domestic Tranquility” at Little Fish Theatre
The thing of it about short plays, plays of around ten minutes duration, is that they pack into those precious few moments a wealth of human drama with its sorrow and slapstick, grief and joy. If one loves a particular little playlet, it ends too quickly. If one doesn’t really care for it, well, it … Continue reading “Pick of the Vine” at Little Fish Theatre
