Actors playing animals give a certain slant to a situation. Most often they talk like people, as in the plays Sylvia and Bengal Tiger in the Bagdad Zoo. In Dominic Finocchiaro’s new play, The Found Dog Ribbon Dance, a stray canine with the default name Dog (Daniel Hagen in a lean, soulful performance) gets taken … Continue reading “The Found Dog Ribbon Dance” at Echo Theater Company
Jen Silverman’s new play, The Roommate, now in its West Coast premiere at South Coast Rep, presents two women in their mid-fifties, whose bloom of youth has faded with the inevitable decline of old age a decade or more in the future. All the action takes place in the kitchen of a comfortable home in … Continue reading “The Roommate” at South Coast Rep
Set in an artificially smoky room jammed and crammed with close-set tables, a scant platform at one end that serves as a stage connected to a narrow, twenty-foot runway, The Unauthorized Musical Parody of Home Alone, with a high-powered cast of consummate actor-singer-comedians, serves up a blistering couple of hours of raucous, intimate entertainment. The … Continue reading “UMPO Home Alone” at Rockwell: Table & Stage
Mariela Salvatierra (Rachel Gonzalez), a stoic beauty, wears a mask of patience as she sponges down her much older husband, Jose, who is in the last stages of the diabetes that both know will kill him. Jose (Vance Valencia) is cranky and short with her, whining and complaining of pain and discomfort. It is clear … Continue reading “Mariela in the Desert” at Casa 0101
Glowing superlatives cannot do proper justice to Pat Kinevane’s extraordinary work, Underneath. Written by the performer and directed by Jim Culleton of Fishamble: The New Play Company, the show is a solo performance by an actor of tremendous skill who connects with his audience in an intimate, personal way, chatting with randomly-selected members, mostly women, … Continue reading “Underneath” at Odyssey Theatre
It is quite the concept, this recasting of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice into the post-Civil War cauldron of Washington D.C. Playwright Aaron Posner not only shifts the action out of Venice and moves the time frame up several centuries, but he also re-crafts the old story of a Christian merchant who makes a bad deal … Continue reading “District Merchants” at South Coast Repertory
The best thing about Waiting for Johnny Depp is the title. It peaks the interest and makes one want to check it out. The two-act, one-woman show directed by Holly Friedman, with script, music and lyrics written by Janet Cole Valdez, the performer, Deedee O’Malley, and Holly Friedman, is a series of vignettes detailing the … Continue reading “Waiting for Johnny Depp” at Whitefire Theatre
After more than 900 performances on Broadway and multiple Tony, Drama Desk and Critics Circle awards, including Best Musical, the national tour of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, now in its Los Angles stop at the Ahmanson Theatre, validates those awards in spades. A packed opening night house roared with laughter and applause … Continue reading “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder” at Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson Theatre
The universal conundrum of the end of life takes center stage in Bekah Brunstetter’s thoroughly engaging new play Going to a Place where you Already Are, now in its world premiere run at South Coast Repertory. The great dichotomy… is there nothing or something after death? Nothing is easy to understand. Life emerges from a … Continue reading “Going to a Place where you Already Are” at South Coast Repertory
The power of the theatre to bring attention to the injustices of the world is remarkable. Over and over, theatre artists and writers expose social sins and spotlight issues that the collective conscience often prefers to remain unacknowledged. Academy Award winner Dustin Lance Black (screenplay Milk) put heat on the California proposition that banned same … Continue reading “Blood” at The Complex
Paul Myrvold's Theatre Notes 