THE LAST GOODBYE (OLD GLOBE): 87% – SWEET
SWEET But in Kimmel’s adaptation, Romeo drinks the poison, Juliet wakes up, and the two have a final scene together before he dies and she kills herself. It was so shocking and unexpected I could heard...
View ArticleVENUS IN FUR (SAN DIEGO REP): 100% – SWEET
SWEET David Ives’ Venus In Fur has come to town, or about as close to L.A. as she’s going to get for a while, which is more than enough reason to head down south to catch San Diego Repertory Theatre’s...
View ArticlePETER AND THE STARCATCHER (AHMANSON): 77% – SWEET
BITTERSWEET If, in the first act, the wit varies so vertiginously that it flirts with the tiresome, then in a deliriously delicious opening musical number of the second act, the entire cast sings and...
View ArticleTHE STEWARD OF CHRISTENDOM (MARK TAPER): 53% – BITTERSWEET
BITTERSWEET This devotion to verbal patterning is both his signal strength and conspicuous weakness as a dramatist. In “The Steward of Christendom,” Barry’s 1995 play now being revived at the Mark...
View ArticleTHE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS JEFFERSON, CHARLES DICKENS AND COUNT LEO...
SWEET Carefully compiled references and biographical details whiz by in Matt August’s finely tuned staging, with superb performances illuminating the clashing personalities that drive three discordant...
View ArticleVANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE: 84% – SWEET
SWEET The show, directed by David Hyde Pierce following Nicholas Martin’s Broadway staging, opened at the Mark Taper Forum on Sunday in tiptop shape. Indeed, you can mark this down as a shimmering...
View ArticleMY NAME IS ASHER LEV: 94% – SWEET
SWEET The play isn’t an undiluted screed on behalf of unfettered art; it depicts the pain Asher’s parents undergo when they become the unwitting subjects of his masterpiece – and the conflicts this...
View ArticleA SONG AT TWILIGHT (PASADENA PLAYHOUSE): 90% – SWEET
SWEET This production of “A Song at Twilight” is a reminder that there’s more to Coward than Champagne bubbles and intoxicating quips. What could very easily have turned into a vintage case study of a...
View ArticleRUTH DRAPER’S MONOLOGUES (GEFFEN PLAYHOUSE): 92% – SWEET
BITTERSWEET Perhaps the problem, aside from the material, is in Bening’s decision to direct herself. Aside from a vocal quality onstage that always seems a bit flat and somehow forced, Bening might...
View ArticleThe Saturday Saying
“Which brings me back to the original point: how much should, or do, we care about revisiting Ruth Draper? Put another way, would most of us be interested in this project if it were not being performed...
View ArticleTHE TALLEST TREE IN THE FOREST (MARK TAPER FORUM): 64% – BITTERSWEET
BITTERSWEET Daniel Beaty brings this story to the Mark Taper Forum in his solo show “The Tallest Tree in the Forest,” a respectful and intelligent if dramatically disappointing recap of Robeson’s life....
View ArticleTHE LION IN WINTER (COLONY THEATRE): 78% – SWEET
SWEET Artistic Director Barbara Beckley has made a great choice in bringing The Lion in Winter to our community. This play is a must see, masterly mounted, and very well cast by Patricia Cullen....
View ArticleBUYER AND CELLAR: 98% – SWEET
SWEET Wicked without being unnecessarily cruel, Buyer and Cellar takes jabs at the cult of celebrity while reminding us why we’re so fascinated by it in the first place. Streisand’s eccentric behavior...
View ArticleCHOIR BOY (GEFFEN PLAYHOUSE): 86% – SWEET
BITTER Tarell Alvin McCraney’s 2012 Choir Boy is a tantalizing, underdeveloped play-with-music not entirely improved by Trip Cullman’s direction, now at the Geffen a year after the production’s...
View ArticleMARJORIE PRIME: 67% – BITTERSWEET
BITTER A terrible play, and depressing as well, playwright Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime is set in a not-too-distant future and imagines a world where sophisticated robots have been fashioned as...
View ArticleTHE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL (AHMANSON THEATRE): 97% – SWEET
SWEET Ultimately, what makes this harrowing “Trip” endurable, even uplifting, is Carrie’s hard-won humor and wisdom, and the peace she is able to make with her own unhappiness before she is caught and...
View ArticleAFFLUENCE: 94% – SWEET
BITTERSWEET The cast — Pedersen, Lord, Kulinska, Huff, Uhebe and Tepper — are all experienced actors and performed appropriately. I found Eisenberg’s direction to be slow, as if the audience might miss...
View ArticleBRIGHT STAR (OLD GLOBE): 79% – SWEET
BITTERSWEET The drawbacks of this musical’s backward-glancing manner are most notable in Martin’s book, which is often floridly melodramatic. The action takes place just after the Second World War,...
View ArticleFOREVER: 67% – BITTERSWEET
BITTERSWEET From a theatrical perspective, unmodulated rage works best in small doses; too much of it stuns the senses. Subtler moments, as when she confesses her dreams of marrying the Irish cop who...
View ArticleThe Saturday Saying
“I began this review by discussing the advantage to theaters of producing one-person shows, and the short-cut writing a personal memoir offers. Orlandersmith often consulted a notebook as she expounded...
View ArticleWHAT THE BUTLER SAW (MARK TAPER): 82% – SWEET
SWEET “What the Butler Saw” represents Orton at his most sophisticatedly silly. It’s a play bursting with references to other plays, including even one of the greatest tragedies ever written,...
View ArticleINTO THE WOODS (OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL/THE WALLIS): 92% – SWEET
SWEET This OSF production at the Wallis may not have the star power of the screen version coming out on Christmas Day, but it has the buoyancy and complexity of feeling that have turned Sondheim and...
View ArticleThe Saturday Saying
“The world does not need a sanitized version of “Into The Woods” and children do not need all the production values of a Disney blowout (though Meryl Streep will probably do the Witch’s role justice)....
View ArticleCritique of the Week
Karen Weinstein brings such an interesting psycho-analytical approach to her reviews. This is a prime example. INTO THE WOODS Karen Weinstein – Culture Vulture Trip thee lightly into the woods my...
View ArticleBLITHE SPIRIT (AHMANSON THEATRE): 82% – SWEET
SWEET Coward’s work enables virtuosos who possess technique that’s as polished as it is effortless to reach new heights. Lansbury might as well be flying across the Ahmanson stage. Seeing her in...
View ArticleREBORNING (FOUNTAIN THEATRE): 80% – SWEET
SWEET Director Simon Levy has assembled an extraordinary cast in his exquisitely well-realized production, which also features impressive design elements, particularly Jeff McLaughlin’s scruffy...
View ArticleTHE NIGHT ALIVE (GEFFEN PLAYHOUSE): 79% – SWEET
BITTERSWEET When I saw the play, under McPherson’s direction, at London’s Donmar Warehouse, a quality of undefined menace was unmistakably part of the drama. That same edge isn’t quite there at the...
View ArticleTHE PRICE (MARK TAPER FORUM): 82% – SWEET
BITTERSWEET Garry Hynes’ production, which opened Saturday at the Mark Taper Forum, is a shade too respectful. The Tony-winning Irish director treats the text as though it were a castle of poetry when...
View ArticleCHAVEZ RAVINE, AN L.A. REVIVAL (KIRK DOUGLAS THEATRE): 88% – SWEET
BITTERSWEET The staging is of such high caliber and the material has so much import that it would have been nice to see these artists put more faith in the sophistication of their audience — and their...
View ArticleTHE POWER OF DUFF: 64% – BITTERSWEET
BITTER The volume and interchangeability of plot developments suggest a story in search of something to say. The punchy gimmick — an anchorman who starts to pray — could conceivably be spun into a...
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