Neil Simon died last month. Based on what we saw on social media, lots of people took it hard. Palpable was the anguish, sincere were the remembrances of this most commercially successful of playwrights (who died at the ripe age of 91), barbed were the attacks on the snooty-nosed contingent who don’t consider the appellation […]
John Reed Puts Shakespeare in a Blender and an Anti-War Statement Results
When mistakes are made in the wild, wacky world of journalism, it’s usually always the writer’s fault (sometimes, it’s an error by an editor; but we’re not supposed to talk about that). But in THIS case, it’s absolutely someone else’s fault: that of John Reed, whose play All The World’s a Grave: a […]
A New OC-Centric Play Proves That Shakespeare Isn’t Dead Yet
Some 450 years after his death, William Shakespeare still won’t shut up. Case in point: Two new plays currently receiving their debut productions in Orange County wouldn’t exist but for Shakespearean inspiration. Darren Andrew Nash’s Allegory of the Cave, part of the eighth-annual OC-Centric new-play festival, leans on the literary spirit of Shakespeare’s ill-fated Ophelia […]
Long Beach Playhouse’s The Twentieth-Century Way Brings the City’s Rainbow History Back Home
Long Beach—OC’s poor redheaded stepchild to the east (if east means west, that is), a city with no identity or economic or cultural import—does have some merits. Yes, Iowa-by-the-Sea remains as electrifying as that long-scuttled nickname would suggest, but the so-called International City sure has a lot of ships that visit. And you can ride […]
New Swan and the Wayward Artist Break Free of the Bad Shakespeare Rap
Theatrically speaking, summer means Shakespeare. A lot of Shakespeare. Too much Shakespeare. And all too often over the past 20-plus years, these eyes and ears have been bored to the edge of the existential abyss by directors and actors who tackle material they can’t handle—and who look and sound awful while doing it. Which is […]
Everything About the Chance’s Big Fish Is Top-Notch, Except the Story Itself
There is absolutely nothing wrong with director Oanh Nguyen’s staging of Big Fish, a musical adaptation of the 2003 Tim Burton-directed film and the 1998 novel it was based on. The music and singing is top-notch, the choreography and technical elements spot-on, and the entire affair shows that the Chance, which long ago emerged as […]
Fox Fullerton set to take a BITE into summer
Anyone who has spent much time in downtown Fullerton (shame on you) is undoubtedly familiar with the Fox Fullerton, the once-stately movie palace opened in 1925 on Harbor Boulevard just north of Chapman Avenue. It’s been closed since 1987 and has survived threats of wrecking balls, redevelopment plans, and all kinds of weird […]
The Christians Takes You to Church
Yes, the name of the play is The Christians. Yes, it was written by young, emerging playwright Lucas Hnath, and it has seen productions in such hotbeds of liberal indoctrination as London, New York, Austin and Los Angeles. Yes, it is year two of the Donald Trump interregnum, and the kind of Christians that Hnath’s […]
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When Better to Visit the Big Island Than During a Volcanic Explosion? [Summer Travel 2018]
His best friend had died four months ago. A brief, but intense and intensive love affair had just immolated. Like any self-respecting egocentric and scarred Leo, all he wanted was to slink away and lick his wounds. So why not head toward an erupting volcano? The trip to the big island of Hawaii was a […]
OC Weekly’s Midyear Guide to the Best Local Theater
It’s summertime, and even though the living ain’t always the easiest, OC summertime sure beats the hell out of Stockton summertime. And for those of you who want to immerse yourself in a little bit of artsy-fartsy culture, there’s plenty of stuff both inside and outside, theatrically speaking, to satisfy that most perverse of urges. […]
Hurricane-Force Musical Hamilton Touches Land at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts
What do you write about a play that has been so written about, talked about, dissected, analyzed and been christened as the Big Theatrical Thing? We’re talking, of course, about Hamilton, the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical that is an international sensation. It entered the American political conversation after Vice President Mike Pence attended a show in […]
In L.A. Man, Legendary Alt-Weekly Journalist Joe Donnelly Looks Back at the Driving Force of His Tumultuous Career
Joe Donnelly is worried. Not to the point of shoveling fistfuls of Xanax down his throat, but he’s worried, or perhaps somewhat perturbed, about a few things. He’s worried about the write-up he’ll receive soon from the Los Angeles Review of Books about a new anthology of profiles culled from his 20 years of writing […]
A Dystopian Urinetown: The Musical Deluges STAGEStheatre
Fans of Urinetown: The Musical—and I count myself as one of those fervid believers—look forward to each new production as eagerly as if they are a kid on the night before going to Disneyland (before they realize it sucks) or a 15-year-old gearing up for his first dry hump. It’s a time of frenzied expectations […]
A Diverse Lineup Takes Center Stage at South Coast Rep’s Pacific Playwrights Festival
Twenty-one years ago, the following names graced the inaugural Pacific Playwrights Festival (PPF), South Coast Repertory’s foray into the mostly uncharted (at least on the Left Coast) waters of new plays: Richard Greenberg, Anthony Clarvoe, Cusi Cram, John Glore, Jessica Hagedorn, Howard Korder, Chris Van Groningen, Karen Zacarias. Okay, okay, that was supposed to be […]
SanTana Art Walk Finally Gets Some Theater
Bob Tully is a well-paid, well-traveled middle-aged white man living in Orange County. Definitely the kind of authority qualified to mansplain about abortion, #metoo and police shootings of black people, right? But though Tully, who has launched an innovative theater company called Playhouse, which will stage its second production Saturday amid the Santa Ana Art […]
Amy Freed’s Shrew! Reshuffles the Bard for South Coast Repertory
If awards were given to program notes, then the odds on South Coast Repertory’s Shrew! would be even money. Among the insightful reads is SCR dramaturg John Glore’s two-page treatment of the history of Shakespeare’s popular but problematic The Taming of the Shrew and Amy Freed’s process in writing her new, imaginative, reshuffling. None of […]
Going to Tennessee Without a Net
Last year, an august publication devoted to truth, justice and cold beer at a reasonable price awarded the coveted honor of best theatrical production to a show that lasted one night: Awkward Party, a longform improv piece that illustrated the incredible storytelling potential of throwing a cast on stage, giving them loosely defined characters in […]
The Mormons are Coming! (Again…)
As a young girl, Kayla Pecchioni never dreamed she’d be one of the main leads for a national touring production of the ridiculously popular and successful musical The Book of Mormon (How popular? By one account, in 2013, its various productions around the country, and world, were raking in $20 million a month). Pecchioni wanted to be a […]
CSULB Play Shows That The Past is Present–And Both Are Pretty Hard to Figure Out
The first thing you notice about the latest play at California State University, Long Beach, which is running through this weekend, is the title. To be precise, the number of words in that title: 27 or so, depending on if years are words. The full name: We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero […]
Though Bumpy at Times, Cambodian Rock Band Is an Exhilarating Ride
Part play, part rock concert, part eccentric comedy set against the backdrop of the Cambodian genocide, Lauren Yee’s new play, Cambodian Rock Band, is many things stuffed into one undeniably entertaining package—stuffed being the operative term. Commissioned by South Coast Repertory (SCR), it’s now receiving its world-premiere production, and the play’s relative newness shows. While […]
Crimes of the Heart Is a Southern Gothic With Legs, But It Lags
Beth Henley won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1981 for Crimes of the Heart. What made it surprising wasn’t so much that the play wasn’t great (it was one of the more competent ones amid a meager lot of plays during a period of commercial transition in mainstream American theater), but her gender. She […]
