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No Man's Lands: Quartets by Pinter and Walsh

Fri, Dec 4 Listen

Before Harold Pinter passed away last December, the final production the playwright was involved with was a West End revival of his 1975 drama No Man's Land. Pinter was at the opening night of Rupert Goold's staging last fall, which was polished if not particularly probing. Michael Gambon starred in the role of Hirst, originated 33 years earlier by Ralph Richardson. Gambon was perfectly cast as the old British bull, yet for as strong a presence as Gambon was in London, his turn ? and the...

A 'Labour of Love'

Thu, Nov 19 Listen

Shakespeare's comedy Love's Labour's Lost is not one of his sturdiest creations. While the major plays like Hamlet, Twelfth Night or A Midsummer Night's Dream can rise above lackluster stagings or uninspired acting, Love's Labour's Lost is a delicate souffl ? only when presented with absolute grace and skill, can it avoid collapsing under the weight of its own deliciousness...

A 'Farce' to Be Reckoned With

Thu, Nov 12 Listen

Last summer, Theatre Talk spoke of "the most dazzling production of a new play to come along in years." That play was The Walworth Farce, by Irish dramatist Enda Walsh. And after runs in Edinburgh, London, and New York, the original production has arrived here in Los Angeles where it opened last night as part of UCLA Live's International Theater Festival...

Irish Ghosts and Leprechauns

Thu, Nov 5 Listen

In this week after Halloween, it's fitting that we talk about ghost stories. Conor McPherson, the prolific Irish dramatist, is a master of modern ghost stories ? his plays have featured apparitions, bloodsuckers, even Mephistopheles himself. And yet, there's no blood or gore in McPherson's plays ? he's more interested in the guilt these spirits represent, not who they can kill....

Nojangles

Thu, Oct 29 Listen

The late 1950's and 1960's were indeed Sammy Davis Jr.'s moment. During that time he was one of, if not, the highest paid entertainer in America. His career is the subject of a new musical titled Sammy...

A Reigning Parade

Thu, Oct 22 Listen

Those are the opening bars of the musical Parade and that little bit of music tells you a great deal about the show as a whole. There's the military drum beat that evokes the Civil War, the bells and oboe melody that sound like Broadway and the atonal piano cluster which tells you the dissonant Parade is not your standard feel-good, leave-whistling-the-songs musical...

Donuts and Dilaudid

Thu, Oct 15 Listen

What do you do after your sprawling, three-hour play about America in decline wins the Pulitzer Prize for drama? That's a problem most aspiring playwrights ? to say nothing of established writers ? would love to have; but it's nevertheless been a problem for Tracy Letts. Letts is the writer of popular, short shockers, like Killer Joe and Bug, who then decided to write something long and serious. That play turned out to be August: Osage County, which won the Tony, the Pulitzer, and is now...

Tragedies: Medea and Modine

Thu, Oct 8 Listen

Two great tragedies are currently running in Westwood. One dates back 2,500 years; the other feels twice as old (and dated) even though it was written earlier this year. ..

Bush-Era Angst

Thu, Oct 1 Listen

Of the many things George W. Bush said that came back to haunt him, one quip perhaps best describes what would become known as the Bush II Era: "A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it," he said about working with Congress, "just so long as I'm the dictator..."

A Raucous 'Peace' and Intoxicating 'Encounter'

Thu, Sep 24 Listen

A simple, joyous belief in theater as entertainment radiates from two productions currently playing here on the west coast. The first is the annual production of a Greek classic at the Getty Villa's outdoor amphitheater...

Disney vs. Dreamworks: Round 2, Live on Stage

Thu, Sep 10 Listen

Spam-Alot Funnier

Fri, Sep 4 Listen

That's the song, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," from the musical Spamalot. Of course, die-hard Monty Python fans will tell you that song originally came from the 1979 movie Life of Brian ? but then very little that's in Spamalot is original. The full title of this show, which won the 2005 Tony Award for Best Musical, is Monty Python's Spamalot: A New Musical lovingly ripped off from the motion picture Monty Python and the Holy Grail...

Preserving Strange

Thu, Aug 27 Listen

Coming Home

Thu, Aug 20 Listen

This past weekend, the Number One movie in America was a film titled District 9, about aliens from outer space who suffer under a sort of intergalactic apartheid policy outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. One can only wonder if Athol Fugard, the most well known South African playwright of the real apartheid era (who now lives here in Southern California) saw District 9 ? and if so, what he thought of it...

Hats and Hamlet

Thu, Aug 6 Listen

In the last twelve months many shows have been cancelled due to the "unexpected financial climate." This week was supposed to have been a review of Elizabeth Meriwether's Heddatron at the Kirk Douglas Theater. Alas, it was indefinitely postponed. (Leaving Angelinos to forever ponder the intersection of Ibsen and robots.) What's more, some theaters and companies have cancelled seasons or even closed their doors completely, so it seems fitting to make mention of two local troupes that are...

Octo-Bomb

Thu, Jul 30 Listen

A bad musical is not inherently worse than a bad play. Tickets for bad musicals are usually not much more expensive than bad plays, and usually they don?t take much more of your time...

Sorkinesque

Thu, Jul 23 Listen

Aaron Sorkin has only written four plays, but his writing style has influenced countless authors since his third play, A Few Good Men, became a hit on Broadway back in 1989 and later became a widely seen (and quoted) motion picture...

Summer Shakes

Thu, Jul 16 Listen

As we approach summer's halfway point, we can say with some confidence that 2009 is proving to be a banner year for outdoor Shakespeare...

Upper West Side Comes to Lower West Coast

Thu, Jul 9 Listen

Our Towns

Thu, Jul 2 Listen

Fourth of July is usually not a good weekend for on stage drama bright beaches, warm sun and evening fireworks generally trump dark theaters; but if the weather is bad and one had to spend part of the weekend inside, theres no better way to do it than watching Thornton Wilders Our Town.

Pullman Two-Hander

Thu, Jun 25 Listen

Bill Pullman's handsome, neighborly features continue to earn him starring and supporting roles in countless feature films, but they also give him the perfect faade for playing Edward Albee's darkly repressed Manhanttanites. Pullman has only two major stage roles in his recent bio, but both were Albee's and both were subtle but startlingly deep performances. The first was the part of Martin in Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Goat, the second was the role Peter in Albee's 2007 double-bill...

The Next British Invasion

Thu, Jun 18 Listen

This summer in London, some of the world's most well-known English actors are performing some of the world's most well-known stage dramas. These shows sold out almost immediately, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're worth seeing. The Waiting for Godot starring Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart is fitfully enjoyable but uninspired. The two actors look like they're having fun, but director Sean Mathias (who was responsible for that dreary Cherry Orchard at the Taper a few years back) is...

Leading Ladies

Thu, Jun 11 Listen

August Summer

Thu, Jun 4 Listen

On Saturday night, Barack Obama flew up to New York with Michelle Obama for a night out, and the first couple went to the theater district. They saw August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone, fulfilling a promise Obama made to his wife during the campaign: if he won the election, he would take her to a Broadway show. Since Saturday, tickets sales for Joe Turner's Come and Gone have tripled...

Numbers

Thu, May 28 Listen

The British playwright Caryl Churchill has been writing acclaimed dramatic work since the 1970s, but with her last three plays, Far Away, A Number and Drunk Enough To Say I Love You all written this decade, she has done the impossible. Not only has she managed to get all three of these serious-themed, short plays produced by major theaters in both London and New York, but with these three works, she has also somehow managed to stop time. Each of these plays runs only about 60 minutes, and...

Cat's Cradle

Thu, May 21 Listen

Trying to Remember

Thu, May 14 Listen

Two very successful show-biz brand names were re-launched in Los Angeles last week. Both titles, in their original incarnations, were simple stories, told with a little song and dance that evoked the early 1960s. Incidentally, both also starred the late, great Jerry Orbach....

Dealing with Devils

Thu, May 7 Listen

As anyone who's spent any time appreciating books, plays or movies can tell you, it's rarely a good idea to make a deal with the devil. The Faustian pact is generally a losing proposition, which is one of the things that makes Conor McPherson's The Seafarer, a shambling, whiskey-soaked Christmas card to Goethe so hard to resist...

Brief Encounters

Thu, Apr 30 Listen

After so many diverting, well-written, but not quite satisfying works (not to mention a few bona fide clunkers) I've stopped anticipating new Richard Greenberg plays and I no longer wait for him to finally pen the "Great American Drama." Greenberg has written some lovely minor plays, like Three Days of Rain and Take Me Out, but the big, defining work eludes him. Despite the grand ambitions of his characters and the big themes that his plays address, Greenberg remains a miniaturist...

Local Tetrologies

Fri, Apr 24 Listen

In our era of movie sequels and multi-season story lines on television, the notion of spending a long time with one set of characters and their drawn out dilemmas is not foreign to contemporary American audiences. But there is a difference between something that is serialized (sit-coms, daytime dramas, Friday the 13th movies) and epic works that require a large canvas...

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