THE FOOD HERE IS MIXED…AND SUCH SMALL PORTIONS One thing you've got to love about this festival of ten minute plays: When they're done correctly, these vignettes are like plates of…
NOT JUST A GAY BAR ANY MORE It is the unfortunate nature of some gay dramas to hammer home or leadenly evangelize a theme with a heavy hand. You know the sort of thing I am talking about…
A HEAD SPINNINGLY GOOD EXORCIST ROMP THAT DOESN'T SUCK C#CKS IN HELL A year or two back, wily producers crafted a stage version of the chilling 1970s horror flick, The Exorcist, and gave it …
NOT MUCH UNDERGROUND Author Neil Gaiman writes for the anime and graphic novel era " rollicking adventures that are tonally glib, suffused with whimsy and wit, and full of puns, extraordinar…
YOU CAN SKIP THESE SKETCHY SKETCHES Those of us who are of a certain age reverently remember the National Lampoon as being one of the great humor magazines of the 1970s and early 1980s. …
I'D LIKE TO RETURN THIS GIFT, PLEASE The Geffen Playhouse has a proud tradition of staging crackerjack productions of dramatic works by some of the modern theater's greatest playwrights. To …
A FINE MESS The Grand Irrationality: The title of playwright Jemma Kennedy's romantic comedy refers to the concept found in astrology relating to ultimate chaos " e.g., the idea that som…
BAD GIRL DONE GOOD Here's a play with a fascinating history for you. Early-mid 20th century Chicago playwright Phillip Yordan originally intended this play to be set in the Polish Americ…
THE SHTICK MAY DETRACT FROM THE PLAY, BUT JUST TRY TO RIVAL THE ACTORS' GANG The Rivals (1775), Richard Brinsley Sheridan's wonderful Comedy of Manners, is a play about pretension; everyone …
THE JOADS AT HOME Playwright Randy Sharp's one act drama takes place during the Dust Bowl catastrophe of the 1930s, when a monstrous drought descended on the central plain states turning fer…
THE FAMILY THAT STAYS TOGETHER HATES TOGETHER The legacy of emotional damage inflicted on children by their parents is one of the main themes in Him, a new play by Daisy Foote " but the subt…
SOPHISTICATED SONGWRITING IN CLOSER THAN EVER One might well approach this musical about growing into middle age with some trepidation. The fact is that plays about midlife usually tend …
REAL TERROR IN THE AIR AND IN THE THEATER If this play doesn't make you want to travel by train instead of by air, nothing will. Here's a performance project (credited to creators Bob Be…
THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A DANE The Globe Theater of London brings its touring production of Shakespeare's tale of the Melancholy Great Dane to the Michael Schimmel Center, and one is tempted t…
IN LOVE OR IN LOVE WITH BEING IN LOVE Playwright Kristen Vangsness' intriguing, but ultimately frustrating comedy features as its center a gal who makes the mistake of confusing love with, w…
THE LONG MEET CUTE If you're inclined to think in terms of film noir, you could very easily give playwright Jenelle Riley's quite charming romantic comedy the subtitle "The Long Meet Cute":Ã…
THE SCHLONG AND SHORT OF IT The great local critic Wenzel Jones, writing about the play "Naked Boys Singing," (another play in which men happily doffed their clothes to showcase their Full M…
THE PEASANTS ARE REVOLTING, NOT THE PRODUCTION Set amidst the teeming, verdant jungles of South India, Encounter is an often compelling dance theatrical production from the Navarasa Dance Th…
NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE Author Joan Didion's powerful piece of writing, the elegiac monologue The Year of Magical Thinking, receives its Los Angeles premiere in this intimate production at the…