Email Author Neal Weaver

2012 Stories by Neal Weaver

• Sherlock's Last Case

  published December 20, 2012

  In Charles Marowitz's comedy-thriller, Dr. Watson (Bert Emmett), fed up with Sherlock Holmes' condescension and superiority, launches a diabolical... More >>

• Coney Island Christmas

  published December 6, 2012

  Donald Margulies' sweetly goofy Coney Island Christmas, based on Grace Paley's short story The Loudest Voice, is an unmitigated... More >>

• Intimate Apparel

  published November 15, 2012

  Lynne Nottage's lyrical drama tells the tale of the naive-but-indomitable black seamstress, Esther (Vanessa Williams), in 1905 New York. Esther... More >>

• Doomsday Cabaret

  published November 8, 2012

  This irreverent rock musical, with book, lyrics and music by Michael Shaw Fisher and direction by Chris Raymond, was inspired by the Mayan... More >>

• The Beat Goes On!

  published November 1, 2012

  This is the fourth installment of a series of shows, under the overall title of Rockin' With the Ages, designed to provide opportunities... More >>

• A Kind of Love Story

  published September 27, 2012

  Jenelle Riley's lighthearted comedy is seriously funny and endearingly sweet. Mark (Michael Lanahan) and Ally (Carrie Wiita) were indoctrinated,... More >>

• The Full Monty

  published September 13, 2012

  This crowd-pleasing musical, with book by Terrence McNally and music and lyrics by David Yazbek, and the 1997 movie on which it's based, pull off... More >>

• Focus Group Play

  published September 6, 2012

  Carrie Barrett's comedy Focus Group Play, presented as part of the Katselas Theatre Company's LAbWORKS 2012, is set in a focus group... More >>

• Memphis: The Musical

  published August 9, 2012

  In Memphis, Tenn., in the 1950s, even the music was segregated. Anything written or performed by black artists was called race music, and branded... More >>

• To Quiet the Quiet

  published August 2, 2012

  In an apartment kitchen, a man, Quinn (Michael Marc Friedman), is questioning a raddled, nervous woman, Kathy (Lisa Richards). He seems initially... More >>

• Jitney

  published June 28, 2012

  This piece, in a much earlier version, was August Wilson's first full-length play. But in 1996 he decided to revise it into the seventh play in... More >>

• Bitchslap!

  published May 24, 2012

  Hollywood divas Bette Davis and Joan Crawford have inspired more drag-show performances than anybody Ñ except perhaps Judy Garland. Too... More >>

• Confessions of a Mormon Boy (Part I in The Mormon Boy Trilogy)

  published May 3, 2012

  It's been said that the greatest asset any writer can have is a good story to tell. And self-styled Oxy-Mormon Steven Fales has a helluva story.... More >>

• Good People

  published April 19, 2012

  David Lindsay-Abaire's Tony-nominated Good People, having its L.A. premiere, takes an oblique look at the issue of class in America. Margie... More >>

• The Merchant of Venice

  published April 5, 2012

  Director Sean Branney is keenly aware that the blatant anti-Semitism of Elizabethan England, which permeates Shakespeare's The Merchant of... More >>

• Jesus Ride

  published March 29, 2012

  Writer-performer Mike Schlitt is a master of the purposeful — and very funny — digression. His one-man show is nominally about his... More >>

• Spring Awakening

  published March 22, 2012

  It's amazing that writer Frank Wedekind had the courage and perception to write about adolescent sexual awakening in 1893, at a time when neither... More >>

• Closer

  published March 15, 2012

  Patrick Marber's play takes a hip, darkly funny view of the transitory nature of love in London in the 1990s. Obituary writer and would-be... More >>

• Candida

  published February 23, 2012

  George Bernard Shaw wrote the engaging comedy Candida at least partially as a response to Ibsen's A Doll House, about an intelligent... More >>

• The Lonesome West

  published February 9, 2012

  Martin McDonagh's comedy is set in a village in western Ireland, which seems to be a hot-bed of murder, suicide and rampaging Irish eccentricity.... More >>

• Hamlet

  published January 26, 2012

  Over the 10 years of its existence, the Independent Shakespeare Company has developed a reliable house style: brisk, athletic, no-nonsense... More >>

• Did You Do Your Homework?

  published January 19, 2012

  In his solo play, Aaron Braxton marshals his skills as writer, actor, singer and director to relate his experience as a substitute teacher in... More >>