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By Steven Leigh Morris
Over at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, the schoolkids of Grover's Corners in Thornton Wilder's Our Town pour off the stage, like water from a... More >>
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By Steven Leigh Morris
It's probably dangerous to subtitle a biographical play "The Kick-Ass Wit," as twin-sister journalist-playwrights Margaret and Allison Engel do in... More >>
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By Steven Leigh Morris
Are we insects or are we dancers?
"I was always fascinated by insects since I was a child. I would go into my backyard and look under rocks, to... More >>
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By Steven Leigh Morris
How often, in the pantheon of literature and drama, do you find a guy performing an homage to his mom? Far more common in the annals of pop... More >>
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By Steven Leigh Morris
In a silvery-blue jacket and slacks, lithe British actor Julian Sands presented 90 minutes of readings from the poetry of and speeches by Harold... More >>
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By Steven Leigh Morris
There's a reason that John Patrick Shanley's two-character, 75-minute "apache dance" from 1984, set in the Bronx, is one of the most-produced... More >>
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The life of a Nigerian Afrobeat legend
By Steven Leigh Morris
The band and the actors are already warming up as the audience trickles into the Ahmanson Theatre for Fela!, Jim Lewis and Bill T. Jones'... More >>
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By L.A. Weekly Theater Critics
Lighting Design by Mother Nature
Playwright-director Sharon Yablon toured local stages in September with 24 Hours on Sunset, a collection of... More >>
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By Steven Leigh Morris
This past June witnessed the week that was, with the nationwide theater organization Theatre Communications Group celebrating its 50th anniversary... More >>
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By Steven Leigh Morris
There's an imposing bed at the center of the stage. Colin (Troy Blendell) has such a typically English, genial disposition, you have to wonder why... More >>
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By Steven Leigh Morris
If you visit New York this winter, you'll find on Broadway a playwright oft-produced in L.A. (Theresa Rebeck) and a pair of Hollywood stars... More >>
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By Steven Leigh Morris
So a British high school student, afraid to go home after school, afraid of her stepdad — that's as much as she says — asks a fellow... More >>
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By Steven Leigh Morris
One of the eeriest events in recent local theater history occurred in 2010, when the Fountain Theatre’s beloved director-producer, Ben... More >>
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The solo show asks: Is it OK to refuse to have kids?
By Steven Leigh Morris
Perhaps the best word to describe Charlayne Woodard as a performer is silken. When she crosses the stage, it's as though her body is propelled by... More >>
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Composer's book battles theater critics
By Steven Leigh Morris
In the preface to the second volume of his anthology of lyrics, Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011) With Attendant Comments,... More >>
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The solo artist plays four nursing home residents who share a secret past
By Steven Leigh Morris
In his solo performance Forgotten, Pat Kinevane enters a stark stage, dressed in a kimono. During the hypertheatrical arrival, the sound design... More >>
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By Steven Leigh Morris
I felt some mixed feelings watching Twelfth Night in A Noise Within's new, 283-seat Pasadena digs. The first reaction is the now oft-stated sense... More >>
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Playwrights on the late Geffen head
By Steven Leigh Morris
Actors, colleagues and critics have weighed in on the Oct. 31 death of Gil Cates, the Geffen Playhouse's producing director, from an apparent... More >>
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Absurdism is back
By Steven Leigh Morris
God is dead. He died in the 1950s during the Theater of the Absurd movement, when European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco,... More >>
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Olympia Dukakis goofs around with death
By Steven Leigh Morris
An embittered and aging tranny named Kemp (Marco Barricelli) comes to visit an old aunt (Olympia Dukakis) on the basis of a letter she sent him... More >>
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What do all the glittering prizes mean?
By Steven Leigh Morris
"I'll take any trophy. I don't care what it says on it." —Mary-Louise Parker
After the announcement of this year's Ovation Awards nominees... More >>
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Ionesco Meets JonBenet Ramsay
There are at least three reasons to check out Ensemble Studio Theatre's staging of Gregory Moss' newish play House of Gold at Atwater Village... More >>
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By Steven Leigh Morris
A native of Manchester, England, gymnast Andrew Atherton is no stranger to L.A., having lived here a decade ago for about a year and a half,... More >>
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"I'm man's best friend. It's a thankless job," says pooch Brown Spot (Justin Okin) near the opening of Henry Murray's smart and sobering fantasia,... More >>
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Countering the right wing's fury with humor
By Steven Leigh Morris
After mockingly gyrating and rubbing her torso up against comedian Hal Sparks, the lithe and spunky left-wing radio talk-show host Stephanie... More >>
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By Steven Leigh Morris
Before last Saturday night's performance of his new play, Jane Fonda in the Court of Public Opinion, Terry Jastrow greeted the audience at the... More >>
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How much attention-getting is too much for a solo show?
By Steven Leigh Morris
In Ghetto Klown, John Leguizamo's fifth solo performance about himself, you have to ask how much an extremely nimble and gifted performer can get... More >>
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By Paul Birchall
Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga's powerful psychological horror show takes as its inspiration Theresienstadt, a Nazi concentration camp that was... More >>
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By Steven Leigh Morris
In the beginning was the word. The word was also the beginning of storytelling: Any word, or words, strung together to dramatize a memory or a... More >>
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By Steven Leigh Morris
Imitation is not only the highest form of flattery, it's also another measure of our theater's shrinking influence on the culture at large.
From... More >>
