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David Vining is many things: theater director, dialect coach, university professor. In Stray Cat Theater's new production of Blackbird, Vining reminds us that he's also a fine...
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If, as the saying goes, no news is good news, then this year's theater season is nothing but good news. Great news, in fact, for those of us who don't like our plays and...
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The funniest thing I saw the other night at Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre wasn't up on stage, but rather in the men's room. As I stood in the lavatory stall, relinquishing the...
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I'm not a big Rent fan. I know: It's a musical theater milestone; it single-handedly revived the sung-through musical; its monster success here and abroad introduced a whole...
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Even if the largely teenage cast of bare: A Musical hadn't succeeded in really selling this rather stunning story of naughty Catholic school kids, it would have appeared that...
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Terry Helland, director of Desert Stages Theatre's Jekyll and Hyde, took the stage just before curtain. "This show is the most difficult I've ever worked on," he announced...
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You are seated, for the sixth consecutive year, in an imaginary auditorium, where the sound of rustling programs and impatiently shuffling feet suggest that the doling out of...
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Broadway Palm Dinner Theater's production of High School Musical was nice enough. My impression of the show was certainly helped by the fact that I, unlike most people my age,...
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It seems Nearly Naked Theatre has been doing "naughty" plays for so long now that the company can appear subversive only by presenting a traditional musical. But the...
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I've been working on a list of people or things that Katie McFadzen
possibly can't play. Here's what I have so far: a pencil sharpener;
Stalin; a venereal disease. But don't...
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I like to think that Johnny Cash, the country music
singer-songwriter and American institution, mellowed with age. I suspect that late in life, he'd left far behind him the...
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Okay, seriously: I'm too old and too uncool and, frankly, too white to have enjoyed Black Theatre Troupe's Revenge of a King. Herb Newsome's freaked-out retelling of Hamlet...
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When I got home from the theater the other night, I immediately updated my Facebook page. I typed a note to the virtual community that read, "Two things: 1. Go see columbinus...
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I kept thinking about John Lennon as I watched Actors Theatre of Phoenix's Rabbit Hole the other night. Specifically, about how Paul McCartney was widely quoted as having said...
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Lillie Richardson is not 11 years old. I had to keep reminding myself of this during her performance in Black Theatre Troupe's production of The Bluest Eye. Richardson plays a...
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I have finally seen a play that made me want to stand and applaud at the end. First time ever.
I figure I've been to the theater on the average of once a week for 20 years,...
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A House with No Walls is neither an enlightening history lesson nor a compelling entertainment. Thomas Gibbons' play tells us nothing we didn't already know about America's...
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Before his death last month, Dale Wasserman was among a handful of Americans to whom the title "Broadway legend" applied — although it seems likely that the famous (and...
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As usual, I saw a hell of a lot of plays this past year. But I suspect 2008 is the year I'll remember not so much for what took place on stage (although it's hard to forget a...
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About three minutes into Stray Cat Theatre's newest production, I found myself thinking: This can't be really happening. When you go to see it — and you must, if you do...
