Posts Tagged ‘backstage’
SLAUGHTER CITY: 50% Bitter
SWEET
Director Barbara Kallir has a tall order here—working with rich language, singing, and choreographed meat-cutting, much knife-handling, and, at its core, a dual love story that competes with Wallace’s sometimes [...]
OEDIPUS EL REY: 100% Sweet
SWEET
Alfaro spins much of this in a colloquial lexicon that makes it all the more forceful. Some of his passages — Tiresias’ musings on what a father really is, after [...]
BARBRA’S WEDDING: 50% Bitter
SWEET
In Barbra’s Wedding, now showing at the Blank’s 2nd Stage Theatre, playwright Daniel Stern (the actor of Home Alone fame) has captured the pathetic ghost of showbiz past and made [...]
CAVE QUEST: 100% Sweet
SWEET
Diane Rodriguez’s direction is enhancing yet controlled, allowing both performances to be interesting while maintaining excellent contact with the main theme—which is enlightenment of a kind and, of course, justifiable [...]
BACKWARDS IN HIGH HEELS: 86% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET
“Backwards in High Heels” has no great plot or momentum, but if you happen to be in the vicinity of Long Beach you might want to give this slight, modestly [...]
FORGIVENESS: 100% Sweet
SWEET
The human heart’s capacity to get past the atrocious sins of others in order to grant forgiveness is bracingly dramatized in stage and TV scribe David Schulner’s world premiere, packing [...]
THE BALLAD OF EMMETT TILL: 83% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET
The problem may be one of taste, but it ties directly back to the compulsion to spill the guts theatrically. Finney’s staging of the abduction starts brilliantly, with a pair [...]
DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS: 100% Bittersweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET
The company was wise to enlist the direction of the award-winning local director Richard Israel who I think has set out to direct every musical that ever existed since he [...]
FENCES: 100% Sweet
SWEET
Robinson is riveting as the conflicted man whose fanciful storytelling and outward affection for Rose is in sharp contrast to the way he handles his self-professed responsibilities and the harsh [...]
BROADS, THE MUSICAL: 56% Bittersweet – UPDATED
BITTER
I loved the four gals playing the Broads – all talented – but the show needs a major overhaul. Too many jokes are tired old cliches – and singing about [...]
