#curtaincall

Enjoyable ensemble performance makes “Witch” wholly worthwhile

Have you been feeling like all is lost? Think our capitalistic reality is so far gone that maybe the only…

1 year ago

“Modern-verse” staging of “Julius Caesar” questionable but timely

Each summer Shakespeare by the Sea tours traditionalist stagings of plays by their eponym throughout the Southland. And while Year…

1 year ago

It’s Year 7 of soundpedro — and you still haven’t been?

At the apex of San Pedro, Angels Gate Cultural Center is a rejuvenating space on its most ordinary day, an…

1 year ago

“Tragedy Gift Shop” more fable than play

Commonplace gun violence. Exploitation. Sensationalism. Amoral corporate greed. This is today’s America, and it’s enough to make you want to…

1 year ago

Garage Theatre turns 25 by the grace of community

When I sat down with a quartet of Garage Theatre co-founders in 2010 as they got ready to celebrate their…

1 year ago

Long Beach Opera dials up the ambition for season’s second aleatory offering

Having just seen/heard Long Beach Opera’s staging of El Relicario de los Animales, I don’t have a clue what they’re…

1 year ago

Long Beach Playhouse channels the spirit of August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson”

According to the American Psychological Institute, the term ‘intergenerational trauma’ did not come into use until the 1960s. So while…

2 years ago

Cast finds connection in multiverse muck of “Constellations”

There’s a “Treehouse of Horror” episode of The Simpsons where Homer accidentally turns his toaster into a time machine. Finding…

2 years ago

First of two LB Playhouse “Hedwig”s well-sung, way too quiet

For a quarter-century after Hedwig and the Angry Inch entered the Zeitgeist — first as a fin de siècle stage…

2 years ago