Welcome to Watching the Dark, a regular column featuring essays and articles about horror films. Written by Terry Morgan. I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House from Netflix Qu…
Welcome to Watching the Dark, a new regular column featuring reviews and articles about horror films. Written by Terry Morgan. The Blackcoat's Daughter from A24 The Angels, They Forg…
Musicals can have many different formats, but the two most prevalent structures these days are the traditional and the jukebox. The traditional (incorporating Sondheim, because his changes a…
Welcome to Watching the Dark, a new regular column featuring reviews and articles about horror films. Written by Terry Morgan. You Can't Run Forever from Lionsgate I've been a critic…
If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, perhaps the road to freedom is paved with righteous anger? Henrik Ibsen may have thought so when he wrote his proto-feminist play, A Doll's…
According to the great sages of the internet, Hamlet is the most produced play in world history, and whether or not that claim is true, the indecisive Dane is certainly ubiquitous. And if it…
Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's Sweeney Todd is my favorite musical. Its combination of a beautiful score, clever lyrics and unusually gruesome subject matter is sui generis. When it's f…
"A sad tale's best for winter," Shakespeare has one of his characters opine in his penultimate work, The Winter's Tale, an odd duck of a play that's mostly been overshadowed by his final one…
I find one-person shows one of the most difficult types of theatre to review, for several reasons. If the quality of the writing or performance isn't good, there may be nothing but negative …
Although no year in which the Mark Taper Forum is at least temporarily shuttered and the Kirk Douglas Theatre's programming is reduced can be said to be an entirely positive year for Los Ang…
One of the great pleasures of theater is seeing a revival of a classic play not only succeed on its own merits but also be relevant to modern times. Certain works such as The Crucible or Ene…
Sometimes great actors can save a bad play. The sheer strength of their talent or the brilliance of their star power dazzles us into not noticing or caring that the vehicle they're in is lac…
The first time I encountered Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, I identified strongly with the title character, both with his frustrations and what he thought of as the tragedy of his life. As I got old…
Measure for Measure has been referred to as Shakespeare's "#MeToo play," a story in which a man in power uses his clout to try and sexually abuse a woman, except that she stands up to him an…
In a world in which a repulsive con man can get elected president and turn the entire Republican party into a credulous and insane mob, it's to be expected that somebody would try to write a…
For better or worse, it's human nature to find the misfortune of others amusing. YouTube is filled with videos of people making mistakes or getting hit somewhere unpleasant by a stray ball. …
When I got to my seat at the Atwater Village Theatre, I saw a note. It informed me that this seat was in "the Crabby Zone," and that performers in crab costumes with outsized claws would be …
I have seen a fair number of Shakespeare plays altered by directors in my day, from modernizations to setting/era changes, and the main thing is that the alterations have to successfully ill…
The subject of unlikely friendships is always intriguing (however will this cat and dog get along?), and none seems more unlikely than the friendship between boxing legend Muhammad Ali and e…
Laguna Playhouse, in association with Gare St. Lazare, Ireland and the Rubicon Theatre Company, presents the rolling Southern California premiere of The Realistic Joneses by Will Eno. Th…
The reasons that a piece of art works in one format but not so well in another are many and varied. In a time in which seemingly everything is being turned into a musical, and every animated…
The 1992 Los Angeles Uprising, known more colloquially as the "L.A. riots," happened almost 31 years ago. Anna Deavere Smith's play about it, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, premiered in 1994 a…
Plays concerning the supernatural or people attempting to communicate with the departed have been with us for a while, from Noël Coward's comical Blithe Spirit to Prince Gomolvilas' excel…
Stephen Sondheim revolutionized musical theater. He took his initial mastery of the classic tuner (from shows such as A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, West Side Story and Gyps…
Plays in which family secrets are tragically revealed are nothing new " Oedipus and his mom were shocking audiences back as far as 429 BCE. In the U.S., the 500 lb. gorilla of this genre wou…