TRAFFICKING IN BROKEN HEARTS
Saturday, May 16th, 2009
Papo is a Puerto Rican hustler who’s been selling his body on the mean streets of early 1990s New York City since the age of fifteen. Brian is a 26-year-old gay virgin who frequents phone sex lines and adult bookstores, alternately craving and fearing his first sexual experience. Bobby is a 16-year-old runaway whose older brothers have been raping him daily since he was twelve.
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BIG THE MUSICAL
Friday, May 8th, 2009
Following its award-winning productions of Zanna, Don’t and Assassins, West Coast Ensemble continues its winning streak of musical hits with a sensational intimate staging of Big The Musical.
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THE CRUCIBLE
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009NOT RECOMMENDED
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible holds a special place in my heart. It gave me my very first experience as a stage actor at the age of 16, and though I later watched the 1996 film on video, it wasn’t until December 2007 that I saw The Crucible staged for the very first time, decades after high school, in a production that left me devastated, as the playwright certainly intended.
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VOICE LESSONS
Sunday, April 19th, 2009
No one writes comedy quite like Justin Tanner; his writing style and comic sensibility are, quite frankly, almost impossible to describe. Wacky? Demented? Bizarre? Over the top? Maybe even brilliant? The answer is all of the above, and never has this been clearer than in the hour of inspired lunacy that is Voice Lessons.
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THE DEVIL WITH BOOBS
Friday, April 17th, 2009RECOMMENDED
Open Fist Theatre Company’s West Coast Premiere of Dario Fo’s The Devil With Boobs is the kind of show that most people will either love or hate. I ended up pretty much in the middle. While I absolutely loved the performances, and found the show gorgeous to look at, I must confess to not having “gotten” Fo’s mishmash of styles, his nonstop use of vulgarity, and what seems often to be the antithesis of sophistication.
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SAVAGE IN LIMBO
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
No one writes about New Yorkers, particularly those who reside in the Bronx, quite like John Patrick Shanley … and nowhere is this more true than in his “Concert Play” Savage In Limbo. Fortunately for Shanley fans, the actors who make up the 68 Cent Crew have just the right look, attitude, and voice to bring the Oscar-Pulitzer-Tony-winning playwright’s quirky, entirely original characters to life. It’s hard to imagine an L.A. troupe more suited to stage Shanley’s 1986 tale of a quintet of 32-year-old bar denizens in search of love.
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LAND OF THE TIGERS
Sunday, April 5th, 2009
Land Of The Tigers is a realm where tigers walk on two legs, wear wigs (some of them powdered), hats (some of them three-cornered) and assorted 18th Century garb—and speak English. It is a land where the only enemy is the dreaded swan, and because “the ‘Swan Alert’ remains as high as ever,” guards are thankfully keeping watch day and night. In Land Of The Tigers, reproduction is strictly controlled, and mating rituals keep bloodlines strong. Thus, when one of the elite, Fang Stalkington, complains to the Tigressional Congress that his sister Sheba is not doing her duty by mating with him, it is serious business indeed. Though Fang has peed on Sheba to demonstrate in no uncertain terms that she belongs to him and him alone, the beauteous Sheba is having none of this. ‘You cannot spray our troubles away,” she growls at him.
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WOMEN OF MANHATTAN
Saturday, April 4th, 2009
30ish best friends Billie, Rhonda Louise, and Judy have gotten together at Rhonda Louise’s beautiful Manhattan apartment for girls’ night. When Billie wonders out loud where the men are, Rhonda reminds her that Billie had said precisely not to invite any men, the whole point of the evening being that “the three of us would just deck out and look great for each other and fuck the men.” “But don’t you feel we’re wasting our gorgeousness on each other?” asks Billie.
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