Neil Simon and Jason Alexander would appear to be a theatrical match made in heaven. And so they are. In Simon’s “The Prisoner of Second Avenue,” now running at the El Portal Theater in North Hollywood, Alexander romps, rages, and unravels to early Simon at his most hilarious.
If “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” had been written by Mel Brooks, it would be “God of Carnage.” “God of Carnage,” Yasmina Reza’s Tony Award-winning Best Play of 2009, brings four of Broadway’s best actors to the Ahmanson to drive each other into a riotous, scenery-chewing frenzy.
If Glenn Beck didn’t exist, somebody would have to invent him. Somebody already has. It’s playwright Martin McDonagh, who brings us the character of JohnnyPateenMike, the town gossip in “The Cripple of Inishmaan.
If a man commits a moral crime against his best friend and torments himself with that secret for more than 50 years, is it necessary — or even appropriate — for his children to sit in judgment and literally destroy him — and the lifetime friendship? That’s the dilemma posed by Allan Manings’ new pla
If Jane Austen had written plays as well as novels and had lived later in the 19th century, she might have written “Trio.” This beautiful play has many of the ingredients of an Austen novel: a brilliant heroine, a narcissistic, self-destructive husband, and a delicate romance.
“In Mother Words” is a series of 20 vignettes about motherhood written by 14 authors and performed by three superb actresses and one excellent actor. The sketches are funny, poignant, spirited, instructive, often predictable, and sometimes overly gooey.
Phillip Gellburg keeps insisting that he worships and adores his wife Sylvia, yet he hasn’t made love to her in more than 20 years. “You gradually give up and it closes over you like a grave,” he says.
What do Stephen Sondheim, Franco Zeffirelli, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sergei Prokofiev and Charles Gounod have in common? They have all created popular works in their own time based on William Shakespeare’s end-of-the 16th century play, “Romeo and Juliet.
Chelsea Sutton’s play “99 Impossible Things” should really be called “100 Impossible Things.” The hundredth being the play itself. Filled with faux fey characters, almost all of whom are nuts in one way or another, the play presumably aims to add a little amusing fantasy to your otherwise drab life.
Mina Badie is the most authentic pregnant woman who isn’t pregnant that I’ve ever seen. She slouches on the sofa, belly in air, she rises sideways, clutching the arm of the sofa, and she waddles around her spectacularly tacky apartment bracketing her belly in earphones to soothe the baby with music.
The show is called “Traces,” and you’ve simply got to see it. It’s like Cirque de Soleil, but without the razz-matazz. Like a troop of Chinese acrobats, but with personality.
We’ve all seen John Lithgow on the stage or screen at one time or another. As five-time Emmy Award winner in the television series “Third Rock From the Sun.
