Konstantine Stanislavski Love art in yourself and not yourself in art.
Harold Clurman The stage is life, music, beautiful girls, legs, breasts, not talk or intellectualism or dried-up academics.
by Geoff Hoff~
(Full disclosure: The director of Summer in Hell, David Jette, was once a writer for LATR.)
At Rumeneck Cove, the shore is partitioned off into private beaches for the well-healed owners of the vacation houses. The privileged offspring of money consider themselves entitled to whatever they want and will use whatever means at their [...]
by Geoff Hoff~
The script for the play Rocky Horror Show, written by Richard O’Brien (who played the role of Riff Raff in the original production and the movie) is incredibly decadent, dramatically problematic and a lot of fun. The production by the Coeurage Theatre Company currently playing at the Space Theatre is also incredibly decadent, [...]
by Geoff Hoff~
The program for the play The Quarry, now playing at Moth Theatre, begins with a short piece by the playwright about finding an old family photo album amongst the other debris thrown into the Milford Quarry. It seems a very intriguing inspiration for a play, delving into the question of why someone would [...]
by Geoff Hoff~
In the two years I have been reviewing plays in Los Angeles, I have never been late to a curtain. I have often sharply judged those people who do arrive late and those companies who accommodate them with curtains that regularly and habitually go up as much as twenty minutes past the advertised [...]
by Geoff Hoff~
A young theatre company struggles with what it means to be successful artists with a fever dream of a play about a young artists straggling with what success means. This may sound a little self-referential and self-indulgent, but the Coeurage Theatre Company’s production of the (re)made play, Hats, Nudes & Immortality is [...]
by Geoff Hoff~
People are neurotic, manipulative, lonely, wounded, wounding, weirdly unpredictable and cruel in order to protect themselves. At least that seems to be the overriding theme of Love Sex & Violence Too, written by Helena Weltman, now playing at the Whitefire Theatre. It is a collection of five vignettes strung together with little [...]
by Geoff Hoff~
It is difficult to review The Birthday Boys, the Hollywood Fringe Festival hit now playing in an extended run at Theatre Asylum, without talking about the ending but I will do my best. It is the story of three soldiers in Iraq, all privates, who have been captured and are being held as [...]
by Geoff Hoff ~
To begin at the beginning. That is the opening line of Dylan Thomas’ lush, lusty “play for voices”, Under Milkwood, originally intended as a radio play. It is often performed live on stage, however (and once as a rather ill-advised movie), either in traditional “reader’s theatre” mode, with actors siting on [...]
by Geoff Hoff~
Just once, I’d like to see the story of a woman from a privileged and affluent background who is living with the Bohemian artist, but falls madly and irrationally in love with the rich industrialist or Wall Street up-and-comer with whom she cheats on her uncaring but passionate artist.
The Bedroom Window, the new [...]
by Geoff Hoff~
I realize that, over the few years I have been a theatre critic, I have become a bit jaded. I suspect it may be one of the inevitable consequences of the pursuit. I want every play I see to be brilliant, and enough aren’t that I no longer expect it, which is sad. [...]
