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 Joel Elkins~
In the overture to Opus, now making an extended run at the Fountain Theatre, one of the characters compares making beautiful music together to lovemaking (and bad music to drinking Drano). If so, then the Lazara Quartet at the heart of the play is an absolute orgy, four men whose legatos, crescendos and [...]
by Joel Elkins~
Of director Jennifer Chambers’ previous production, The Muscles in Our Toes, I commented: “I don’t know whether any part is meant to be taken seriously. . . . All I know is it was funny. And that’s saying something.” Her latest endeavor, Play Dates currently playing at the Elephant Theatre, is twice as [...]
by Joel Elkins~
The Girl Who Would Be Kingis a fairy tale about “Basil,” a girl raised as a boy by her power-hungry father, the Duke of Lesser Flugel, in the hope that she could one day ascend to the throne of the patrilineal Kingdom of Flugelhorn. She is raised to be proud of her “manhood” [...]
by Joel Elkins~
Disillusioned: Confessions of a Serial Magician was written by and stars Matt Marcy, a self-described dork who took up magic to impress girls. Disillusioned is part one-man show, part magic act, part audio-visual presentation and part audience participation. Hidden among all these component parts can be found a few laughs and some decent [...]
by Joel Elkins~
I was curious to find out if a takeoff on Gilbert & Sullivan set in outer space dubbed U.S.S. Pinafore could ever be as clever as its premise or its title.
The adaptation by Jon Mullich (who also directed) is indeed clever, although admittedly, the songs didn’t have to be altered [...]
by Joel Elkins~
When I went to see the world premiere of Behind the Gates, all I knew about the play was its title and artwork on its poster and playbill, an iron lock inscribed with a Jewish star. I had no idea what it was about. When I saw the tagline (”A [...]
by Joel Elkins~
Zero and infinity: polar opposites, yet two sides of the same coin. The symbol for zero, a circle, is nonetheless endless, like infinity. The symbol for infinity is merely a zero with a twist. Most everything in nature strikes a balance between these two extremes, treading the not-so-fine line between them. Yet every [...]
by Joel Elkins~
Johnny comes home from his first day at school, and his mother asks him how it went.
“It was a little confusing,” he responds.
Quizzical, his mother asks, “Couldn’t you follow what the teacher was saying?”
“Sure,” he answers.
“Was the math too hard?” she asks.
“Naw, that was easy.”
“How about the reading and writing?”
“Piece of cake,” he [...]
by Joel Elkins~
The Towne Street Theatre Company, formed in the aftermath of the LA riots with the mission of healing wounds through theatre, seems the natural venue for the world premiere of Langston & Nicolas, the story of the relationship between Langston Hughes and Cuban poet laureate Nicolás Guillén. Through fictionalized conversations between the two, [...]
by Joel Elkins~
There is something to be said for truth in advertising.
Dialogue Between a Prostitute and Her Client, now playing at The Fremont Centre Theatre, can best be described, unsurprisingly, as a dialogue between a prostitute and her client. No misrepresentation. No bait and switch. Now, if only the characters were as forthcoming.
The play opens [...]
![[title of show] at the Celebration Theatre](http://www.latheatrereview.com/wp-content/uploads/cache/1500_NpAdvHover.jpg)
