Tag Archive

‘Culture Clash in Americca’

By Jean Lowerison

The L.A.-based Culture Clash comedy trio (Richard Montoya, Ricardo Salinas and Herbert Siguenza) is back and up to its old tricks: convincing us that we are all aliens (or insiders; it’s all in the perspective) and here together, and we may as well get along as make life difficult for ourselves. They’ve been doing this... »

‘The Wild Party’

By Jean Lowerison

Remember when “banned in Boston” was a badge of artistic honor and a ticket to financial success? Joseph Moncure March’s 1928 The Wild Party, a long narrative poem describing a debauched Jazz Age soiree featuring lust, death, kink and incest, was in fact banned in Beantown (and probably elsewhere), and predictably became March’s most successful... »

‘The Seagull’

By Jean Lowerison

I have always found it difficult to work up much sympathy for Mme. Ranevskaya, Chekhov’s best-known heroine, inexplicably moping around about having to sell the family’s cherry orchard and move to an apartment in Paris. How, I still ask myself, could living in Paris be considered a hardship? But The Seagull is another breed of... »

‘The Marriage Bed’

By Jean Lowerison

In the straight world, men are thought to be commitment phobic. In The Marriage Bed, it’s middle-aged Val (Dana Hooley), who has shared a London flat (and a bed) for several years with Jeni (Dre Slaman), 20 years her junior. Jeni is a 30-something attorney of middle-class Indian descent, once married to, now divorced from... »

‘The Revenger’s Tragedy’

By Jean Lowerison

What is it that attracts man so strongly to revenge tales? Shakespeare set the scene with the ineffectual Hamlet, who wanted his uncle’s head for the murder of Hamlet’s father and ended up dead himself, in a court strewn with corpses. Following the Elizabethans came the Jacobeans, pushing tales of the lurid and distasteful to... »

‘The Fever’

By Jean Lowerison

It’s pretty easy to tap into liberal guilt these days, what with wars of dubious validity, natural disasters upending the lives of thousands and the highest unemployment numbers in decades. In 1991, actor/playwright Wallace Shawn first performed The Fever, a meditation on the awareness of injustice, to mostly negative reviews. But by this decade it... »

‘Riverdance’

By Jean Lowerison

They’ve danced in Red Square, on the Great Wall of China and in Radio City Music Hall. And now Riverdance, the 13-year-old phenom that started as a seven-minute Irish dance segment on a 1994 TV show, is in town on its farewell tour, performing through January 10 at San Diego Civic Theatre. They made their... »

‘The Last Days of Judas Iscariot’

By Jean Lowerison

Was Judas Iscariot – arguably the Bible’s most famous suicide – victim of a bad rap, or was the crime of ratting Jesus out to the Romans for some silver coins so heinous that hanging himself was the only rational response? That’s the premise of Triad Productions’ The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, playing through... »

‘The Glass Mendacity’

By Jean Lowerison

Maggie the Cat (Renee Scott) prowls around in a succession of “fancy J.C. Penney slips” and has designs on Stanley Kowalski (Joe Dallo), though he’s married to the ever-loony Blanche (Catherine Cronin). Blanche, meanwhile, has the hots for Mitch O’Connor (Kenn Johnson), who has never heard of “Sister Gimp” Laura (Stephanie Strand). Meanwhile, Laura’s... »

‘Santaland Diaries’

By Jean Lowerison

Did you ever wonder who those goofy-looking department-store Santa’s elves really are? Many of them at the Macy’s in New York are aspiring actors and writers like David Sedaris, who spent one holiday season in yellow and green tights, a yellow turtleneck, hunter green velvet shorts and jacket, an absurd stocking cap and turned-up elvin... »

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