Bonkers in Yonkers
By Steven Libowitz   |   October 15, 2024

Jonathan Fox was both surprised and moved when he saw Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers in its original Broadway run back in the early 1990s, back when he was still a grad student in New York.  “I was familiar with his earlier plays like The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park, so I was […]

Shimmy Shimmy: Kerrilee’s Goal is Exaltation
By Jeff Wing   |   September 17, 2024

The decorous sunken lawn in front of Pierre Lafond is ordinarily a still point of shade-dappled peace, the calming eye of any given day’s hurricane. The trees lean in with leafy solicitude, birdsong seasons the scented air, and the good people of Montecito engage in lively conversation, gesturing and gabbing. Into this bucolic set piece […]

 

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Dimensions of Dementia: ‘The Father’ Debuts
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 17, 2024

Critics have unanimously praised Florian Zeller’s The Father, a play that takes the unusual perspective of presenting the world from the vantage of an elderly but still elegant man going through progressive stages of dementia. His shifting and relative reality – including concepts of such taken-for-granted facts as time and place – wreaks havoc on […]

Much Ado: Shakespeare Unplugged and Outdoors
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 10, 2024

Elings Park’s two-production experiment in bringing Shakespeare to its charming Godric Grove amphitheater this summer winds up with a pair of performances of Much Ado About Nothing from UCSB’s Naked Shakes, the Irwin Appel-founded-and-directed company that employs minimal props and costumes to keep the focus on the acting and the Bard’s prose. Ado, which boasts […]

Alcazar’s One-Acts  
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 10, 2024

The Alcazar Ensemble is staging a second weekend September 6-8 of the Hanne Pedersen Playwright Competition. That competition features four one-act plays from tri-county authors in honor of its late namesake, one of the co-founders of the Carpinteria Community Theatre. Sophie Goldstein’s This House is Legacy traces a neighborhood that no longer exists but has […]

PCPA presents The Agitators 
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 3, 2024

Pacific Conservatory Theatre’s Solvang Festival Theatre season comes to a close with The Agitators, a powerful two-hander about two titans of America’s troubled history that runs for just 10 days, Aug. 29-Sept. 8. Focusing as much on the friendship between Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony over the course of five decades as their tireless […]

This Magic Moment: New Festival at the Alcazar
By Steven Libowitz   |   August 27, 2024

Recovery from the pandemic is still a part of our world, and if there’s anything that hasn’t fully come back, it might be our shared experiences of humor and magic. Combining those two for an immersive weekend is the point behind the first annual Comedy & Magic Festival at the Alcazar Theatre in Carpinteria. Fourteen […]

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  • Out of the Box’s Taylor-made Retrospective
    By Steven Libowitz   |   August 27, 2024

    If Donald Trump can re-post deepfake AI images implying that Taylor Swift has endorsed him in response to her terrorist threat-canceled European shows, there’s certainly no reason that Out of the Box theater company – which is much more politically/socially aligned with Swift’s actual proclivities – can’t co-opt the title of the pop singer’s massive, […]

    Come to the (Outdoor) Cabaret
    By Steven Libowitz   |   August 6, 2024

    PCPA is bringing Cabaret’s Kit Kat Klub to the sleepy Danish village of Solvang, where the denizens of the famous decadent sanctuary – artists and performers, misfits and outsiders – will perform outdoors under the stars at the Solvang Festival Theatre August 2-25. The Kander & Ebb musical is set in 1929-30 Berlin during the […]

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    On the Boards Over in Ojai
    By Steven Libowitz   |   August 6, 2024

    Audiences will once again have the chance to witness staged readings of potential future classics at the Ojai Playwrights Conference’s 27th annual New Works Festival from August 1-4. The readings are the culmination of a two-week workshop immersion for the five selected playwrights to develop their creations, with the writers joined by professional actors and […]

    Return of the ‘Heroes’
    By Steven Libowitz   |   July 23, 2024

    Heroes, Tom Stoppard’s loose translation of Gérald Sibleyras’ 2003 French play Le Vent des Peupliers (“The Wind in the Poplars”), won the 2006 Olivier Award for Best New Comedy – the highest honor in British theater, equivalent to Broadway’s Tony Awards. A year later, the funny, heart-warming work – about three aging World War I […]

    Carmen’s Charisma
    By Richard Mineards   |   July 23, 2024

    Carmen, Bizet’s classic opera, never loses its entertainment value. Having last seen it when it was staged by Opera Santa Barbara a year ago, the latest production at the Granada, courtesy of the Music Academy of the West’s Summer Festival, was a decidedly contemporary twist on the Spanish love story conducted by Daniela Candillari, principal […]

    I Like Ike
    By Richard Mineards   |   July 23, 2024

    Broadway veteran John Rubinstein was a true tour de force in the New Los Angeles Repertory Company’s Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground by Richard Hellesen, presented by the Ensemble Theatre Company at the New Vic. Directed by multi-award winner Peter Ellenstein, the two-hour show, with simple but effective scenic design by Michael Deegan and Sarah […]

    The Summer of Theater
    By Steven Libowitz   |   July 16, 2024

    Ensemble Theatre Company’s two upcoming presentations were already terrifically timely as they arrive within four months of November’s national election. That was part of the purpose behind ETC executive director Scott DeVine’s decision to schedule short productions of Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground and What the Constitution Means to Me as special events this summer. […]

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