Tom Jacobson’s ‘Bunbury’ tries rewriting the classics
Playwright Tom Jacobson’s Bunbury, on now at Long Beach Playhouse’s Studio Theatre, is a tantalizing “What if . . . ?”—asking a question that it wisely never quite answers.
This being a play, it takes a while before we finally hear it, from the title character (an admirably overwrought Stephen [...]

‘Women of Troy’ is a painful lesson on casualties of war

PHOTO by KEITH IAN POLAKOFF
Women of Troy opens on a meeting between gods, Poseidon (Juan Carlos Parada) and Athena (Ivana Karapandzic) considering a just-wrapped 10-year war (victorious Greeks on one side, Trojans on the other) and, here comes the sort of interesting twist for Team [...]

Don’t rock the boat, baby

I was prepared for “modern rock songs.” I was ready for “dance with urban elegance.” I was even up for “relevant sketch comedy.” And when the bright and shiny kids, all dolled up in their Liza lashes and Joel Grey bowties, opened the cruise-boat cabaret show with a perky, multipart harmony [...]

(Because the lady gets the chair!)
Machinal is the story of a murderess.
It is not a sexy, song-and-dance-filled story of a murderess. Renee Zellweger will not appear to surprise us with good acting and a terrific little cha cha cha. (Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Roxie Hart!) Nor is our murderess a vamp, a la Hedda Gabler, [...]