pinball wizards on KCET’s Art Bound

My latest effort for KCET’s Art Bound: Pinball wizards of Orange County…   http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/counties/orange/pinball-wizards-of-orange-county.html

Muffin and Dick

Two stories in this week’s OC Weekly.

Cover story on one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met, former LPGA golfer Muffin Spencer-Devlin:

And a review of a play about  one of the most fascinating characters to traverse the American public stage: Richard M. Nixon

 

KCET’S ART BOUND

First entry in KCET’s Artbound, an on-line cultural journalism blog. 

http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/counties/orange/selling-richard-nixon.html

Review of the Prince of Atlantis at SCR

http://www.ocweekly.com/2012-04-19/culture/the-prince-of-atlantis-south-coast-repertory-steven-drukman/

 

This image has nothing to do with the review. But I know how people like pretty pictures.

Review of the Legend of Robin Hood

http://www.ocweekly.com/2012-03-22/culture/robin-hood-maverick-theater-fullerton/

Lon Milo Duquette’s Magikal Mystery Tour

Wish I’d come up with the headline. But I did type the words…

http://www.ocweekly.com/2012-03-08/music/lon-milo-duquette-magick-im-baba/

On the occasion of the 108th birthday of Theodore Seuss Geisel…

http://www.ocweekly.com/1998-12-24/culture/one-sad-grinch/

 An interview with one of his most beloved curmudgeons…

 

 

Review of Quills at Cal Rep

http://www.ocweekly.com/2012-03-01/culture/quills-california-repertory-doug-wright/

“The play is fashioned in no small part on the legacy of the grotesquely over-the-top, blood-drenched Grand Guignol theater, which bewitched Parisian audiences from the late 19th century through the mid-20th. It’s a pitch-black comedy that wrestles with several Big Ideas: public morality versus artistic expression, incarceration as rehabilitation or punishment, the age-old theme of state-sanctioned authority versus the individual. It’s Randall P. McMurphy meets the Spanish Inquisition, a heady, intoxicating brew of perversity and polemics, something an adventurous left-of-center theater company such as California Repertory would be all over like an ursusagalmatophiliac on Fozzie Bear.

Unfortunately, its production bombs under the direction of Larissa Paige Kokernot. Actors either gallop or trudge across the stage without conscious need of connecting with one another. They’re either somber and stoic or garish caricatures. OnlyAnna Steers, as the semi-smitten Madeline, traverses the dual tracks of satire and serious. There’s little method to the madness, and it turns a robust, wickedly incisive meditation on censorship and free expression into an X-rated Three’s Company episode, but without Jack bending Chrissy over the divan while Mr. Roper pumps Janet in the pooper.”

quills

Review of Elemeno Pea at SCR

http://www.ocweekly.com/2012-02-17/culture/elemeno-pea-marc-masterson-south-coast-repertory/

“Metzler’s comedy, which Masterson directed in its world premiere at his previous gig at the Actors Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky, is a crackling, electrifying affair, 96 minutes of nonstop entertainment. It’s hilarious and serious, often in the same moment. And while its setting—a ridiculously well-appointed guest house on a posh estate in Martha’s Vineyard—isn’t too far removed from the well-heeled environs of many of the East Coast-centric plays SCR has produced over its long, illustrious history, the words spewing from these highly articulate characters’ mouths ring with a decidedly uncommon edge.”

 

AND, a short blog post about CLOWNS:

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/heardmentality/2012/02/it_aint_easy_bein_a_clown.php