The Arts

Oldies but goodies star in ‘Heroes’ at North Coast Rep

By Carol Davis SOLANA BEACH, California — When you put Jonathan McMurtry, Ray Reinhardt and Ken Ruta in the same room you’ve got history knocking at your door. I’ll venture to say none will see 65 again and that’s being generous. But ‘Old Actors Never Die’ they continue to do what they do best. As […]

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Something broken in new interpretation of ‘Glass Menagerie’

By Carol Davis SAN DIEGO—-Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie is a haunting play. It has been said that Williams was in the middle of many of his rewrites of the play during the time his sister Rose had undergone a prefrontal lobotomy and this was his way of coming to terms with his sister’s illness

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

‘Gypsy’ overcomes small theatre space

By Carol Davis SAN DIEGO–No it’s not Ethel Merman, Rosalind Russell, Tyne Daly or even Patty LuPone. It’s our own Linda Libby who heads up the first ever big-time musical, or musical for that matter, staged by ion theatre in the company’s BLKBOX space in Hillcrest. Libby, whose credits stretch from stage to TV, is

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Carol Davis, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Social protest in ‘Hair’ at Civic, and outside by ‘Occupiers’

By Carol Davis SAN DIEGO — It didn’t take the observations of a rocket scientist to see the comparisons between the ‘Occupy San Diego’ movement outside the Civic Theatre and the 44-year-old (but revised) smash hit of the late 60’s Hair. Here’s what the young folks protesting the Vietnam war in the 60’s were railing

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Carol Davis, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Grossmont’s production of ‘Dead Man’s Cell’ lacks Moxie’s flair

SAN DIEGO–This region, it appears, is more than ready for Sarah Ruhl’s quirkiness. It’s not that we have not yet been exposed to her plays. We have indeed. The San Diego Repertory Theatre downtown has produced two of her works, The Clean House and In The Room Next Door (or the vibrator play”) to critical

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Temple Solel and Write Out Loud announce collaboration

By Carol Davis CARDIFF BY THE SEA, California — Write Out Loud has a unique mission: to read literature aloud to live audiences – short stories, poems, and other short subjects come to life – as talented actors bring the stories “off the page” to the delight of the audience. Theatre critic Pat Launer called

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

West Side Story sequel needs some retooling

By Carol Davis   SAN DIEGO—Somewhere between reality and romanticism is the space in which the Candelaria Family lives. Somewhere is also the title of one of Leonard Bernstein’s reflective ballads from his popular West Side Story and it is also the title of Matthew Lopez’s brand new world premiere comedy drama now being given a

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Carol Davis, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

“Walter Cronkite is Dead’ plays out at Ronald Reagan Airport

By Carol Davis SAN DIEGO–The trouble with airport waiting rooms and flight delays is that everyone at one point or another is sitting next to someone they don’t know, don’t want to know about and really don’t care about. For reasons beyond their control, they are all in the same boat and conversations have a

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Mame thrives at the North Park Birch Theatre

By Carol Davis SAN DIEGO–Jerry Herman’s Mame is one of those oldies but goodies that hasn’t been around the San Diego musical theatre scene for over thirty years. With book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, and based on the novel by Patrick Dennis and the play Auntie Mame Herman’s familiar music (Hello Dolly

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Carol Davis, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Welk’s ‘La Mancha’ still pleases after decades

By Carol Davis ESCONDIDO, California — It mattered not that the actors in the Dale Wasserman (Book), Mitch Leigh (Music) and Joe Darion (Music) mega musical hit of the 1965 Broadway Production, Man Of La Mancha, based on the 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote, by Wasserman were also the musicians in this current offering of

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Carol Davis, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Edward II couldn’t be diverted from his gay lover

By Carol Davis SAN DIEGO —  Diversionary Theatre in the Hillcrest neighborhood is presenting Christopher Marlow’s epic work Edward II, with Richard Baird directing. Somehow epic and Baird go together naturally. Baird founded Poor Players whose mission it was to produce the works of Shakespeare. In fact between his directing and acting some 20 or more

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Carol Davis, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast