Cynthia Citron

By Cynthia Citron WEST HOLLYWOOD, California— Girls Talk is an uproariously funny play—for about 20 minutes.  Then it turns from affectionately teasing banter to passive-aggressive vitriol and it isn’t funny any more. Roger Kumble‘s new play, now having its world premiere at the Lee Strasberg Theatre in West Hollywood, brings together three high-end matrons from Bel […]

By Cynthia Citron HOLLYWOOD, California –  If Jane Austen had written plays as well as novels and had lived later in the 19th century, she might have written Trio.  This beautiful play has many of the ingredients of an Austen novel: a brilliant heroine, a narcissistic, self-destructive husband, and a delicate romance.  The only thing missing is Colin Firth.  Trio is the triangular love story inspired

By Cynthia Citron HOLLYWOOD, California — Israela Margalit came to playwriting late. A celebrated concert pianist, her career has encompassed performances with 50 major orchestras around the world. She performed under the baton of her first husband, conductor Lorin Maazel. (“He booked me for four concerts; after the fourth one he asked me out to

By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — If Tennessee Williams were still alive, he’d be 100 years old this year.  And so, in recognition of the occasion, theaters all over town are mounting new productions of his plays.  Including the always-wonderful Fountain Theatre, which is currently presenting Williams’ final play, A House Not Meant to Stand.

By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — In Mother Words is a series of 20 vignettes about motherhood written by 14 authors and performed by three superb actresses and one excellent actor.  The sketches are funny, poignant, spirited, instructive, often predictable, and sometimes overly gooey.  But the fly in the Desitin is that you’ve seen many of

By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES – Phillip Gellburg keeps insisting that he worships and adores his wife Sylvia, yet he hasn’t made love to her in more than 20 years.  “You gradually give up and it closes over you like a grave,” he says.  Further, he hates the fact that he is Jewish and devotes himself to “passing” for Gentile, yet he asserts,

By Cynthia Citron   LOS ANGELES — You might call director Elina de Santos an Arthur Miller groupie — not to trivialize, but to celebrate, her lifelong devotion to the works of the man she considers America’s greatest playwright. “I read Death of a Salesman when I was 15 and was completely stunned by it,”

 By Cynthia Citron       LOS ANGELES — Someone recently referred to Jane Fonda in print as an “old lady.”  Huh?  In my view, this would be a far more beautiful world if everyone looked as good in their 50s as Fonda does in her 70s. What’s more, the girl’s still got it in the acting department.

By Cynthia Citron NORTH HOLLYWOOD, California — What do Stephen Sondheim, Franco Zeffirelli, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Charles Gounod have in common?  They have all created popular works in their own time based on William Shakespeare’s end-of-the 16th century play, Romeo and Juliet. In Shakespeare’s own time, however, the prolific Spanish playwright Lope

By Cynthia Citron   LOS ANGELES–Mina Badie is the most authentic pregnant woman who isn’t pregnant that I’ve ever seen.  She slouches on the sofa, belly in air, she rises sideways, clutching the arm of the sofa, and she waddles around her spectacularly tacky apartment bracketing her belly in earphones to soothe the baby with music.  She calls him “the bump.”  Mina and the

   By Cynthia Citron HOLLYWOOD — All that exuberant energy!  All those gorgeous voices!  All those wonderful songs!  It’s Hair, The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, which has just opened in L.A. with much of its Broadway cast.  And you can readily understand why this production won the 2009 Tony Award for Best Musical Revival, as

By Cynthia Citron SYDNEY, Australia–Who would have guessed that the elegant Cate Blanchett had a flair for physical comedy reminiscent of Chevy Chase in his pratfalling prime?  As Yelena in Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at the Sydney Theatre, she jumps, she pirouettes, she kicks up her heels, she falls backwards, legs in the air, into

By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Take the intense drama of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, add the unique unmelody of a Stephen Sondheim-ish score, and set it in a jazzed-up version of the three-story house in August-Osage County, and you have a semblance of the excruciatingly moving madness of Next to Normal, the Tony

By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES–  “I am not an émigré, I am an exile,” playwright Bertolt Brecht insisted, and he proved his point by returning to Germany soon after the end of World War II.  But many of his countrymen remained in America, finding a haven and founding an artistic community in the film industry