Cynthia Citron

By Cynthia Citron BURBANK, California –“By the time Tom and I had finished building the theater, we had $25 left in the bank.” Maria Gobetti is talking about the Victory Theatre Center in Burbank that she and husband Tom Ormeny opened in 1979. Now, after more than 30 years, the Victory is still going strong, […]

By Cynthia Citron SANTA MONICA, California — In A.R. Gurney’s shaggy dog story, Sylvia, Tanna Frederick plays a pampered pooch dressed in tutus and tiaras.  You might call her a woof in chic clothing. Frederick, who has starred in four of playwright and filmmaker Henry Jaglom’s romantic comedies, Hollywood Dreams, Irene in Time, Queen of the

       By Cynthia Citron ENCINO, California — If Ernest Hemingway saw Paris in the ‘20s as a movable feast, Woody Allen, nearly a century later, sees it as a great big bowl of jellybeans: colorful, sweet, and totally addicting. From the first notes of jazz (can that be Allen playing jazz clarinet?) as backup to

  By Cynthia Citron NORTH HOLLYWOOD — It’s Jeffrey Schoenberg’s Spring 1603 Fashion Collection, and it’s what every Shakespearean scholar will be wearing this fall.  Or should wear this fall!  The most sumptuous silks, puffed pantaloons, gold-threaded lapels—brilliant costume designer Schoenberg has outdone himself! And oh yes, there’s a play to watch as well.  It’s

By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — “Memory is the only thing that grief can call its own,”  Sean O’Casey wrote, and there is grief and memory enough to go around in his classic play Juno and the Paycock, now being performed at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles. Set in Dublin in 1922, the play

By Cynthia Citron BURBANK, California– “All theater is a character telling a story—as if he were sitting around a campfire.” Playwright Wendy Graf is sitting at a table at a cafe in Burbank as she quotes iconic director Gordon Davidson. “And so what I’ve done is create a story especially for Anna.” To which Anna Khaja, sitting

By Cynthia Citron NEW YORK, N.Y. —  It was a “Three Standing Ovations” week!!  Not easy to come by in New York, where audiences reward only the very best.  (Not like Los Angeles audiences, who habitually award standing ovations to actors just for showing up.)  There is so much energy and anticipatory excitement generated in the elegant, intimate theaters on Broadway that it’s enough to

 By Cynthia Citron               LOS ANGELES — If Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? had been written by Mel Brooks, it would be God of Carnage. God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza’s Tony Award-winning Best Play of 2009, brings four of Broadway’s best actors to the Ahmanson to drive each other into a riotous, scenery-chewing frenzy.  It also

By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — We have a live lamb on stage and she’s not housebroken—or, more accurately, stage-broken—so our first run-through was a bit redolent,” director Scott Paulin says. He’s talking about the newly revised version of Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class, which makes its Los Angeles premiere this week at

By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES–A middle-aged couple, once married but now divorced long enough to have gotten over their various grievances and resentments, have become casual friends.  Would it be feasible, he suggests, for them to become Friends With Benefits?  After all, neither of them has potential partners beating down their doors.  And, as successful

By Cynthia Citron CULVER CITY, California — If talk radio hosts didn’t exist, somebody would have to invent them.  Somebody already has.  It’s playwright Martin McDonagh, who brings us the character of JohnnyPateenMike, the town gossip in The Cripple of Inishmaan. JohnnyPateenMike  considers himself a “journalist” as he delivers the “news” door to door on

By Cynthia Citron BURBANK, California — It’s a hoot!  And with this one, the performers are having as much fun as the audience.  It’s Rockin’ With The Ages 3 – the Musical,  presenting a cast between the ages of 60 and 86 with the energy and stamina of teenagers.  They bounce and high-kick and twist

   By Cynthia Citron SANTA MONICA – There is something decidedly peculiar about the old couple who live deep in the forest in a cottage that they built themselves.  They have no electricity, no telephone, and no water.  “Who needs water when we have a beautiful river so close by?” she says. But that’s not