Cynthia Citron

By Cynthia Citron   NORTH HOLLYWOOD — “Shakespeare was God, and so was my father,” Lucia Joyce says.   Then she adds, by way of explanation, “God comes down to earth and forgets who He is.”  Lucia (Meg Wallace), the passionate, obsessive daughter of James Joyce is eventually consumed by her desperate hunger for his attention.  He (Ian Patrick Williams), for his part,

By Cynthia Citron BURBANK, California — There are certain witches that everyone remembers.  Macbeth’s three brewed toil and trouble in a steaming cauldron.   Bewitched’s Elizabeth Montgomery did the dishes by twitching her nose.  The Wicked Witch of the West melted when Dorothy threw a bucket of water on her.  But unless you are a movie

By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Athol Fugard’s new play The Train Driver brings to mind Bette Davis’ legendary line, “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!”  The “bump” in this case being the fatal collision between a speeding train and a black woman with a baby on her back. As

By Cynthia Citron HOLLYWOOD–Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman still stands as the monumental and definitive portrait of a man of the post-World War II generation, angst-ridden, driven, and ultimately crushed by the nightmarish underside of the American Dream.  In a comparably brilliant play, Edmund White brings that portrait up to date with a harrowing

 By Cynthia Citron HOLLYWOOD –Imagine being stranded with a broken leg on the narrow ledge of a 600-foot ice wall, in minus 50-degree weather, just 1,000 feet from the summit of the second highest mountain in the world. That’s the terrifying premise of Patrick Meyers’ play, K2, that opened this week at the Underground Theatre

By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Barney Cashman is frumpy, lumpy, and awkward with women.  And so is John Combs, the actor who plays him in Last of the Red Hot Lovers.  Coincidence?  I think not.  Because if there is one thing that director Howard Teichman prides himself on, it’s his impeccable casting.  And with

By Cynthia Citron NORTH HOLLYWOOD–Cecil B. DeMille once waited five months for his peacocks to shed so that Edith Head could use their feathers in the spectacular cape that she designed for Hedy Lamarr to wear in Samson and Delilah. A tasty tidbit offered by Edith Head—in the person of Susan Claassen—at the El Portal

By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Howard Teichman is a man who knows a crisis when he sees one.  He is smack in the middle of two of them at this very moment.  The first is a mid-life crisis.  Not his, but Barney Cashman’s, the protagonist of Neil Simon’s play The Last of the Red