So Cal Arts & Entertainment

Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days” has to be one of the toughest roles for a woman in modern theatre—it’s not only a virtual monologue (with a handful of interruptions) but the actor in question is limited to her voice, face and upper body in Act I, losing the use of her...

You’ve seen the movie, why bother with the play? In the case of David Henry Hwang’s “M. Butterfly” (through June 8 at South Coast Repertory), you’ll want to make the time to catch this revival—especially if you missed it on Broadway. The play exemplifies what live...

Ever have one of those days where you can’t get started? David Hare apparently had one, and managed to turn it into a hit play called “Skylight” (at Anaheim’s Chance Theater through May 19). The romance between Kyra and Tom depicted in this overly long drama has run...

There can be no argument that “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was a great achievement for 1937. Without taking anything away from Disney, Lotte Reiniger’s “The Adventures of Prince Achmed” (available on Blu-ray from Milestone Film & Video) must be acknowledged as an...

More than a bit of the blarney in So Cal next week. If the cluster of Irish films at the Newport Beach Film Festival tomorrow aren’t enough—see the previous blog—Dublin’s famed Abbey Theatre touches down May 2 at Chapter One in Santa Ana with a touring show, “Two...

Want to see a new Hungarian film? I do. It's called “Curtiz” and it's about the complicated life of Hungarian-born director Michael Curtiz during WWII and the making of "Casablanca." It’s screening next week at the 20th annual Newport Beach Film Festival, running...

Film festival season is officially underway. Hot on the heels of the long-running film noir festival, Noir City (closing tonight), the tenth annual TCM Classic Film Festival virtually engulfs Hollywood April 11-14. Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan and director Rob Reiner will...

Timing is everything, and the time is now for plays and films about women of substance and worth. Anna Ziegler’s “Photograph 51” (through today at South Coast Repertory) is just such a play, about a scientist named Rosalind Franklin, who played a major albeit little...

Combine Bombay and Hollywood and you get Bollywood—the incredibly prolific Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai that produces nearly 2,000 feature films a year. The cinema’s hottest byproduct may be Bollywood Dance—a mash-up of styles including belly-dancing,...

If you’re as passionate about live theatre as I am, I urge you to catch August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running” at the Matrix Theatre in Los Angeles—whether the trains are running or not. Yes, it’s black history month, but this installment in the playwright’s Pulitzer...