Cynthia Citron is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer specializing in coverage of the arts.
Her published books, available on Amazon, include:
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Whole lotta screamin’ goin’ on. And it isn’t coming from the audience. In fact, the audience becomes quieter and quieter as the evening wears on. Not a good sign for what is supposed to be a rip-roaring comedy. Sir Alan Ayckbourn has written 73 plays, so it stands to […]
Raucous, rambunctious and riotous, but not a rip-roaring revival Read More »
Cynthia CitronBy Cynthia Citron HOLLYWOOD–Seven people stranded in a stalled elevator makes an interesting premise for a play, wouldn’t you think? Well, almost. In Elevator, a new play written and directed by Michael Leoni, seven strangers, fine actors all, twiddle through the first hours of the ordeal without really making contact with each other. In fact,
Trapped in and by 'The Elevator' Read More »
Cynthia Citron
By Cynthia Citron BEVERLY HILLS, California – The actors are terrific and their characters are complex, varied, and funny enough to keep you entertained and engaged for two hours. Unfortunately, the play goes on for three… The play, written and directed by Allen Barton, is Engagement, now having its world premiere at the Beverly Hills Playhouse. And it starts off with a screaming tirade
Theater Review: 'Engagement' is, well, an engaging production Read More »
Cynthia Citron
By Cynthia Citron CALABASAS, California – Picture the Blue Man Group covered in mud. That’s a first impression of the Orto-Da Theatre Group, a sensational ensemble of actors from Israel making their American debut last week at the International Theatre Festival in Calabasas. Their presentation is called “Stones,” and, like the Blue Men, they work without words, completely in mime. “Stones” was created and directed by Yinon Tzafrir, who
Theater Review: A Monument Comes to Life Read More »
Cynthia Citron, Middle East
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES–At the same moment that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan was being chided by the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee for having clerked for the suddenly demonic “activist judge,” Thurgood Marshall, Marshall himself, in the person of actor Laurence Fishburne, was enthralling audiences in a dynamic nearly two-hour monologue at
A riveting performance by Laurence Fishburne Read More »
Cynthia Citron
By Cynthia Citron LONG BEACH, California –Is it too soon to pan a play about the Holocaust? Sadly, 65 years after the stories from the death camps shocked and horrified the world, the shock and horror revealed in Barbara Lebow’s 1989 play A Shayna Maidel” (Yiddish for “a pretty girl”) seems somewhat manipulative. The play is
'A Shayna Maidel' seems manipulative Read More »
Cynthia CitronBy Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES– It takes a super-savvy conductor to lead a group of four extraordinary non-musicians (plus one actual violin virtuoso) through the intricate movements of a play about a string quartet, and Simon Levy is that man. Levy, longtime producing director and dramaturg of the Fountain Theatre, has done his usual fine-tuned job
'Opus' a fime work of drama…and of music Read More »
Cynthia CitronBy Cynthia Citron SAN DIEGO–Nestled at the foot of New York’s George Washington Bridge, way past all the trendy restaurants and the streets of neatly gentrified brownstones, on the UPPER upper West Side of Manhattan, is the neighborhood called Washington Heights. When I lived there as a child the community was made up, mostly, of
'In the Heights' will leave you on a high Read More »
Cynthia CitronBy Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES–Agnes Flynn’s dad doesn’t want her to go to the embankment to neck with Seamus O’Malley. But she does anyway and Seamus, in a fit of lust, bites her on the neck. No, he isn’t a vampire, but his bite affects her as profoundly as if he were. It transforms her
Hamlin disappoints in 'The Jesus Hickey' Read More »
Cynthia CitronBy Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES–In 1965 Polish-Jewish novelist Jerzy Kosinski wrote The Painted Bird, a novel widely seen as an autobiography of his own tragic experiences during the Holocaust. Except, it was later learned, none of the dates corresponded with the reports of his countrymen who had known him as a boy. Besieged by charges
Kosinski's taleslarger than life in Los Angeles stage production Read More »
Cynthia CitronBy Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Five women sit in a row onstage and talk about being women. Their subjects range from buying a bra to their obsession with boots to the enduring chic of the color black. They talk about marriage and divorce and the death of a child. And most of all, they
'Love, Loss and What I Wore' is hilarious, poignant and passionate Read More »
Cynthia Citron
By Cynthia Citron BURBANK, California–At the time that his most popular songs were put together in a musical compendium called “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,” he was. But just a decade later he was dead of lung cancer at the age of 49, and his emotionally charged ballads had gone
A beautiful version of an old classic Read More »
Cynthia Citron, USA
By Cynthia Citron HOLLYWOOD–There is hardly any ethnic or religious group that is not maligned in Holy Ghost, Jon Tuttle’s World War II-era drama now having its west coast premiere at Theatre of Note in Hollywood. Even the Amish, for God’s sake! But what can you expect at a prisoner of war camp in South
Gevalt! Germans at POW camp in South Carolina Read More »
Cynthia CitronBy Cynthia Citron HOLLYWOOD–On the 55th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s death, April 18, 2010, his secretary, Helen Dukas, called a press conference at Theatre West in Hollywood. She wanted to talk about an earlier press conference, held on March 14, 1934, on the occasion of her boss’ 55th birthday, celebrated with a symposium in his
'Secretary' tells Einstein's secrets in one-woman play Read More »
Cynthia Citron, Middle East, USA