Global

This is the world premiere of Our Man in Santiago – well, almost. According to director Charlie Mount, there were actually two performances of Santiago in March 2020, when the you-know-what shut Theatre West (along with just about everything else) down. Playwright Mark Wilding’s wild take on the 1973 coup in Chile finally debuted Sept. 24 and this critic is delighted to say that Wilding’s satire about the downfall of socialist President Salvador Allende is even timelier now than it would have been about 18 months.

This is because the recent resounding total defeat and humiliation of Washington in Afghanistan is shining a light on the sheer, utter imbecility of US imperialism and lunacy of its foreign policy. The CIA played a devastating covert role in Afghanistan starting in 1979 – only six years after the Agency helped topple Chile’s democratically elected government, as Wilding cleverly exposes (see: American Amnesia: USA’s Afghan Original Sin Began 1979 – Not 9/11 - LA Progressive).

In what’s the most ironic venue twist I’ve stumbled across in my reviewing misadventures, the one-man bioplay about the iconoclastic comic whose routines (in)famously included a bit called “Religion Incorporated” is actually being presented inside of an L.A. church. Ronnie Marmo plays the title role in I’m Not a Comedian… I’m Lenny Bruce, which is actually being staged in the intimate theater located in St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church, where the Loft Ensemble theater company is based in the NoHo Arts District.

Marmo also wrote this Theatre 68 guest production at Loft Ensemble, directed by actor Joe Mantegna, whose stage and screen credits include David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross (for which Mantegna won the Tony Award), CBS’ Criminal Minds series and The Godfather III.

After more than a year offstage due to the you-know-what, LA Opera is back as Giuseppe Verdi’s 1853 Il Trovatore launches the 2021/22 Season for long-suffering Angeleno opera aficionados. But what a “cheerful” choice!

As the lead sentence of Naomi Andre’s article in LA Opera’s Performances Magazine puts it: “There is something kind of odd about Il Trovatore.” “Kind of?” Verdi’s turgid tragedy, with a nightmarish libretto mostly by Salvatore Cammarano, adapted Antonio Garcia Gutierrez’s play featuring witchcraft, burning at the stake, civil war, duels, mistaken or confused identities, thwarted love, “gypsies,” grim reapers straight out of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, imprisonment and other cheery plot points and bagatelles.

Zakaria Zubeidi is one of six Palestinian prisoners who, on September 6, tunneled their way out of Gilboa, a notorious, high-security Israeli prison. Zubeidi was recaptured a few days later. The large bruises on Zubeidi’s face told a harrowing story, that of a daring escape and of a violent arrest. However, the story does not begin, nor end, there. 

Scenes of thousands of Afghans flooding the Kabul International Airport to flee the country as Taliban fighters were quickly consolidating their control over the capital, raised many questions, leading amongst them: who are these people and why are they running away? 

In the US and other Western media, answers were readily available: they were mostly ‘translators’, Afghans who ‘collaborated’ with the US and other NATO countries; ‘activists’ who were escaping from the brutality awaiting them once the Americans and their allies left the country, and so on.

Suddenly there’s major concern across the country — from the mainstream media to every last rock-ribbed Republican — for the rights of Afghan women and girls to be able to work, to go to school.

Oh my God, we’ve given Afghanistan back to the Taliban! Even George W. Bush found his way back into the news cycle: “I think the consequences are going to be unbelievably bad and sad.”

America, America, the global do-gooder, bringer of civilized values to the Middle East. This is why we’ve hemorrhaged trillions of dollars over the past two decades engaging evil itself. This is why hundreds of thousands of people had to die, millions had to be displaced. We were defending the rights of . . . people we could care less about.

The twentieth anniversary of 9/11 has motivated some critics of the standard narrative to explore alternative explanations for what took place on that fatal day. To be sure, there has been considerable focus through the years on exactly what happened, analyzing the technical aspects of what made the twin towers and nearby Building 7, which is where the CIA Station was located, fall while also speculating over what actually occurred at the Pentagon and at Shanksville Pennsylvania.

​You don’t have to be a horror fan to enjoy Thomas Hamilton’s documentary Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster (I’m not and I did). The 90-minute nonfiction biopic has all of the conventional hallmarks of a well-made movie history doc. Of course, there are copious clips ranging from Karloff’s classics, including in the role the British actor was best known for, as Frankenstein’s monster in various versions of the film franchise adapting the character from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s chilling 1818 novel, starting in 1931. There are scenes from Karloff’s other famous films, including 1932’s The Mummy, The Old Dark House and The Mask of Fu Manchu, plus glimpses from more obscure flicks, including from his silent screen days. His subsequent many TV outings – wherein he often good-naturedly mocked his monstrous persona – are also covered.

This summer the Fountain Theatre has been presenting – as it has annually done since 2003 – Forever Flamenco on its Outdoor Stage. In July, August and ending Sept. 24-26, the three-night weekend events have offered lucky Angelenos a rare taste of this unique Andalusian art form. The dance, music and singing are derived from its 18th century “originators, the gypsies… [who] sang songs of oppression, lament, and bitter romance, a kind of blues that by the 19th century began to catch on among all the other downtrodden inhabitants of Andalucia,” according to Cadogan Guides’ Southern Spain, Andalucia & Gibraltar by Dana Facaros and Michael Pauls. (NOTE: The term “gypsy” is now regarded as pejorative and the word “Roma” is considered to be culturally sensitive.)

The guidebook authors add that “the half-tonal notes and lyrics of futility of the cante jondo, or deep song, the purest flamenco seem to go straight back to the Arab troubadours [not to be confused with those other Troubies currently rocking that other open-air theater at Malibu in Lizastrata at the Getty Villa] of al-Andalus.”

Nick Vasquez and me, shortly before his arrest.

Nick Vasquez and his comrade, Donald, both leaders in the Extinction Rebellion movement, a worldwide environmental group that seeks to prevent the extinction of the human race by environmental catastrophe through non-violent acts of civil disobedience, were both arrested Friday, 17th of September, in Tallahassee, FL, at the steps of the capitol building. I plan to interview them both on my podcast Vanguard Youth Radio. Nick & Donald have been traveling throughout Florida in their quest to pressure Governor DeSantis to fulfill his obligations on the environment. They have been arrested multiple times, some charges were dropped, others are still pending, and they need our support, especially from the students and youth who can join the rebellion.