SDJW thanks its November writers
SAN DIEGO — San Diego Jewish World thanks and would like to acknowledge those writers whose works appeared on this news publication during the month of November. They were: David Amos Kenneth Bandler...
View ArticleOutfoxing Wall Street in ‘The Big Short’
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Many years ago, as I tried to keep up with each of my kids as they breezed through “the new math” and learned to multiply fractions, I realized with dismay that if I had...
View ArticleSDJW thanks 43 whose works appeared in January
SAN DIEGO (SDJW) — San Diego Jewish World expresses its appreciation to the 43 writers and photographers whose works appeared during January 2016. These individuals included: David Amos Eitan Arom...
View ArticleMemory vs. ecology in ‘Dream Catcher’
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Once again the amazing and consistently fabulous Fountain Theater has mounted a play that, like most of their others, is a must see! This one is called Dream Catcher and...
View ArticleHolocaust survivor takes last stand in new drama
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Franz Altman is making his Last Stand. Which is to be expected, because when a man is 90 years old there probably aren’t too many Stands left for him to take. Or the...
View Article‘Look at Us Now, Mother’ explores a Jewish childhood
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — In the children’s nursery song the cheese stands alone. Hi-ho the derry-o, the cheese stands alone. In the Jewish home it is the mother who often stands alone,...
View ArticleSDJW thanks its February 2016 contributors
SAN DIEGO — This publication would like to thank and express appreciation to the writers and photographers whose works appeared during February 2016 in San Diego Jewish World. They include: Judy Lash...
View ArticleLove in the age of religious diversity
By Cynthia Citron STUDIO CITY, California–He is a non-observant Jew, she is an ardent Catholic, and they meet cute. He sees her through the front window of an art gallery in Soho and jumps out of his...
View ArticleSDJW thanks its March 2016 contributors
SAN DIEGO — San Diego Jewish World expresses its appreciation to the byliners and staff photographers whose works appeared in March 2016 editions. They included: David Amos Eitan Arom Judy Lash Balint...
View ArticleThe ubiquitous Mr. Eisenberg
By Cynthia Citron BEVERLY HILLS, California — The name “Jesse Eisenberg” may not be as familiar as, say, Jerry Seinfeld—-yet. But if you saw him portraying Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The...
View ArticleTense ‘John Is A Father’ makes its debut
By Cynthia Citron NORTH HOLLYWOOD, California — Perhaps I should recuse myself from reviewing John Is A Father because its star, Sam Anderson, is one of my favorite actors. In addition, he is one...
View Article‘Bad Jews’ depicts split between religious and secular
By Cynthia Citron HOLLYWOOD — The play has such a despicable name that you would think it would attract every neo-Nazi, Aryan Nation, Skinheaded anti-Semite in southern California. The play is called...
View ArticleCorporate raider drama comes to the L.A. stage
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — If Lawrence Garfinkle comes to your town, be wary! And be afraid. Be very afraid. Garfinkle, known to his fellow Wall Street stockbrokers as “Larry the Liquidator,”...
View ArticlePlay focuses on Hitler, Chaplin and Pickford
By Cynthia Citron BEVERLY HILLS, California — At first he was seen as a joke. Then, as he continued his campaign of insults and threats, outrageous proposals, and the promise to make his country great...
View ArticleTwo extra ordinary Holocaust films: ‘Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe’ and...
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — This past weekend I saw two intense biographical documentaries dealing with completely opposing viewpoints on the Holocaust. The first, Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe,...
View ArticleHe’s a lion, hear him roar
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — The slice of life that he brings to the stage is his own. Filled with pain and anger, hostility, loneliness, and alienation, it is, nevertheless, a solo performance...
View ArticleBeckett’s genius on display at L.A.’s Odyssey
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — What could be more overwhelming than a play by Samuel Beckett? How about FIVE plays by Samuel Beckett? Ron Sossi, the fearless founder of L.A.’s Odyssey Theatre and its...
View ArticleArts columnist Citron tells of her memoir
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — If my editor will indulge me, I should like to tell you about a book today rather than a play or film. The book is called As I Remember It and it is my memoir which has...
View ArticleA supper for the power- hungry
By Cynthia Citron HOLLYWOOD — Playwright Phinneas Kiyomura’s play Supper introduces three oil-rich brothers who have come to Japan to celebrate the wedding of their fourth brother, Freddy (Joel...
View ArticleA memoir of travel, encounters with the famous
As I Remember It by Cynthia Citron, © 2017 Xlibris; ISBN 9780152-4571627. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO – Given that Nancy and I are mentioned in Cynthia Citron’s book, I feel a bit embarrassed...
View ArticleA French farce that is hard to parse
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — The first French farce was performed in the 13th century. British farce began a century later. They are both still going strong, but often in very different...
View ArticleNew film asks ‘Who do you love?’
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Probably every long-time married couple will acknowledge that every once in a while the rapture will wear off. If they’re lucky they will find a spark that reignites...
View ArticleBeing ‘foreign, protagonist speaks gibberish
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Since he wrote it in 1984, Larry Shue’s play The Foreigner has been produced and revived by amateurs, students, and professional companies almost continually. It’s a...
View ArticleThe Lyons, hear them roar
By Cynthia Citron NORTH HOLLYWOOD, California — Cruelty is usually the weapon of choice in dysfunctional families. In the Lyons family this toxic behavior has engendered alienation, isolation, and...
View Article‘Paris Can Wait’ updates class ‘A Man and A Woman’
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Things were a lot softer in 1966. If you were old enough to go to movies in those relatively tranquil days, you will undoubtedly remember with a smile Claude Lelouch’s...
View Article‘Dogfight,’ a well staged musical, hasn’t dogs or planes
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Well, they aren’t Stephen Sondheim—-yet. But they could be—-in time. Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who wrote the lyrics AND composed the music for Dogfight have just...
View ArticleMaudie: The Grandma Moses of Nova Scotia
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — If you can imagine the handsome Ethan Hawke with a perpetual frown and a gravelly voice like Billy Bob Thornton’s in Sling Blade, you will appreciate Hawke’s amazing...
View ArticleRobert De Niro is in the title, but not in the play
By Cynthia Citron HOLLYWOOD, California — Even as you giggle continuously through Sy Rosen’s delightful chronicle of his journey into “old age” you are also continually aware of how skillfully he has...
View ArticleAbout Lenny Bruce, who started it all
By Cynthia Citron NORTH HOLLYWOOD, California — Before George Carlin. Before Richard Pryor. Before EVERYONE who followed, there was Lenny Bruce. Ostensibly having died of a drug overdose in 1966,...
View ArticleFranken mixes politics, comedy in L.A. appearance
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Minnesota Senator Al Franken was in Los Angeles last weekend to promote his new book, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate. Taking advantage of his visit, Andrea Grossman,...
View ArticleKorzen, once Seinfeld’s nudnik, in one woman show
By Cynthia Citron SANTA MONICA, California — “The world would be a better place if everyone would just do what I say!” Annie Korzen Famous Actress announces as she begins her one-woman show detailing...
View ArticleThree couples zoned out at The Secret Rose Theatre
By Cynthia Citron NORTH HOLLYWOOD, California — The attractive middle-aged couple is having a fight. It’s not one of those screaming, throwing-things-at-each-other kind of fights. Rather, it’s the...
View ArticleWhere, Oh Where is Angelica?
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — As producer Gary Grossman explains it, the mission of the Skylight Theatre Company is to present only world premieres. No revivals, no imports from London or New York,...
View ArticleCatch ‘Some where in the Middle’ before it closes
By Cynthia Citron NORTH HOLLYWOOD—The play Somewhere in the Middle is about three generations of a family living together somewhere in the Midwest. For once, they are not a dysfunctional family, a...
View ArticleRumors not Neil Simon’s only specialty
By Cynthia Citron NORTH HOLLYWOOD, California — In a telephone call to Ernie, who is downstairs in a formal black suit, Charlie, who is upstairs in pajamas, announces that he has gone temporarily...
View ArticleStories of the Hear and Now
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — If I were to list all the accolades and awards that Stephen Sachs has won over his long career as a playwright, a director, and as co-artistic director of the Fountain...
View ArticleArmstrong makes good on Kennedy’s promise
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — It’s a magical movie. In a foreign language. With no subtitles. And it’s one of the most intense experiences you’ll have in a movie—even if you don’t know what they’re...
View ArticleIn America they left their mark
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Several hundred women—and a smattering of men—gathered at a lovely home in the Brentwood area this past Sunday to participate in the opening of the 11th season of the...
View ArticleFilm Review: ‘Three Identical Strangers’
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — Friends who have similar personalities and mannerisms sometimes joke about being “twins separated at birth.” It’s not a joke, however, to a set of triplets born in New...
View ArticleNow a play on creation vs. evolution debate
By Cynthia Citron HOLLYWOOD, California — At some point in his life the thinking man will usually ask himself three important questions: Who—or what—am I? Where am I? and How did I get here? At this...
View Article‘The King of Brooklyn’ tells his story
By Cynthia Citron SHERMAN OAKS, California — Can you imagine seeing the name “Melvyn Kaplofkis” up in lights on Broadway? Well, neither could he. So he changed it to “Mel King” and became “The King of...
View ArticleTale of the beauty queen’s daughter
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — It’s difficult to watch Barra Grant portray her mother in the biographical play that she authored without remembering the devastating biography that Christina Crawford...
View ArticleSherlock Holmes fan himself subject of a deep mystery
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — The play Mysterious Circumstances consists of seven actors playing some 26 different characters, as well as “others” too insignificant to identify specifically. And so...
View ArticleAlways banking on Robert Redford
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — It’s a film that will stay with you long after the final credits roll. Not only because it’s one helluva good film, but also because it’s Robert Redford’s last film....
View ArticleLove, Madness and Somewhere in Between
By Cynthia CitronLOS ANGELES — The play takes place on a nearly empty stage, unencumbered by scenery or props, except for a row of shiny black folding chairs and a toilet seat that the actor holds in...
View ArticlePlay blames Nancy Reagan for indifference to AIDS
By Cynthia Citron NORTH HOLLYWOOD, California — It’s been nearly 35 years since the beloved film star Rock Hudson died of a heretofore unknown disease called AIDS.At the time, Ronald Reagan, who had...
View Article‘After the Wedding:’ A tale of love and grace
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — It is virtually impossible to review the beautiful new film After the Wedding because to reveal any of the plot would inevitably unravel all the rest of it. It’s a...
View ArticleThe journey of Ram Dass
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES — A million years ago I worked in the Public Relations Department at Boston University. At the time there were 72 schools and colleges flourishing in the Greater Boston...
View ArticleFor the Love of Lily
By Cynthia Citron LOS ANGELES Ernest was a boy full of sadness and woe, And, I think you’ll agree, justifiably so. His mother had died, and just as he feared, His father then, literally, just...
View ArticleRethinking Dorian Gray
By Cynthia Citron HOLLYWOOD, California — To be perfectly honest, I have absolutely no idea what this play is about. It is called Driving Wilde but the only relation it has to Oscar Wilde is that it...
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