Benjamin Simpson
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
Perhaps most notable among the many prizes received by playwright E.M. Lewis is the Steinberg Award from the American Theatre Critics Association, garnered for Song of Extinction, produced in 2008 by the L.A. troupe Moving Arts. (That production also won both an LA Weekly award for Best Production and the LADCC award for Outstanding New Play.)
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Now running through August 5
Benjamin Skigen
Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen
Fans of the TV show Friends who want a night off from watching reruns on Netflix might be tempted to check out FRIENDS! The Musical Parody, currently in its Los Angeles premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, where it opened Wednesday in a guest production after successful runs Off-Broadway and around the country. But ultimately, this parody is about as uneven and frustrating as season nine, with weak music and lyrics sucking the potential fun out of a solid concept.
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Now running through August 4
Jenny Graham
Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen
Set up as a play-within-a-play, the action of Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, currently playing at Antaeus Theatre Company in Los Angeles, begins in the lobby.
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Terry Morgan - Stage Raw
One can see why Antaeus Theatre Company has decided to revive Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle now. It’s a play in which the rich are revealed to be monsters of ego and avarice — where one wealthy woman even chooses an array of fancy clothing over saving her infant child.
Now running through
Noah Torjesen
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
Joe Orton was only 34 when he was bludgeoned to death by Kennegth Halliwell, his jealous lover and one-time writing partner. Halliwell envied Orton’s newfound celebrity as an up-and-coming playwright, launched after the BBC aired The Ruffian on the Stair as a radio play in 1964.
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Now running through July 28
I.C. Rapoport
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
Geraldine Inoa’s incisive character-rich drama, directed by Stevie Walker-Webb at the Matrix Theatre, examines the impact of institutional racism on a group of young people in the aftermath of their friend’s murder by police. The off-beat title is a reference to the origin of African-American soul food, prepared by slaves from the scraps their “owners” left for them after they took all the good parts for themselves.
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Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen
We are sadly used to hearing high-profile stories about young, unarmed black men shot by white police officers, but what happens when the media attention fades and the victim’s family must find a way to continue living after their world has been shattered? This is what playwright Geraldine Inoa explores in Scraps, a play currently in its west coast premiere at the Matrix Theatre Company in Los Angeles.
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Now running through September 15
Jeremy Daniel
Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen
The tone for the farce that is The Play That Goes Wrong is set long before the curtain rises. Frazzled cast members wander the audience, asking questions such as if anyone has a dog they can borrow for the second act, as others attempt to fix the constantly malfunctioning set.
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Katie Buenneke – Stage Raw
The Play That Goes Wrong, a British production at the Ahmanson by way of Broadway and, as the title would indicate, nearly everything goes wrong, as planned. The show is quite funny at times, with moments so hilarious you’ll laugh until you cry, but it’s too long, and loses the comedic momentum it builds for itself.
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Jonas Schwartz – Theatermania
The Play That Goes Wrong stabs you in the funny bone over and over. A mastery of pratfalls and a love letter to bad acting (cowritten by Mischief Theatre company members Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields), the comedy is such an adrenalin rush, audiences at the Ahmanson Theatre will be panting heavier than the actors forced to contend with a collapsing set.
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Now running through August 11
If you weren’t able to attend our 50th Anniversary Award Ceremony on April 8th at Pasadena Playhouse, you can watch the show on our YouTube Channel.
CLICK HERE to view the video
Thank you to Andrew Messer, our videographer for the evening.
We hope to see you next year!
Matthew Brian Denman
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
I’ve always admired Celebration Theatre for its expert staging of technically demanding plays in tiny venues. The company’s musical productions — last year’s Cabaret, the Boy from Oz (2016)and Women of Brewster Place, the Musical (2010) — have been especially impressive.
Now comes The Producers, Mel Brooks’s wacky stereotype-laden show about an unethical Broadway producer…
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Now running through August 12
Victoria Anne Greenwood
Lovell Estell III — Stage Raw
Frederick Knott’s edgy thriller was first performed on Broadway back in 1966 and ran for 373 performances. It’s had many stage revivals, not to mention the well-touted film version that starred the talented Audrey Hepburn, along with Alan Arkin and Richard Crenna. In short, this “slow-burn” thriller has been around the block a few times — but it can still translate to gripping entertainment. This production, however, which is the Loft Ensemble’s first in their new space, isn’t quite there yet.
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Now running through July 28
Jenny Graham
Terry Morgan - Stage Raw
When, in 2008, premiered Good Men and True, his tale of privileged young prep school students acting badly, it certainly wasn’t new or surprising — this sort of pernicious behavior has gone on for generations. But the obnoxious, beer-relishing example of Brett Kavanaugh brought entitled, smug white men back into the spotlight again, so Aguirre-Sacasa revised his play, under the new title of Good Boys.
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Jonas Schwartz – Broadway World
The great Frederick Douglass wrote, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (RIVERDALE) must have been thinking of something similar when he wrote GOOD BOYS, the new piercing drama at The Pasadena Playhouse. Though Aguirre-Sacasa’s play debuted in 2008, it focuses on issues that have risen to the top of the country’s consciousness with the #metoo movement.
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Now running through July 21
Ed Krieger
Jonas Schwartz – Broadway World
DEATH OF A SALESMAN, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Arthur Miller, is the American Hamlet for actors of a certain age. Its protagonist is a complex, frighteningly bare role, that provides an acting challenge relished by the greats. Rob Morrow, best known for Robert Redford’s QUIZ SHOW and the quirky TV dramedy NORTHERN EXPOSURE, pulls off the tricky role by adding an impish quality to the crumbling man, bringing a fresh light to the production at Ruskin Group Theatre.
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Now running through August 4
Jeff Lorch
Terry Morgan – Talkin’ Broadway
The old maxim states that truth is stranger than fiction, but sometimes truth isn’t quite that bold and merely approaches the outlandishness of prose. Such is the case of Richard Lancelyn Green, the subject of a New Yorker article, a Sherlock Holmes expert who was found dead in his apartment in 2004….
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Margaret Gray – LA Times
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional private detective dreamed up by the turn-of-the-century British doctor and writer Arthur Conan Doyle — or so history would have it. Certain scholars, collectors and fans prefer to believe that Holmes was an actual person. Holmes himself would probably agree with them….
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Jonas Schwartz - TheaterMania
The leading expert on Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective Sherlock Holmes becomes the key element in a real-life mystery when he is found dead alone in his apartment. It appears to be murder, but could it be suicide?
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Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
In December 2004, The New Yorker magazine published an article by journalist David Grann titled: “Mysterious Circumstances: The Strange Death of a Sherlock Holmes Fanatic.”
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Now running through July 14
