Photo by Gloria Vasquez
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
Michael Phillip Edwards’s fiery one-person play is less a drama in the traditional sense than a blistering rumination on identity and race, and the toll racism takes on American men of color. Its urgency erupts not from events per se but from the inner dialogue of the pivotal speaker, an elderly black man named Sam who simultaneously burns with racial pride and shame. Read more…
Now running through August 2.
Photo by Ed Krieger
Jonas Schwartz - Arts In LA
Bent, playwright Martin Sherman’s revelatory 1979 play about the gay experience in Nazi concentration camps, receives an arresting production at the Mark Taper Forum. Moisés Kaufman’s direction and his stellar cast will leave audiences breathless. Read more…
Jenny Lower – LA Weekly
It’s difficult and rare to come across stories that can illuminate the Holocaust in unfamiliar ways. Bentis such a play, and at the Mark Taper Forum it’s getting its first major revival since its 1979 Broadway debut. Read more…
Bob Verini - Stage Raw
Martin Sherman’s Bent is one of those plays whose revival isn’t just welcome but necessary. As much as popular culture, literature and scholarship keep revisiting the causes, crimes and legacy of the Nazi era, somehow or other it seems as if interest keeps drying up in the dismal story of Germany’s appalling treatment of homosexuals. Read more…
Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A.
In this electrifying revival, Martin Sherman‘s brilliant, Tony-nominated 1979 drama, which originally starred Richard Gere, has lost none of its pertinence.
Now running through August 23.
Dany Margolies - Arts In LA
Whether genetically predisposed or trained well at his granddaddy’s knee, Jim Loucks has the knack for telling stories large and small. In this solo show, Loucks layers recollections from his youth and builds a powerful piece about guns, death, and dignity. Read more…
Now running through August 9.
Photo by John Koppling
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net
Prolific Chicago-based playwright, Phillip Dawkins, is back. When his riveting ensemble drama “The Homosexuals” was presented at L.A.’ s Celebration Theater in 2013, it certainly whetted one’s appetite to view more of his work. In a staging by L.A.’s Coeurage Theatre Company, Dawkins’ zany seriocomic reverie, “Failure: A Love Story” is an ambitious and determinedly offbeat work, spotlighting a spirited ensemble cast. Read more…
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly
Philip Dawkins’ unorthodox play Failure: A Love Story isn’t the first to counsel music, love and laughter as an antidote to death, but it may be unique in heralding that milestone in a blithe and gleeful way. Read more…
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw
One truthful takeaway (amongst many) of playwright Philip Dawkins’s beautifully wistful and charming tour de force is this: Everyone you love will probably die. In fact, take out that “probably.” Everyone you love will die and, in this work of slapstick tragedy, you can either be a grump about it, or you can just live your life as hard as you can and not worry about it. Read more…
Now running through August 29.
Photo by Joan Marcus
Bob Verini - Arts In LA
Members of the opening night audience at Pasadena Playhouse’s A Night With Janis Joplin were clearly primed for an intimate tête-à-tête with the titular musical legend, and judging by the two hours’ worth of spontaneous outbursts, they got what they came for. I counted five full or partial standing ovations, interspersed between cheers for every screeched song title, every familiar vamp, and every smokin’-hot guitar riff (there were a lot of them). Read more…
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw
When our daughters were still young, yet old enough, we determined to take them on their first trip abroad to Europe. There was some protest: Why travel to Venice, when they could go to the Venetian in Las Vegas, where their grandparents lived? Read more…
Now running through August 16.
Photo by Trinocerous
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw
Talk about site specific theater: Here’s a production of playwright John Patrick Shanley’s romantic standard that is immersive — literally. Read more…
Now running through August 1.
Photo by Garth Pillsbury
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
In director Tony Tanner’s amusing if somewhat decorous adaptation of The Misanthrope – performed out of doors for the public free of charge – lead performer Christopher Salazar comes off as a disgruntled guy, less a people-hater than a frank person with little taste for dissembling. Read more…
Now running through August 16.
Photo by Ed Krieger
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Pulitzer-winning 1943 musical “Oklahoma!” sparkles anew in Cabrillo Music Theatre’s exuberantly entertaining revisit to the Broadway classic.Read more…
Margaret Gray – LA Times
The first collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, “Oklahoma!,” which debuted in 1943, is often credited with reinventing musical theater — although “Showboat,” from 1927, is invariably mentioned in the same sentence. Read more…
Now running through July 26.
Photo by Mike Hardy
Shirle Gottlieb – Gazette Newspapers
This blockbuster rock-opera exploded from the stage in 1971 and has been playing all over the world ever since.
Composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Tim Rice, the plot revolves around the last week of Jesus’s life — from his arrival in Jerusalem until his world-renowned death.Read more…
Now running through August 15.
Photo by Craig Schwartz
Jonas Schwartz - Arts In LA
Todd Almond’s libretto for the musical Girlfriend is as honest as a John Hughes gay musical would have been—if John Hughes had written a gay musical. Using Matthew Sweet’s 1990s Alternative Rock album of the same name as it’s framework, this story captures the anticipation and titillation that sets in when one’s crush starts to pay attention and reciprocate that affection.Read more…
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net
Matthew Sweet’s 1991 rock album, “Girlfriend,” was parlayed into an intimate two-character musical, which originally bowed at Berkeley Rep in 2010. Revised for its current L.A. premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, this utterly disarming teenage gay love story effectively evokes an earlier era…… Read more…
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
It’s Alliance, Nebraska in 1993, and two teenage boys, Will (Ryder Bach) and Mike (Curt Hanson), face troubling questions about their sexual identity. Read more…
Now running through August 9.
Photo by Phi Tran
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
In 2012, Ilia Volok appeared locally in a stage adaptation of Gogol’s Diary of a Madman, in which he portrayed the mental dissolution of a petty bureaucrat living in Czarist Russia. Volok was compelling to watch even though the cumbrous prose made some of his performance slow going. Read more…
Now running through July 26.
Photo by Michael Lamont
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw
If you’re anything like me, you’ll go into Mike Kindle’s one-act drama knowing nothing about the mother of Barack Obama, but come out with a healthy respect for the progressive woman who, virtually single-handedly, raised the man who became the President of the United States. Read more…
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly
Mike Kindle’s ambitious stage biopic spans 35 years in the life of Stanley Ann Durham, the mother of President Barack Obama, who by the president’s own account was the predominant influence in his childhood and the fount of his values. Read more…
Now running through July 26.