Photo by Ed Krieger
Jenny Lower – Stage Raw
Separate Beds, a relationship comedy by that lacks the absurdity of a farce and the insight of a drama, may stir self-recognition among a few long coupled audience members. (If so, you should get yourself to a marriage counselor right away.) Read more…
Now running through June 19
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
Titles don’t always alert you to what plays are about, but with Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries, the appellation is pretty much on the mark. Read more…
Now running through June 26
Photo courtesy of Zombie Joe’s Underground
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw
I am not sure why it comes as a surprise that Zombie Joe’s Underground, the ferociously imaginative theater company on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood, should so ably create this sweet, artful candy box of an adaptation of Shakespeare’s frivolous rustic comedy. Read more…
Now running through June 19
Photo by Michael Lamont
David C. Nichols – LA Times
The best of times are now at the David Henry Hwang Theatre, where East West Players concludes its 50th anniversary season with an idiosyncratically endearing revival of “La Cage aux Folles.” Read more…
Now running through June 26
Margaret Gray – LA Times
Al Dubin wrote lyrics for enduring songs of the stage and screen, won an Academy Award in 1936 for “Lullaby of Broadway” and may be best known for his five-year partnership with Harry Warren at Warner Bros., which produced a string of hits — “42nd Street,” “We’re in the Money,” “I Only Have Eyes for You” and “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” among others. Read more…
Now running through June 12
Photo by Enci Box
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw
Class warfare has surged and ebbed in the U.S. public consciousness during harder or more prosperous times throughout the past century, but the distorted perversion that it is something waged by the poor upon privileged victims gets exposed as a disingenuous lie by Eugene O’Neill’s 1922 The Hairy Ape – an anguished cry on behalf the exploited and dismissed. Read more…
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
Throughout his long and productive career, playwright Eugene O’Neill pursued a course of experimentation, producing works both in a realistic style and in an expressionist mode that attempted to go beyond the limits of conventional theatre. The Hairy Ape in 1922 was the second of his attempts to transcend realism, following The Emperor Jones the previous year. Read more…
Now running through July 17
Photo by Isabel Wagner
Lovell Estell III – Stage Raw
Ask anyone whether they’ve heard of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) and you’ll probably get a quick “yes,” along with an annoyed “what a stupid question” stare. But it’s a safe bet that the names Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith wouldn’t be recognized. They were the men who started the organization in the unenlightened 1930’s, Read more…
Now running through June 5
Photo by Kevin Parry forThe Wallis
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
In one way, The City of Conversation can be seen as playwright’s paean to the bygone politics of 20th century America —in retrospect a fairer and far less brutal game than the one played today. Read more…
Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze
Plays usually center on a boiling-over point. “The City of Conversation” offers at least two. And its two focal characters aren’t shy about confronting them. Read more…
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA
An ambitious young woman forces a showdown with her mother-in-law that has devastating consequences in The City of Conversation. Read more…
Now running through June 4
Photo by Dan Bonnell
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
John (Sam Anderson), the title character in Julie Marie Myatt’s long one-act, is a bitter and guilt-ridden man. A hard-drinking womanizer and jail-bird, he became a father, but a very reluctant one.
Read more…
Now running through July 3
Photo by John Perrin Flynn
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw
For a considerable time now, it has become exceptionally difficult to shock an audience, a gambit that used to be an important arrow in the artist’s quiver. Nevertheless, in a society where in recent years the most dreaded circumstance has become to feel in any colorable way “awkward”, discomfiting the viewer may now be the next best thing. Read more…
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly
Honky, directed by Gregg T. Daniel at the Rogue Machine Theatre, is one of those tricky comedies that elicits laughs from audience members even as they shift uncomfortably in their seats. Read more…
Now running through June 12
Photo by Ed Krieger
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
What happens to a working-class alpha male when he loses his work? The consequences of such are on brilliant display in playwright/performer Raymond J. Barry’s Foreclosure or Yelling at Women Walking Their Dogs, a taut penetrating one-act that rivets around a fractured American family and the never-ending battle between philistinism and art. Read more…
Now running through May 28
Photo by Jeff Lorch
Margaret Gray – LA Times
The first time Derek DelGaudio performed at the Geffen Playhouse — in the 2012 show “Nothing to Hide,” which he created with co-star Helder Guimarães and director Neil Patrick Harris — DelGaudio ended up staying longer than expected: The magic act, originally slotted for a one-month run, packed the house for 18 weeks. Read more…
Dany Margolies – Arts in LA
Derek DelGaudio’s world premiere In & of Itself proves him to be a captivating performer and a mesmerizing illusionist. He is not quite yet the philosopher he purports to be, but kernels of interesting ideas weave through the piece—such as making personal pain disappear like a house of cards. Read more…
Jenny Lower – LA Weekly
Derek DelGaudio’s new solo show at the Geffen Playhouse’s black-box theater is a lot different from other one-man ventures. For one thing, there’s magic. And unlike the impulse to overshare that weighs down so many other autobiographical efforts, DelGaudio cloaks his personal storytelling in mythological allusions….. Read more…
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA
The illusion and prestidigitation show, In & Of Itself, presently playing at the Geffen Playhouse, feels somewhat underwhelming. Ostensibly a very short evening with a solo performer (one hour and five minutes) the show unfolds at a languid pace. Read more…
Now running through June 26