Chris Whitaker
Jonas Schwartz - TheaterMania
In this political climate, it is very easy to demonize those who think differently, particularly when their beliefs infringe on others’ rights. The right to refuse service to members of the LGBTQ community has become explosive, going all the way to the Supreme Court, where the issue has still not been resolved.
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Now running through October 21
Photo courtesy of Griot Theatre)
Lovell Estell III — Stage Raw
Like most of Shakespeare’s greatest works, this familiar tale of jealousy, love and betrayal readily lends itself to critical exploration and original adaptations. Although it was written over four hundred years ago, it’s particularly relevant in these neurotic times given our seemingly endless obsession with ethnic identity and matters of religion.
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Now running through October 7
Dean Cechvala
Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen
Three “sandwich artists” with very different lives walk into a franchise. What happens? Unfortunately the answer is…not much. American Hero, a play by Bess Wohl currently being presented by the IAMA Theatre Company in a guest production at the Pasadena Playhouse, is a comedy about working class America, but focuses on a microcosm that ultimately fails to prove a point. Read more…
Frances Baum Nicholson –The Stage Struck Review
If one had to peg a single theme for the plays I have seen open in the past month, it would be two-fold: the heartlessness of corporate America combined with the innate sense of straight white privilege, and the plight of those the privileged see as underclasses, be they minority cultures, blue collar victims of the evisceration of union power, or simply those trying to get by in the morass of the service economy.
Jonas Schwartz - TheaterMania
Part of the American spirit entails taking a no-win situation and finding a road to success. The three employees of a mini-mall sandwich shop in American Hero find their situation direr by the day, but instead of giving up, they roll up their sleeves and keep making hero sandwiches, even after they run out of meat, cheese, and bread.
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Now running through October 21
Darrett Sanders
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
Although the publishing world serves as the framework for Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ scathing dramedy, his story is less about the decimation of a once flourishing profession as it is about the impoverishment of our lives and our relationships with others, or lack thereof.
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Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen
When Gloria, a Pulitzer Prize-finalist play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins currently in its west coast premiere at The Echo Theater Company, begins, it seems like a modern workplace comedy.
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Now running through October 21
Darrett Sanders
Terry Morgan - Stage Raw
Not every work of art is designed with the mass audience in mind. Some are experiments or explorations, or maybe just a diverting goof. All these terms might apply to John O’Keefe’s All Night Long, a kaleidoscopic fever dream of a play that revels in erudition and silly humor but doesn’t hew to a traditional dramatic structure or feature a standard resolution.
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Now running through October 7
Jeff Lorch
Ellen Dostal – Broadway World
Ammunition Theatre Company ventures into the wacky world of fractured fairy tales for its latest production, FAIRY TALE THEATRE 18 & OVER: THE MUSICAL.
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Now running through October 7
Darrett Sanders
Jonas Schwartz - TheaterMania
Life and death have always been intertwined. People spend much of their life worrying when they will pass away, how their beliefs will protect them in the next realm, and if they’ll be able to share experiences with those who have already died.
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Now running through October 7
Corwin Evans
Ellen Dostal – Broadway World
How much rage would a person need to feel to kill two people with 29 whacks of an axe? The short answer is, a lot. That’s the number Andrew Borden and his second wife Abby actually sustained in 1892 – not the 81 immortalized in this haunting nursery rhyme.
To this day, no one knows who committed the murders although Andrew’s youngest daughter, Lizzie, has always been guilty in the court of public opinion. She was acquitted at trial but rumors followed her to her grave. What we do know is that a crime of passion enacted with this much violence can only mean there is more to the story.
LIZZIE, by Steven Cheslik-deMeyer, Alan Stevens Hewitt, and Tim Maner, draws its own conclusions about what might have fueled Lizzie Borden’s rage to the point of committing murder, and Color & Light Theatre Ensemble brings that rage to the forefront in a ballsy 90-minute musical character study that is part throat-ripping rock concert, part riveting theatre invention. This is rage rock at its finest and the four women who tell the story have the vocal ability and acting intensity to deliver a moving tale with unrelenting ferocity.
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Now running through September 29
Gina Long
Frances Baum Nicholson –The Stage Struck Review
When a play being produced locally has a long history of excellence, that can be both a blessing and a curse for a theater company, especially a comparatively small one.
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
We don’t usually think of friendly card games as battles to the death, or near it, except perhaps in the Wild West. But as playwright D.L. Coburn suggests in his Pulitzer Prize play, when it comes to super competitive men like Weller Martin (Alan Blumenfeld), anything can happen.
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Now running through October 7
(Photo, courtesy Australian Theatre Company)
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
In Swansong, Irish playwright Conor McDermottroe drafts a portrait of a disturbed and angry man unable to quell his sudden fits of rage or find balm for the inner wound that’s been festering since his childhood.
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Now running through October 7
Frances Baum Nicholson –The Stage Struck Review
It is quite remarkable how many times the Victor Hugo novel, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” has been dramatized, in film, on television, and on the stage.
Now running through September 22
Joan Marcus
Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen
Jukebox bio-musicals are seemingly a dime a dozen these days—Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations is currently playing at the Ahmanson Theatre, and the Pantages Theatre was recently home to On Your Feet, the Gloria and Emilio Estefan musical. But Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, which just reopened at the Pantages in Los Angeles after a successful run in 2016, feels a little different and more special.
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Rob Stevens – Haines His Way
Carole King is the most successful female songwriter of the latter half of the 20th century, having written or co-written 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1955 and 1999.
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Now running through September 30