Doug Catiller
Margaret Gray – LA Times
Sharr White’s “The Other Place” captures a powerful actress in her prime. This critic-pleasing play’s first New York production, back in 2012, which eventually moved to Broadway, starred Laurie Metcalf. Its O.C. premiere, now playing at Chance Theater, has lured the mesmerizing Jacqueline Wright to Anaheim. Read more…
Now running through October 28
Aidan Grant
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
This solo performance is written and performed by Robert Galinsky. In addition to being a writer and actor, Galinsky is a lifelong social activist, volunteering with numerous organizations, including teaching classes for incarcerated youth at New York City’s Rikers Island Detention Center.
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Now running through November 9
John Perrin Flynn
Terry Morgan - Stage Raw
Although Rogue Machine is a small theatre company, it’s always punching above its weight class and generally achieving whatever artistic challenges it sets for itself. This year the group had a particularly difficult task — it had to find a new home, a misfortune that sometimes sinks otherwise stable organizations.
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Now running through December 30
Daniel Kitayama
Harker Jones – LA Weekly
Presenting its 10th season of screams and scares at the Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, Wicked Lit has become an Halloween-season tradition in Los Angeles. The immersive walking theater experience presented by Unbound Productions gives patrons a look at Mountain View’s stunning mortuary (designed by Cecil E. Bryan) and provides a perfect complement to the show’s supernatural subject matter.
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Ellen Dostal – Broadway World
For eight of the last ten years, Wicked Lit has created theatre among the dead – quite literally – at Mountain View Mausoleum in Altadena.
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Now running through November 10
Jenny Graham
Frances Baum Nicholson –The Stage Struck Review
Boston Court Pasadena’s Co-Artistic Director Jessica Kubzansky loves Shakespeare. That I know. She has directed insightful productions of the Bard’s work at several venues, and in her “RII” at BC she pared one play down to great effect, allowing more focus on essential and timeless themes in a comparatively obscure history play. Read more…
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
Sarah B. Mantell’s poignant play begins with a young couple capering playfully across the spare, unembellished set. Their first words are tentative; they’re the sort uttered, pretty much ubiquitously, between would-be lovers who do not know each other well. For a couple of minutes, you wonder if you’re in for a fancified rom-com about the rocky shoals coursed over by true love.
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Now running through November 4
Craig Schwartz
Frances Baum Nicholson –The Stage Struck Review
Of all of Oscar Wilde’s creations, the overall theme of “A Picture of Dorian Gray” has most become a part of the English language. Read more…
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way
In his program notes for the current A Noise Within’s production of his adaptation of A Picture of Dorian Gray, director Michael Michetti states “Oscar Wilde was perhaps the nineteenth century’s most infamous homosexual”. Read more…
Ellen Dostal – Broadway World
They say a picture paints a thousand words. In director Michael Michetti’s compelling stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s A PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, it does more than that. It captures a lifetime.
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Now running through November 15
Toky Photography
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
In August 2012, white supremacist named Wade Michael Page entered a Gurdwara, or Sikh temple, in Oak Creek, Wisconsin and shot and killed six people —another of the all too frequent hate crimes that continually debase our nation. Here in Los Angeles, Sikh writer/performer Sundeep Morrison became alarmed….
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Now running through October 14
Alexander Karavay
Lovell Estell III — Stage Raw
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James’s novelette involving the supernatural, is one of a select number of short fictional works that have consistently attracted critical valuation. First published in 1898, it’s since been fruitful material for many artistic renderings.
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Now running through October 31
Enci Box
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
Romanian-French experimental playwright Matei Visniec began his prolific writing career in Bucharest, but because of the strict censorship at the time, none of his plays could be produced. He sought political asylum in France and began writing in French.
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Now running through November 4
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.
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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