Ellen Dostal – Broadway World
In The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a young hotel manager optimistically states, in the face of every disaster: “In India we have a saying, ‘Everything will be alright in the end. So if it’s not alright, it is not yet the end.’ ” It’s the same idea Shakespeare’s heroine touts in ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL and, regardless of where it originated, it requires pluck.
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Now running through April 22
Chelsea Sutton
Lovell Estell III — Stage Raw
Before Neil Simon became Neil Simon, he got his first break as a writer working for Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca’s 1950’ TV series “Your Show of Shows.” On board were some big talents, with scribes like Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks and Joseph Stein churning out the laugh material on a weekly basis.
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Now running through April 22
Miguel Elliot
Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze
It can be done. A director can take relatively ordinary material and, with the help of adept designers and a committed cast, turn it into extraordinary theater.
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Now running through April 15
Here is a selection of photos from the 49th Annual L.A. Drama Critics Circle Awards. Congratulations to all of the award recipients and thank you to all who attended! Thanks to our photographer, Jayne Calucag. All photos are available for free low res download at her website, JayneCalPhotography.com HERE. There is a service charge for edit and high resolution images.
Judi Davidson and Steven Leigh Morris, winner of the Gordon Davidson Award
Cast and Creatives of Rotterdam
Shirley Jo Finney
Julian Reeve
Artists from Actors Co-op representing 33 Variations
Michael Michetti and Jessica Kubzansky
Jon Imparato & the LA LGBT Center posse
David Lamoureux, Dottie Reiner and Michael Betts from Musical Theatre West
Stephanie Kerley Schwartz & Michael Schwartz
Artists representing Geffen Playhouse
Liz Ross & Alex Alpharaoh
Jaime Robledo
Harry Groener, Dawn Didawick, Bill Brochtrup and Kitty Swink
Artists representing King Hedley II
Joel Daavid
Alessandro Camon and Belle Rêve Theatre Co.
Christopher Moscatiello
Tim Cummings
Peter Carrier
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
In the interests of full disclosure, let me say that I am not very knowledgeable about computers and programming, so much of the technical jargon and inside humor in Marek Glinski’s play went right over my head. Glinski’s play might be called a cyber-satire, or a madcap comedy for the cyber age. I could not always follow exactly what was happening, though the overall idea was clear enough.
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Now running through April 15
The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle announced the recipients of its 49th annual awards for distinguished achievement in theatre on March 19, 2018, at A Noise Within in Pasadena. Wenzel Jones presided over the festivities, and Christopher Raymond served as music director.
There were two winners of the 2017 Production award: Hamilton (Hollywood Pantages Theatre) and Rotterdam (Skylight Theatre). Awards in 17 other categories went to touring hits as well as productions by local 99-seat companies. In addition, the LADCC presented seven previously announced awards, including the Margaret Harford Award for sustained excellence in theatre, to the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Center; and the Gordon Davidson Award for distinguished contribution to the Los Angeles theatrical community, to Steven Leigh Morris.
Here is the complete list of winners. In some categories, multiple winners were named.
Production
McCulloh Award for Revival (plays written between 1920 and 1992)
Lead Performance
Featured Performance
Ensemble Performance
Solo Performance
Direction
Writing
Writing (Adaptation)
Musical Score
Music Direction
Choreography
Set Design
Lighting Design
Costume Design
Sound Design
CGI/Video
Specialty
The following special award winners were previously announced:
The Margaret Harford Award for sustained excellence in theatre
The Polly Warfield Award for an excellent season in a small to mid-size theatre
The Ted Schmitt Award for the world premiere of an outstanding new play
The Kinetic Lighting Award for distinguished achievement in theatrical design
The Joel Hirschhorn Award for distinguished achievement in musical theatre
The Milton Katselas Award for distinguished achievement in direction
The Gordon Davidson Award for distinguished contribution to the Los Angeles theatrical community
Founded in 1969, The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle is dedicated to excellence in theatrical criticism, and to the encouragement and improvement of theatre in Greater Los Angeles.
The 2017 membership:
Pauline Adamek, ArtsBeatLA.com
Frances Baum Nicholson, Southern California News Group, Stage Struck Review
Paul Birchall, Stage Raw
Katie Buenneke, Stage Raw
Erin Conley, On Stage & Screen
Lovell Estell III, Stage Raw
Shirle Gottlieb, Gazette Newspapers, StageHappenings.com
Margaret Gray, Los Angeles Times
Hoyt Hilsman, Huffington Post
Deborah Klugman, Stage Raw, L.A. Weekly, Capital & Main
Jenny Lower, Stage Raw
Jon Magaril, CurtainUp.com
Dany Margolies, ArtsInLA.com, Southern California News Group
Myron Meisel, Stage Raw
Terry Morgan, TalkinBroadway.com, Stage Raw
Steven Leigh Morris, LA Stage Alliance
Melinda Schupmann, ShowMag.com, ArtsinLA.com
Jonas Schwartz-Owen, Theatermania.com, ArtsinLA.com
Don Shirley, LA Observed
Les Spindle, EDGE LA
Rob Stevens, haineshisway
Neal Weaver, Stage Raw, ArtsinLA.com
Darrett Sanders
Deborah Klugman – Capital & Main
Terry Morgan - Stage Raw
Any play that starts with a kid standing next to a burning typewriter holding a knife in one hand and a dead cat in the other is off to a good start in the “well, I haven’t seen that before” department. Unfortunately, such unusual visual tableaux aren’t really representative of the bulk of Yusuf Toropov’s An Undivided Heart, a Circle X Theatre Co. and Echo Theater Company co-production.
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Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen
Someone stands in front of you with a cat in one hand and a knife in the other, threatening to kill it. What do you say to save the cat? In An Undivided Heart, a co-production of Echo Theater Company and Circle X Theatre Company that opened this past weekend at the Atwater Village Theatre, this is but one puzzle its complicated characters must attempt to solve.
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Margaret Gray – LA Times
After all these centuries as a literate species, and with only seven basic plots in circulation (according to the late critic Arthur Quiller-Couch), human beings have developed a sense of where stories are likely to go — expectations that prompt us to complain when we can see an ending coming (“predictable”) and when we can’t (“what?”).
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Now running through April 22
Tim Sullens
Ellen Dostal – BroadwayWorld
Playwright Wendy Graf is best known for her uniquely dramatic works such as PLEASE DON’T ASK ABOUT BECKET, ALL AMERICAN GIRL, and NO WORD IN GUYANESE FOR ME. But, in her latest world premiere, UNEMPLOYED ELEPHANTS – A LOVE STORY, she takes a lighter – and more formulaic – approach to her subject.
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Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen
A man and a woman meet at the airport. She is on her honeymoon, solo, after being dumped just before her wedding. He says he is on assignment for Animal Planet, researching the unemployed logging elephants of Myanmar.
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Now running through April 15
Matthew Gilmore
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
Thomas More was an exceptional man — a lawyer, writer and scholar who rose from the merchant class he was born into to become a chancellor for King Henry VIII. Friends with Europe’s great intellectuals, including Erasmus, who published his work, he is remembered today for his novel Utopia (a term he coined) which espoused the virtue of communal property, among other uncommon and radical ideas.
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Now running through April 15
Craig Schwartz
Jonas Schwartz - TheaterMania
Progress treads so slowly it almost feels backwards. Lorraine Hansberry’s award-winning play A Raisin in the Sun premiered almost six decades ago, but American culture still grapples heavily with racism and other prejudices. The Younger family of the play grabs at the American dream, but society keeps moving the brass ring just out of reach.
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Now running through April 8
Chris Whitaker
Margaret Gray – LA Times
The writer and actress Sarah Jones is gorgeous, about 8 feet tall (at least it seems that way) and rail thin, with a wide mane of hair. When she walks onstage at the Geffen Playhouse, where she is performing her one-woman show “Sell/Buy/Date” through April 15, it’s impossible to imagine her hiding in plain sight.
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Jonas Schwartz - TheaterMania
In her solo play, Sell/Buy/Date, Sarah Jones exposes the exploitation of women with 20/20 vision. By setting the play in the far future, where a professor looks back at the dystopian reality that our modern planet could be journeying toward, she allows the audience to see every perspective.
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Now running through April 15
Ed Krieger
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
Stephanie Alison Walker’s stirring drama is set in Buenos Aires in the 1980s, when Argentina was ruled by a ruthless military junta. Anyone who spoke out against the regime could be taken into custody and “disappeared,” and even those who privately disagreed with the government and its policies were in danger and subject to constant scrutiny by an extensive network of spies and informers.
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Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly
Among the 20th century’s catalog of atrocities is the chilling fate of Los Desaparecidos of Argentina — unknown thousands of that country’s citizens who were kidnapped, tortured and murdered by right-wing death squads between 1976 and 1983.
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Harker Jones – Arts In LA
Stephanie Alison Walker’s The Madres is a searing, devastating look at a movement that swept Argentina in the 1970s. Set in 1978, the play focuses on Josefina (Margarita Lamas, who trades off with Denise Blasor), a housewife who buries her head in the sand at the political upheaval surrounding her….
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