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
Photo by Doug Catiller
Jonas Schwartz - TheaterMania
Middletown, a delicate, essentially plotless play about Anywhere, U.S.A., and how human connection is essential for our survival, requires actors to be able to fill the void that playwright Will Eno has left in the script. Read more…
Now running through May 19
Photos by Doug Catiller, True Image Studio
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way
I have never been much of a video game player. Truthfully I haven’t played one since the very early versions of Pong and PacMan started replacing pin ball machines in bars to give customers something to do while drinking. So I was a bit leery about seeing the new musical Claudio Quest….
Now running through February 26
Photo courtesy of Chance Theatre
Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA
Love, marriage, birth, and death are fodder for Dan LeFranc’s fast-paced narrative spotlighting a couple who meet, marry, and produce several generations in the space of 90 minutes.Read more…
Now running through May 22
Doug Catiller / True Image Studio)
Margaret Gray – LA Times
When women have babies, expectations are born at the same time – dream children, made up of assumptions and hopes, that grow up alongside the real ones. Read more…
Now running through May 31.
Photo courtesy Chance Theatre
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw
The prophet Ezekiel, preaching to the Babylonian exiles, decried the maxim that “the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth turn out,” insisting that each generation was responsible for its own sins. While as moralists we might agree, if we eschewed the concept, where would the modern theater be? Read more…
Now running through May 10.
Bob Verini - Arts In LA
Ill-advised, intrusive direction plagues the Chance Theater’s She Loves Me, and the casualty is the easy, unforced enjoyment traditionally associated with this jewel box of a musical, adapted from the 1940 Lubitsch classic The Shop Around the Corner. Read more…
Photo by Doug Catiller
True Image Studio
David C. Nichols – LA Times
The three essential qualities invoked in “She Loves Me” — attractive to the eye, pleasing to the ear and functional — generally emerge at Chance Theater in Anaheim. Though not without some quirks, this spry, full-hearted chamber edition of Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick and Joe Masteroff’s 1963 show delivers the romantic comedy goods, at least where it counts. em>Read more…
Now running through December 28.