Michael C. Palma
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way
Afong Moy was 14 years old when she was sold by her father and brought to New York City by traders Nathaniel and Frederick Carne and put on display in their museum. Admission was originally 25 cents (10 cents for children) but, because of the high volume of interest, the price was soon raised to 50 cents.
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Now running through September 29
Philicia Endelman
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
It’s not often we have a story that spotlights a friendship between an elderly woman and a much younger one. It’s a welcome notion, and the primary draw for playwright Grace McLeod’s Herland, a National New Play Network rolling world premiere, directed by Tiffany Moon at Greenway Court Theatre.
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Now running through June 23
Michael Lamont
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
It’s hard to think of a timelier play than Jennifer Barclay’s Ripe Frenzy, about a shooting and mass murder that takes place in a high school in a small town in upstate New York. A rolling premiere from the National New Play Network, it opened here in Los Angeles the day after newspapers across the country reported the latest mind-blowing tragedy in Santa Fe, Texas……Read more…
Now running through June 17
Photo by Luis Kelly-Duarte
Deborah Klugman – Capital & Main
In Yerma in the Desert, the desert is less an external place than the state of mind of the title character. Written by Oliver Mayer, the play is inspired by Federico Garcia Lorca’s 1934 classic Yerma, whose central character, the wife of a shepherd, is childless and unhappy.
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Now running through December 16
Photo by John Klopping
Terry Morgan - Stage Raw
One of the positive uses of art is to shine a light on historical figures that might otherwise have remained obscure — to give someone the credit he or she deserved but didn’t receive in life. A film such as Hidden Figures, which detailed the important contributions African-American women made to the space program, is a good example.Read more…
Now running through September 17
(Photo by John Klepping)
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw
Playwright Boni B. Alvarez cunningly adapts Anton Chekhov’s 19th century drama “Ivanov,” shifting the setting from the Russian provinces to California’s own land of internal exile (that is, if you’re a gay man of a certain age), Palm Springs. Read more…
Now running through July 1
Photo by Sean Deckert
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly
Ellen McLaughlin’s Ajax in Iraq is a bruising play, an often painful-to-watch drama that serves as a reminder of the toll war takes on body, mind and spirit. Read more…
Now running through August 14
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 Marjorie DeWit
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw
Playwright Gabriel Rivas Gomez’s eccentric, uneven drama is loosely based on themes from Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Filtered through a prism of modern corporate capitalism, it’s a tale of American kindness — or more accurately, about the lack of it as far as poor immigrants and our underclass are concerned. Read more…
David C. Nichols – LA Times
Although “The Grapes of Wrath” has seen many adaptations, few have received a treatment quite like “Swarm Cell” at Greenway Court Theatre.
This sincerely intended, valiantly performed, still-gelling deconstruction applies a decidedly postmodern, proto-feminist spin to John Steinbeck’s classic Dust Bowl saga. Read more…
Now running through February 28
Photo by Ed Krieger
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
Eleanor (Joanna Miles) the agoraphobic senior citizen in Tom Baum’s family drama, is a paranoid lady. Not only is she afraid to leave her house: she’s also terrified that home invaders might come to do her ill. Read more…
Now running through December 13.
Photo by Blake Boyd
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
Salani (Jennifer Hubilla), the central character in Velina Hasu Houston’s charmless chick lit musical, is a lovely orphaned teen, an upright individual who must contend with poverty, hard labor, and arrogant or lustful employers before triumphantly attaining freedom and self-realization. The story is set in British Ceylon circa 1939; Read more…
Neal Weaver – ArtsInLA
The heroine of this world premiere musical, with book and lyrics by Velina Hasu Houston and music by Nathan Wang, is the beautiful adolescent Salani (Jennifer Hubilla), who was born and raised on a cinnamon plantation in Ceylon. Her life becomes unmoored and she is set adrift when her mother is killed in a mysterious fire. Salani seems to be unaware that her mother was the mistress of the master of the plantation, Ranil (Dom Magwilli), but Salani suspects that he is responsible for her mother’s death. Read more…
Now running through April 6.
Photo by Eric Neil Guttierez
Bob Verini - ArtsInLA
For this chamber musical, Shaun Davey and Richard Nelson have crafted Irish faux folk tunes that rely more on vocal brio than beauty. And let’s face it, the characters’ increasing insobriety lowers the bar on singing quality as the play’s Christmastime celebration progresses. But the adaptation of James Joyce’s brilliant, deep novella—possibly the best of its kind in the English language—is a bitch to stage, with its tonal shifts, huge cast, multiple settings, and thematic ambiguities. Read more…
Now running through February 22.