Photo by Enci Box

Pauline Adamek  – LA Weekly

An all-female production of Hamlet — why?! The gender-bending (and multicultural) casting permits this motley cast of women to tackle the tragedy’s meaty classic roles but adds nothing to the production. Rather, it distracts and detracts. Lisa Wolpe and Natsuko Ohama co-direct and star (as Hamlet and Polonius, respectively) in a lively rendition that gallops toward its (implied) bloody finale. Read more…

Sharon Perlmutter – Talkin’ Broadway

I sometimes judge High School Shakespeare festivals. My biggest complaint about the performances is often what I’ve come to call “chair-throwing”: when young actors express high emotions by screaming and throwing the props around without any apparent justification. There’s nothing in their performances that leads you to believe these characters are so angry, and feel so trapped and powerless by their anger, that they’re going to take it out on inanimate objects. And to all of those chair-throwing kids I say, “Go see Lisa Wolpe playing Hamlet.”
Read more…

Dany Margolies  -  Arts In LA

Here’s an aphorism that could have been included with Polonius’s fatherly advice to his children: Turnabout is fair play. Today we find it incomprehensible that women were not allowed to appear onstage when this play premiered. In this production, the cast is entirely female. And at many times throughout, you could prove it only by the program.  Read more…

Now running thru October 27.