La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts :: Page 2

BEST OF BEST OF THIS WEEK THIS WEEK, Open Fist Theatre Company at Atwater Village Theatre

March 22, 2023Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw Following in the satirical footsteps of Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show, this Open Fist Company production takes the past year’s cream of the crop of its Thursday night comedy sketch show, This Week This Week, and skewers our calamitous society with mostly hilarious results. Creator and director Ron
Read More

TWELFTH NIGHT At The Broadwater Studio Theater

Photo courtesy of Foolish Production Co.

March 22, 2023Tracey Paleo – BroadwayWorld Notwithstanding that they fell into many textbook Shakespeare traps, and that there was zero chemistry between any single one of the characters, the Foolish Production Company cast actually knew what they were doing. And mostly their 1-hour rendition of TWELFTH NIGHT (playing in rep with MEASURE FOR MEASURE at The Broadwater)
Read More

CARDENIO at City Garage Theatre

March 22, 2023Rob Stevens – Haines His Way City Garage, the resident theatre company at Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station Arts Center, built their thirty-plus year reputation for doing heavy lifting with productions of Greek tragedies and the works of Brecht and Beckett among other dramatists. With their latest offering, Cardenio, they prove they can let down their
Read More

THE THIN PLACE, Echo Theater Company at Atwater Village Theatre

Caitlin Zambito. Photo by OddDog Pictures.

March 22, 2023Harker Jones – BroadwayWorld Tony-nominated playwright Lucas Hnath’s THE THIN PLACE is an eerie meditation on grief, regret and the need for closure, though it is undermined by the lack of a satisfying conclusion… Obie Award- and Outer Critics Circle Award-winning Hnath (“Red Speedo”; “A Doll’s House, Part 2″) carefully delineates each character with precise
Read More

ONCE at Laguna Playhouse

March 22, 2023Socks Whitmore – Stage Raw In Dublin, a struggling Irish musician bumps into a young Czech woman and his life changes forever. This is the premise of the 2007 musical film Once, and likewise the stage musical of the same name, both featuring songs by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová (including the infamous “Falling Slowly”),
Read More

TWILIGHT: LOS ANGELES, 1992 at the Mark Taper Forum

Sabina Zúñiga Varela. Photo by Craig Schwartz Photography.

March 22, 2023Dana Martin – Stage Raw Center Theatre Group meets the moment with Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, conceived, written and revised by Anna Deavere Smith. The original production premiered on Broadway in April, 1994. Smith wrote it as a solo piece, which she developed from hundreds of interviews following the 1992 L.A. uprising. This updated version
Read More

THE LONELY FEW at Geffen Playhouse

March 18, 2023Patrick Chavis – LA Theatre Bites World Premiere: The Lonely Few @ Geffen Playhouse – 8 out of 10 – Good Show! LA Theatre Bites Recommended! More… Jonas Schwartz-Owen – Theatermania The Lonely Few, a world premiere rock musical at the Geffen Playhouse, does away with conventional narrative. It immerses its audience in rock clubs
Read More

Archive for La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts – Page 2

CATS at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)

Wednesday, April 30th, 2014

Photo by Michael Lamont

Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw

In 1981, a musical adaptation by Andrew Lloyd Webber of British poet T. S. Eliot’s collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats took London’s West End by storm. Cats was immediately transferred Stateside, where the Tony Award-winning musical still holds the record for being the second longest-running show in Broadway history. Read more…

Jonas Schwartz - TheaterMania

The new production of Cats at the La Mirada Theatre of the Performing Arts has been helmed by Dana Solimando, (a former member of the Broadway production). Based on T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber overlays his brand of musical pastiche to Eliot’s poems. The story revolves around a posse of felines introducing one another to the audience while at a ball celebrating which of these cats their spiritual leader cat, Old Deuteronomy, will choose to ascend to the next realm. Read more…

Bob Verini - Arts In LA

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Trevor Nunn’s revue didn’t live up to its promise, or was it threat, to run “now and forever” at Broadway’s Winter Garden. However, as long as there are cat fanciers among theatergoers, and young dancers willing to challenge their limbs and joints to the limit, the musical setting of T.S. Eliot’s cat-celebration poems won’t soon come to the end of its nine lives. Read more…

Now running through May 11.

Comments (0)

Categories : Reviews

Tags : Andrew Lloyd Webber, ArtsInLA, Bob Verini, Cats, Jonas Schwartz, La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, Pauline Adamek, Stage Raw, T.S. Eliot, TheaterMania, Trevor Nunn

FLOYD COLLINS at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)

Saturday, April 5th, 2014

Photo by Michael Lamont

Bob Verini - Arts in LA

One of the most ambitious art musicals of recent years, Floyd Collins by Adam Guettel (music and lyrics) and Tina Landau (book and additional lyrics) is receiving an outstanding mounting from helmer Richard Israel and the management of the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts. The producers, who regularly bring you the likes of Peter Pan and Cats, have blocked off their huge auditorium to place Rich Rose’s multilevel black-box set onto a three-quarter thrust with intimate seating. Read more…

Margaret Gray – LA Times

I had never seen anything quite like it, and it grew on me slowly. But I can’t stop thinking about, and humming snippets from, La Mirada Theatre’s revival of “Floyd Collins,” the odd, haunting musical about the Kentucky cave explorer who got himself trapped underground in 1925. Read more.

Sharon Perlmutter - Talkin’ Broadway

Floyd Collins is not an easy show to direct. The show’s protagonist spends the majority of the play trapped underground in a cave and Adam Guettel’s score—which is discordant at times—can be a difficult sell. The last time I saw a production of the show in Los Angeles, I came out humming the direction of Richard Israel, who approached the task with skill, creativity and confidence, putting together a surprisingly effective production of the musical in a small space. Read more…

Don Shirley – LA Observed

One of the best midsize venues for professional theater in LA County has a somewhat unusual location – its 199 seats are on located on the stage of La Mirada Theatre,
adjacent to the actors.

Normally, La Mirada tries to fill its proscenium-style theater’s 1,251 seats in the conventional way — with the audience facing the stage — but to get to the current “Floyd Collins,” the audience bypasses the regular auditorium. The ushers direct the spectators to chairs placed temporarily on the stage itself — in a raked, three-sided thrust around the action.

Read more…

Now running through April 13.