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

Photo by Chris Phipps
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
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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)
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CARDENIO at City Garage Theatre

Photo by Paul Rubenstein
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
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THE THIN PLACE, Echo Theater Company at Atwater Village Theatre

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
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ONCE at Laguna Playhouse

Photo by Jason Niedle
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”),
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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
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THE LONELY FEW at Geffen Playhouse

Lauren Patten. Photo by Jeff Lorch.
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
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Archive for Les Spindle – Page 3

LUKAS ROOM – Rogue Machine at Theatre/Theater,

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, August 7th, 2015
luka_JohnPerrinFlynn

Photo by John Perrin Flynn

Les Spindle –  Frontiers L.A.

Rob Mersola‘s dicey new comedy Luka’s Room benefits from the efforts of a splendid ensemble cast under the crisp direction of Joshua Bitton.  Read more…

Myron Meisel – Stage Raw

His father’s finances suddenly gone south (or perhaps merely hidden during the pendancy of his most recent divorce), 19 year old Luka Lupatelli (Nick Marini) must transfer from Arizona State to a San Fernando Valley community college and occupy the old paternal bedroom at addled Grandma Franca’s (Joanna Lipari) meager digs, across the hall from his ne’er-do-well Uncle Nick (Alex Fernandez), recently sprung from another short stint in County Jail. Read more…

Now running through Sept. 23

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BENT at the Mark Taper Forum

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Tuesday, July 28th, 2015
Photo by Ed Krieger

Photo by Ed Krieger

Jonas Schwartz -  Arts In LA

Bent, playwright Martin Sherman’s revelatory 1979 play about the gay experience in Nazi concentration camps, receives an arresting production at the Mark Taper Forum. Moisés Kaufman’s direction and his stellar cast will leave audiences breathless. Read more…

Jenny Lower – LA Weekly

It’s difficult and rare to come across stories that can illuminate the Holocaust in unfamiliar ways. Bentis such a play, and at the Mark Taper Forum it’s getting its first major revival since its 1979 Broadway debut. Read more…

Bob Verini  -   Stage Raw

Martin Sherman’s Bent is one of those plays whose revival isn’t just welcome but necessary. As much as popular culture, literature and scholarship keep revisiting the causes, crimes and legacy of the Nazi era, somehow or other it seems as if interest keeps drying up in the dismal story of Germany’s appalling treatment of homosexuals. Read more…

Les Spindle –  Frontiers L.A.

In this electrifying revival, Martin Sherman‘s brilliant, Tony-nominated 1979 drama, which originally starred Richard Gere, has lost none of its pertinence.

em>Read more…

Now running through August 23.

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FAILURE: A LOVE STORY at GTC Burbank

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Tuesday, July 28th, 2015
Photo by John Koppling

Photo by John Koppling

Les Spindle –  Edge on the Net

Prolific Chicago-based playwright, Phillip Dawkins, is back. When his riveting ensemble drama “The Homosexuals” was presented at L.A.’ s Celebration Theater in 2013, it certainly whetted one’s appetite to view more of his work. In a staging by L.A.’s Coeurage Theatre Company, Dawkins’ zany seriocomic reverie, “Failure: A Love Story” is an ambitious and determinedly offbeat work, spotlighting a spirited ensemble cast. Read more…

Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly

Philip Dawkins’ unorthodox play Failure: A Love Story isn’t the first to counsel music, love and laughter as an antidote to death, but it may be unique in heralding that milestone in a blithe and gleeful way. Read more…

Paul Birchall  – Stage Raw

One truthful takeaway (amongst many) of playwright Philip Dawkins’s beautifully wistful and charming tour de force is this:  Everyone you love will probably die. In fact, take out that “probably.”  Everyone you love will die and, in this work of slapstick tragedy, you can either be a grump about it, or you can just live your life as hard as you can and not worry about it.  Read more…

Now running through August 29.

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OKLAHOMA! – Cabrillo Musical Theatre at the Kavli Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Thursday, July 23rd, 2015
Photo by Ed Krieger

Photo by Ed Krieger

Les Spindle –  Edge on the Net

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Pulitzer-winning 1943 musical “Oklahoma!” sparkles anew in Cabrillo Music Theatre’s exuberantly entertaining revisit to the Broadway classic.Read more…

Margaret Gray – LA Times

The first collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, “Oklahoma!,” which debuted in 1943, is often credited with reinventing musical theater — although “Showboat,” from 1927, is invariably mentioned in the same sentence. Read more…

Now running through July 26.

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GIRLFRIEND at the Kirk Douglas Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Monday, July 20th, 2015
32cee90ac6b546a426354d676f8e252a

Photo by Craig Schwartz

Jonas Schwartz -  Arts In LA

Todd Almond’s libretto for the musical Girlfriend is as honest as a John Hughes gay musical would have been—if John Hughes had written a gay musical. Using Matthew Sweet’s 1990s Alternative Rock album of the same name as it’s framework, this story captures the anticipation and titillation that sets in when one’s crush starts to pay attention and reciprocate that affection.Read more…

Les Spindle –  Edge on the Net

Matthew Sweet’s 1991 rock album, “Girlfriend,” was parlayed into an intimate two-character musical, which originally bowed at Berkeley Rep in 2010. Revised for its current L.A. premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, this utterly disarming teenage gay love story effectively evokes an earlier era…… Read more…

Neal Weaver  – Stage Raw

It’s Alliance, Nebraska in 1993, and two teenage boys, Will (Ryder Bach) and Mike (Curt Hanson), face troubling questions about their sexual identity.  Read more…

Now running through August 9.
 

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ADAM & EVE AND STEVE: A MUSICAL at the Noho Arts Center

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Monday, July 13th, 2015
Source: Jessica Tunstad

Source: Jessica Tunstad

Les Spindle –  Edge on the Net

As if on cue, following the recent landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Marriage Equality,  and Wayne Moore’s exuberant musical spoof “Adam & Eve and Steve: The Musical” floats into the L.A. theater arena at precisely the right moment. Read more…

Now running through August 30.

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PICNIC at Antaeus Theatre Company

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, July 1st, 2015
Photo by Karianne Flaathen

Photo by Karianne Flaathen

Les Spindle –  Edge on the Net

In its shimmering revival of William Inge’s steamy 1953 classic, “Picnic,” the classics-focused Antaeus Theatre Company serves up a theatrical feast. Read more…

David C. Nichols – LA Times

The intimacy of small-town life and its stifling limitations permeate “Picnic,” which the thoughtfully representative staging at Antaeus Theater Company underscores without telegraphing. Read more…

Jenny Lower – Stage Raw

About 15 minutes into Picnic, William Inge’s 1953 play about desire and repression in a small Kansas town, Hal (Jason Dechert), a free-spirited drifter wearing no shirt and glistening with sweat, struts over to a disapproving neighbor and her two virginal daughters, and asks, “Is it all right if I light a fire?” em>Read more…

Now running through August 16.

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MISERABLE WITH AN OCEAN VIEW at the Whitefire Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Monday, June 29th, 2015

STAGE_MiserableOcean

Les Spindle –  Frontiers L.A.

Howard Skora’s zany dark comedy, directed by Jim Fall, stars veteran actress Patty McCormack (who is well-remembered as an 11-year-old Oscar nominee, playing a murderous moppet in the classic 1956 thriller The Bad Seed). Read more…

Neal Weaver  – Stage Raw

Howard Skora’s black farce is constructed like a TV sitcom, but it’s snarkier, darker, gayer, zanier, more surreal, more outrageous — and certainly funnier — than most television fare. Read more…

Now running through July 18.

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A PERMANENT IMAGE at Theatre/Theater

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Sunday, June 14th, 2015
Photo by John Flynn

Photo by John Flynn

Margaret Gray – LA Times

Here’s a deal, L.A. theaters: We’ll happily watch all the liquored-up-dysfunctional-family-reunion dramas you care to stage, as long as you cast Anne Gee Byrd as the mother. Read more…

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw

Like his other plays, Samuel D. Hunter’s A Permanent Image is set in the arid cultural wasteland of northern Idaho. Read more…

Les Spindle –  Edge on the Net

Obie-winning playwright Samuel D. Hunter (“The Whale,” “A Bright New Boise”) is among the most vibrant and relevant voices in contemporary theater, known for his daring works of uncompromising emotional resonance and psychological depth. Read more…

Dany Margolies  -  Arts In LA

Ah, to be in northern Idaho, where an ordinary couple could peacefully parent a son and daughter, and then spend their golden years wallowing in substance abuse and unenlightening religious worship. em>Read more…

 

Now running through July 20.

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ENRON at the Lex Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, May 29th, 2015
Photo by Joanna Strapp

Photo by Joanna Strapp

 Bob Verini – Stage Raw

Most people’s command of international finance and investment, I think it’s fair to say, probably cuts not much deeper than the “Money makes the world go around” lyrics from Cabaret. Yet in telling the sorry true-life saga of the titular Houston energy giant and its catastrophic demise, Lucy Prebble’s Enron coolly takes for granted our ability to take in, not just the gist of what went down in October 2001, but its intricate details as well.  Read more…

Steven Leigh Morris  – LA Weekly

Near the conclusion of Lucy Prebble’s Enron, a docudrama animated with puppets and choreography about the fabled demise of the $111 billion Houston energy trading company (trumpeted by Forbes for six consecutive years as a model of corporate ingenuity), the firm’s now-convicted president, Jeffrey Skilling (Skip Pipo), defiantly rationalizes his actions. Read more…

Les Spindle –  Frontiers L.A.

Life is somewhat of a cabaret as well as a smoking cauldron of corporate greed and fiscal catastrophe in Lucy Prebble’s sardonic 2010 British play, now in its L.A. premiere.  Read more…

Jonas Schwartz -  Arts In LA

The political satire Enron spells out how one of the largest energy companies in the world toppled in 2001 due to accounting fraud. Employing musical comedy techniques and puppets, writer Lucy Prebble and director August Viverito mix a spoonful of sugar into repulsive subject matter. Read more…

 Now running through June 28.

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SIGHT UNSEEN at the Lounge Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Thursday, March 19th, 2015
Photo by Ed Krieger

Photo by Ed Krieger

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw

The most interesting scene in this production of Donald Margulies’s 1992 play involves an encounter between Jonathan (Jason Weiss), a successful Jewish-American painter having a much-touted exhibition in London, and Grete (Casey McKinnon), an art journalist of German extraction who is interviewing him. Read more…

Les Spindle –  Frontiers L.A.

The career of accomplished playwright Donald Margulies (Dinner with Friends, Collected Stories) first kicked into high gear with this 1992 Obie-winning dramedy, which explores pretensions of the arts world alongside the specter of anti-Semitism. This revisit to the vintage work, directed by Nicole Dominguez, seems less focused than one might hope, despite capable efforts from the four-member cast. em>Read more…

Now running through April 26.

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THE OTHER PLACE at The Road on Magnolia

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Monday, March 2nd, 2015
Photo by Michelle Young

Photo by Michelle Young

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw

Like many plays that deal with our mortality, those about dementia can be extraordinarily affecting. They speak to a loss of self nearly as complete and devastating as our physical demise. Read more…

David C. Nichols – LA Times

The first glimmer of it comes on a Friday. They’ve flown me to St. Thomas, some private golf resort, I pretend I’m giving a lecture but really it’s another sales pitch, I used to be enthralled by my new life, but the blush has come off the rose.”

Now running through April 11.

 

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