Photo by Jenny Graham
Steven Leigh Morris – Stage Raw
The times have caught up to playwright Murray Mednick, now an octogenarian, who has sustained a singular, uncompromising vision in his plays over the course of half a century. The vision is grim, but not without humor. I found myself smiling throughout his latest play, Three Tables, but unable to laugh. That feels just about right for this cultural moment, though it’s getting harder even to smile. Read more…
Now running through May 22
Photo by Miki Turner
Dany Margolies - Arts In LA
This play is more about storytelling than story. It is about the way we make theater and observe theater. It is about words and how they are enhanced by a theatrical production. And yet, as the title character tells us in a surprisingly emotion-stirring moment at the play’s end, our story remains behind when we are long gone. Read more…
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter
As played by Kevin Weisman, Mednick’s Villon swashes a squat figure, a charismatically ugly man of whose sexual power derives from bile and rage, along with a lofty confidence in the power and pointlessness of his gifts. Beaten and abused by his impoverished mother, he is adopted as a young adolescent by a scholar-priest (Gray Palmer) whose name he assumes. Read more…
Now running through March 23.