Photo by Keenan Henson
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
Jeffrey (Jaret Sacrey) is an eccentric but moderately successful inventor of exotic and improbable sex-toys who, though he operates on the fringe of the sex industry, freely admits he’s got no game. Read more…
Now running through April 23
Photo by Lindsay Schnebley
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
An obscure warehouse in Washington, D.C. is the headquarters of a shadowy organization that claims to be devoted to the preservation of the planet. The leader and mastermind of the group is the flamboyant and self-dramatizing Victor (Sean McHugh). Read more…
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way
Playwright William Mastrosimone is best known for his 1982 off-Broadway play Extremities about a rape victim and her vendetta of revenge against her rapist. Read more…
Now running through April 30
Photo by Ed Krieger
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
Robert Schenkkan’s play, set in 2019, is a dystopian vision of what life in Trump-land might be like two years hence.
In a prison meeting room, a black woman, Gloria (Judith Moreland) is interviewing Rick (Bo Foxworth), a white prisoner. She offers him a chance to tell his side of the story. But the two are wary of each other. At first, he refuses to cooperate with her, but when she prepares to leave, he relents. Read more…
Deborah Klugman – Capital & Main
Prolific playwright Robert Schenkkan won a 1992 Pulitzer Prize for his series of one-acts, The Kentucky Cycle, and a 2014 Tony Award for Best Play for All the Way, about the efforts of Lyndon Baines Johnson to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He wrote Building the Wall in response to the election of Donald Trump. Read more…
Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze
Unlike other plays that are about a real-life person but speak metaphorically or use a pseudonym, “Building the Wall” refers to Donald Trump by name and by policy. Read more…
Now running through May 21
Photo by Kevin Parry
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
As the story goes, someone — a friend, a roommate or a lover — said to Mr. Albee, “Edward, you will be thirty years old tomorrow, and you don’t have a damn thing to show for it.” Stung by this comment, Albee sat down and, overnight, wrote a long one-act about a volatile encounter between two men — a complacent middle class guy named Peter, and an impoverished eccentric named Jerry, on a bench in Central Park. Read more…
Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen
“Do you want to know what happened at the zoo?” If you do, make your way to the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, home to the new Deaf West production of Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo—although be warned, the actual answer to that question is far from the point of the piece. Read more…
Now running through April 2
Photo by Ed Krieger
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
When I was in college, I decided I should take some psychology courses to better understand myself and my fellow man. I signed up for Psych A, and discovered to my dismay that it was entirely concerned with statistics and testing methods, with nary a useful insight to be found. Read more…
Erin Conley – On Stage and Screen
In the middle of act one of Disinherit the Wind, now playing at The Complex in Hollywood, something rather unusual is asked of the audience. The main character, Bertram Cates (portrayed by the playwright, Matt Chait) leads everyone in the room, actors and patrons alike, in a brief meditation. Read more…
Now running through April 9
Photo by Matthew Brian Denman
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
Cross-dressing actor-comedian Charles Busch wrote this glossy movie parody as a vehicle for himself in the central role of has-been movie star, Angela Arden. He performed in the play in Los Angeles several years ago, and his Angela was subtle and elegant. But now actor Drew Droege is giving him a run for his money….Read more…
Now running through March 26
Photo courtesy Chromolume Theatre
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
At intermission, one woman audience member declared that Larry Kramer’s autobiographical play is terribly dated — an assertion I feel obliged to refute. While it’s true that the issues it deals with are no longer burning with the white heat they once generated, the piece itself is now old enough to qualify as a historical artifact. Read more…
Now running through March 19
(Photo by Lindsay Schnebly )
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way
33 Variations starring Jane Fonda appeared on Broadway in 2009 and played the Ahmanson Theatre in 2011. Now Actors Co-Op in Hollywood is offering the area’s first intimate production. Read more…
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
This play by Moises Kaufman is an extraordinary piece of work — rich, multifaceted and multilayered, both disturbing and reassuring. Nominally, it’s about a piece of music: Beethoven’s 33 Diabelli Variations, which he wrote based on a waltz by Anton Diabelli. Read more…
Now running through March 26
Photo by Oliver Bokelberg
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly
August Wilson’s King Hedley II takes place in the 1980s when Reaganomics, and the notion that wealth trickles down from the rich to the poor, was the hypothetical order of the day. The reality, of course, is that no such trickling took place; the poor, black and white, grew poorer than ever, a circumstance we see in the struggle of Wilson’s title character to earn a living for himself and his family, and to garner, against odds, some measure of self-respect. Read more…
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
This play by the late August Wilson is part of his 10-play series about the black experience in each of the decades of the 20th century. This one is set in the 1980s. The title character, King Hedley II (Esau Pritchett), is a proud but thwarted black man, whose face is bisected by a livid scar, the result of a razor attack. Read more…
Now running through February 12
Photo by Michael Lamont
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
We don’t usually think of the Japanese as being on the side of the angels during the Holocaust. This play reveals how, when the Nazis began rounding up the Jews in Lithuania, the Japanese ambassador signed exit visas for 6,000 of them and sent them to Kobe, Japan to form a settlement. Read more…
Now running through March 19
Photo by Ron Sossi
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
The late playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett did not make things easy for his audiences. He was first of all an arch-minimalist, reducing his works to the barest possible form. He often eschewed plot, multiple characters, dialogue or hope, concentrating on people who somehow find a way to go on, even while facing the pointlessness and miseries of their lives.
Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze
Just the name conjures a headache in some and bliss in others. Playwright Samuel Beckett is considered one of the most-influential 20th-century playwrights, certainly within Theatre of the Absurd style, his “Waiting for Godot” at the peak of those works.
Now running through March 5
(Photo by Daniel J. Sliwa)
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
Henry (Juan Lozano), a reclusive hermit, is asleep in his bed in a remote cabin in the wilds of Alaska during a white-out blizzard. The door bursts open and a young woman, Rosannah (Roxanna Kaye), enters, wearing a wedding gown complete with veil. Read more…
Now running through February 11