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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

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
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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 Rogue Machine Theatre

ON THE OTHER HAND, WE’RE HAPPY -Rogue Machine Theatre at the Matrix

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Tuesday, March 1st, 2022
Photo by John Perrin Flynn

Photo by John Perrin Flynn

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw

Welsh playwright Daf James’s On the Other Hand, We’re Happy tells the story of a couple’s efforts to adopt a child and the subsequent doubts and fears that plague both the prospective parents and the birth mother. Read more…

Terry Morgan  -  Artsbeat LA

Some theater locations seem to be blessed, and in Los Angeles, one of those lucky places is The Matrix Theatre on Melrose. It’s been producing and presenting high-quality shows for more than forty years, either under the auspices of Joe Stern and The Matrix Theatre Company or as a rental space. Read more…

Tracey Paleo – Gia on the Move

Impeccably directed by Cameron Watson, James has written a refreshing, un-hyperbolized story about a young couple in the process of adoption.  The presentation is exceptionally beautiful, rendering Rogue Machine’s first officially mounted production at its new location on Melrose, an absolute coup. Read more…

Now running through April 17

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DISPOSABLE NECESSITIES at Rogue Machine Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Sunday, December 29th, 2019
John Perrin Flynn

John Perrin Flynn

Terry Morgan  -  Stage Raw

The adage, “Youth is wasted on the young,” is generally attributed to George Bernard Shaw, a man who didn’t lack for adages. The idea that youth can also be wasted on the old is one of the undercurrents that powers ’s play, Disposable Necessities, a science fiction comedy/drama that posits a future in which extended life or immortality is technically possible, but only for the rich.
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Now running through February 3

 

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BLED FOR THE HOUSEHOLD TRUTH at Rogue Machine Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, November 22nd, 2017
Photo ny John Perrin Flynn

Photo by John Perrin Flynn

Terry Morgan  -  Stage Raw

Rogue Machine, one of the theatre companies in town I most admire, has been promoting its new show, Ruth Fowler’s bled for the household truth, as something important and shocking, and warning that easily offended people may walk out at intermission. In my experience, having specific expectations for a play or any work of art ahead of time often proves detrimental, and sadly that is the case here.
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Margaret Gray – LA Times

A New York financier with a great apartment has advertised in the paper for a roommate — specifically a woman. Her rent and board will be free, but she has to be willing to walk around sometimes in her underwear, and she can’t entertain gentlemen friends there.
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Paul Birchall – Stage and Cinema

Ambiguity and nuance are qualities in a play to be greatly desired and lauded – and yet, if you do not go “ick” at least four times while watching playwright Ruth Folwer’s increasingly disturbing drama, I’m not sure what can be done with you.
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Now running through December 18

 

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LES BLANCS – Rogue Machine Theatre at the Met

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, May 31st, 2017
Photo by John Perrin Flynn

Photo by John Perrin Flynn

Terry Morgan  -  Stage Raw

It’s kind of amazing that a major play by Lorraine Hansberry is just having its Los Angeles premiere now. Perhaps the tide of criticism that caused the play to close after one month on Broadway in 1970 tainted its reputation in some way, or its need for a 24-member cast scared producers off. Thankfully, Rogue Machine decided to rectify this situation, and its current production is a smart, exciting theatrical event. Read more…

Rob Stevens – Haines His Way

Lorraine Hansberry was the first black woman to write a play that was produced on Broadway when her classic A Raisin in the Sun opened in 1959. At the age of 29, she won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award becoming the youngest playwright to do so.   Read more…

Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly

Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs is set in colonial Africa sometime in the mid–20th century, and while much has changed since then, the play’s moral dilemmas and the racism and hypocrisy that give rise to them remain with us. Read more…

Margaret Gray – LA Times

The playwright Lorraine Hansberry died of cancer in 1965 when she was only 34, leaving behind incomplete drafts of “Les Blancs” (“The Whites”), a play she had begun writing in 1960, soon after “A Raisin in the Sun” made her famous.Read more…

les-blancs-2

Now running through July 3

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STILL LIFE at Rogue Machine at The Met

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, March 17th, 2017

Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly

Though it aspires to be profound, Alexander Dinelaris’s’ aptly titled Still Life can’t transcend its commonplace dialogue or the limitations of an inadequately conceived central character.   Read more…

Now running through April 23

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THE SUPER VARIETY MATCH BONUS ROUND! – Rogue Machine at The Met Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Thursday, November 17th, 2016
PUB Super

(Photo by John Perrin Flynn)

Lovell Estell III – Stage Raw

Ernest and Margaret Eagleton (Mark L. Taylor, Bonnie Bailey-Reed), are small town Texas folks whose nondescript lives are transformed by a visitor, in this lively comedy by Deb Hiett. Read more…

Now running through December 19

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BULL at The MET Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Tuesday, June 21st, 2016
Photo by John Flynn

Photo by John Flynn

Terry Morgan  -  Stage Raw

Mike Bartlett’s Bull, a loose companion piece to his play, Cock, is witty and devastating in its depiction of workplace cruelty. Although it can be hard to watch, Rogue Machine’s West Coast premiere is a terrific production, tightly directed by Jennifer Pollono and brilliantly acted by a superb ensemble. Read more…

Now running through June 26

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HONKY at Rogue Machine at the MET Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Thursday, May 19th, 2016
Photo by John Perrin Flynn

Photo by John Perrin Flynn

Myron Meisel – Stage Raw

For a considerable time now, it has become exceptionally difficult to shock an audience, a gambit that used to be an important arrow in the artist’s quiver. Nevertheless, in a society where in recent years the most dreaded circumstance has become to feel in any colorable way “awkward”, discomfiting the viewer may now be the next best thing.    Read more…

Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly

Honky, directed by Gregg T. Daniel at the Rogue Machine Theatre, is one of those tricky comedies that elicits laughs from audience members even as they shift uncomfortably in their seats. Read more…

Now running through June 12

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DIRT at the Raven Playhouse

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Monday, March 28th, 2016
Photo by John Perrin Flynn

Photo by John Perrin Flynn

Myron Meisel – Stage Raw

While Alejandro G. Iñárritu customarily and pretentiously inflated the purported weight of the soul in his 2003 movie 27 Grams, Bryony Lavery more tangibly measures the palpable bulk of a dead human body in her insightfully written Dirt, a West Coast premiere presented by Rogue Machine Theatre with SRS Production Wing. Read more…

Now running through April 10

 

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POCATELLO – Rogue Machine at The Met

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, February 24th, 2016
Photo by John Perrin Flynn

Photo by John Perrin Flynn

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw

If you google the town of Pocatello in Southwest Idaho, you’ll get images of dusty hills and a downtown whose architecture might have served as nostalgic backdrop for The Last Picture Show. The place is changing though; look long enough and you’ll see a shot of a Ross store as well, and signs of a bland commercial culture metastasizing across the landscape. Read more…

Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA

Everyone seems to be on the brink of crisis in Samuel D. Hunter’s drama Pocatello, now playing at Rogue Machine Theatre’s new home base theater in East LA. In Hunter’s one-act drama, numerous characters grapple with emotional and spiritual isolation in a remote Mid-western town.   Read more…

Now running through April 10

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NEED TO KNOW at Rogue Machine Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Saturday, October 31st, 2015
Photo by John Flynn

Photo by John Flynn

Terry Morgan  -  Stage Raw

As Pete Townshend was once known to opine, “The world begins behind your neighbor’s walls.” It’s one of the core mysteries of modern life – what do people do or say when they think they’re unobserved or unheard? Read more…

Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly

The characters In Jonathan Caren’s contemporary comedy Need to Know use Facebook and the Internet to glean information about others, but while technology plays a pivotal role here, the playwright’s primary concern is ethics: specifically, how we treat the misfits among us—those who may not conform to conventional standards of beauty and behavior. Read more…

 

Now running through December 13.

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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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