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DIXIE’S TUPPERWARE PARTY at the Kirk Douglas Theatre

Bradford Rogne
December 7, 2018Dany Margolies – The Daily News Sure, “Dixie’s Tupperware Party” keeps its audience amused. The show also educates, teaching us a bit about the history of Tupperware and the woman, Brownie Wise, who invented the Tupperware party. But mostly, at least if you’re interested in comedy as an art form, this solo show is mighty
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A CHRISTMAS CAROL at the Geffen Playhouse

Chris Whitaker
December 5, 2018Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen Around this time of year, productions of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol are a dime a dozen, but none is quite like the moody, spooky version currently running at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. Read more… Now running through December 16

MIDDLE8 at the Stella Adler Theatre

mid
December 3, 2018Margaret Gray – LA Times The eponymous, fictional Kansas City rock band in Stefan Marks’ new play, “Middle8,” now at the Stella Adler Theatre in Hollywood, almost made it big — 20-some years ago. Now losing their hair, paunchy, slogging away at ordinary jobs to support ordinary families, the five of them are still haunted
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A MILE IN MY SHOES at the Hudson Backstage Theatre

Rich Clark
December 3, 2018Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw In A Mile in My Shoes, writer and solo performer Kathryn Taylor Smith dramatizes the crisis in homelessness by portraying various homeless people and some of the community figures who interact with them. The production has heart and a message that needs to be heard, but its staging requires some
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COME FROM AWAY at the Ahmanson Theatre

Matthew Murphy
December 3, 2018Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen On paper, it feels a bit wrong to call a musical about September 11th, 2001 “uplifting.” It is easy to wonder how that could possibly be true…until seeing Come From Away, a true marvel of a show that manages to take a large story everyone knows about one
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SHOWPONY at the Victory Theatre

Tim Sullens
November 30, 2018Lovell Estell III — Stage Raw Like so many of our social and/or cultural environments, today’s workplace is radically different from what it was many decades ago when the centers of power were pretty much the sole province of white males. American women had their “stations,” and not too much concern was given over to
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CLEO THEO AND WU at Theatre of NOTE

Karianne Flaathen
November 26, 2018Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Commendable for its support of female empowerment and its flashes of wit, Cleo, Theo and Wu can be a frustrating experience if you’re a theatergoer who prefers a coherent story to a chaotic one. Read more… Now running through December 6

Archive for Son of Semele

THE WOMAN WHO WENT TO SPACE AS A MAN at Son of Semele

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Sunday, November 4th, 2018
Mauricio Gomez

Mauricio Gomez

Ellen Dostal – Musicals in L.A.

Maureen Huskey’s new one act play with music takes place wholly in the moment before death. Conceived as a 90 minute suspension of time in which Alice B. Sheldon (Betsy Moore) watches her life pass before her eyes, it blends music, movement, sound, and text to create as enigmatic a piece as the life of its central character. That’s not necessarily a good thing.
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Rob Stevens – Haines His Way

Alice B. Sheldon was a Chicago debutante who was never completely comfortable in her body or her life.
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Now running through November 18

 

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PLUNGE at Son of Semele

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, June 1st, 2018
Photo by Son of Semele

Photo by Son of Semele

Terry Morgan  -  Stage Raw

James Joyce in his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man famously wrote, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” That sentiment describes a lot of historical fiction, in which the sins of the past reverberate endlessly down decades or centuries into the present. Read more…

Now running through June 17

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ARCHIPELAGO at Son of Semele

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, June 9th, 2017
(Photo by Mainak Dhar)

(Photo by Mainak Dhar)

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw

In Archipelago, Caridad Svinch spins a love story about a man and a woman from two different cultures, and sets it against a backdrop of war and apocalyptic upheaval. Director Barbara Kallir oversees an attractive and imaginative staging, but the vagueness of the play’s dramatic events and the absence of detail in the characters’ accounts of themselves make for an enervating narrative. Read more…

Now running through June 18

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hey brother at Son of Semele Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Thursday, November 27th, 2014

hey brother- 1

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw

Bekah Brunstetter’s newest play is about brothers: what it means to live with a sibling you’re not compatible with, and what it’s like to long for one who may not exist. Read more…

Now running through December 14.

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WOMAN PARTS at Son of Semele Ensemble

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Sunday, May 4th, 2014

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Photo by Matthew McCray

Margaret Gray – LA Times

Son of Semele Ensemble has selected two startlingly different short plays for “Woman Parts,” a double bill planned, according to the program, as a corrective to the underrepresentation of women in the theater.

The first offering, “Sex & God,” by the Scottish playwright Linda McLean, weaves together melancholy monologues by four women from different periods of the 20th century: in 1905 (Betsy Moore), 1935 (Melina Bielefelt), 1965 (Sarah Rosenberg) and 1995 (Hilletje Bashew). These women tell their stories in alternating, impressionistic fragments (in dialects coached by Ruth Connell) that evoke four instruments in counterpoint.

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw

It’s hard to imagine two more dissimilar plays than Linda McLean’s Sex and God and Sibyl O’Malley’s Lamentations of the Pelvis, which together make up a feminist themed double-header at Son of Semele Ensemble. Written and directed by women, they share a female focus but are otherwise as stylistically different as any two works can be.

Now running through May 19.

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