Photo by Ben Horak
Bob Verini – Stage Raw
South Coast Repertory’s Tartuffe is something to witness, in every sense of the phrase. Audacious and thought-provoking, maddening and enlightening by turns, it’s a worthy addition to the venerable company’s anniversary celebration in its categorical refusal to follow a conventional pathway to the classic that kicked off SCR operations a half-century ago. Read more…
Now running through June 8.
Photo by Debora Robinson
Bob Verini - Arts In LA
It can’t be easy to pen a remarkable play about unremarkable people whose main concern is how unremarkable their lives are. (Ask Chekhov.) Yet, Rachel Bonds has pulled it off handily with Five Mile Lake, whose central figures have solid reasons for doubting their own choices and equally solid reasons for coveting the lives of all the others. Read more…
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter
Maybe you can’t go home again, though onstage that’s invariably what everyone does. Rufus (Corey Brill) left his forsaken hometown outside Scranton, Pa., to pursue his PhD in classics, while brother Jamie (Nate Mooney) remained behind to manage a donut shop and renovate their inherited old house by the titular lake.
Margaret Gray – LA Times
Among the revivals and West Coast premieres that dominate our theatrical offerings, the startling phrase “world premiere” implies an exhilarating, possibly risky novelty: You can’t help expecting pyrotechnics.
But Rachel Bonds’ “Five Mile Lake,” receiving its world premiere at South Coast Repertory, is a small, quiet play in which nothing particularly momentous happens. Read more…
Now running through May 4.
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter
At an expiring retirement home on the outskirts of a small town in northern Idaho, the staff prepares to relocate its few remaining residents, when a dementia-impaired nonagenarian music professor, Ken (Richard Doyle), goes missing off the premises as a fierce blizzard completely isolates them from any outside assistance. Ken’s healthy, sardonic spouse Etta (Lynn Milgrim), beside herself with worry, has to speak up tartly to shield herself from the onslaught of patronizing reassurances and bumbling responses. Read more…
Bob Verini - Arts In LA
A skeleton staff and a few hanger-on residents are the last occupants of the dilapidated Northern Idaho rest home in Samuel D. Hunter’s Rest. This hardy little band must cope with two impending catastrophes—the facility’s closing and a monstrous blizzard—and a dozen or more personal bumps. The South Coast Rep design department does well by the former in the play’s world premiere, but helmer Martin Benson and his fine cast have problems with the intimate travails. The playwright hasn’t done much to help out. Read more…
Now running through April 27.
Bob Verini - Arts In LA
Gregory S Moss’s Reunion at South Coast Rep is a capable production of a mostly derivative, predictable text, one most likely to be enjoyed by those with a real appetite for late ’80s nostalgia and a high tolerance for characters’ wild mood swings into and out of melodrama. A lot of theatergoers possess both, of course. Read more…
Now running through March 30.
Bob Verini – ArtsInLA
Photo by Debora Robinson
Amy Herzog’s 4000 Miles comes to us with a considerable reputation as a Pulitzer Prize finalist, but whatever virtues this intergenerational seriocomedy may possess, they certainly don’t come through in South Coast Repertory’s version.
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Now running through November 17.
Photo by Debora Robinson
Deborah Klugman – ArtsBeatLA
Death of a Salesman is about American capitalism and the price it extracts from the everyday working Joe. It’s about dreams and expectations, and what happens to someone when these go unfulfilled. It’s about honesty and the ultimate consequences extracted from those who self-deceive. And, of course, it’s about fathers and sons – that primal connection that can blight a life once corroded or destroyed.
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Now running through September 29.
Photo by Ben Horak/SCR
THE PARISIAN WOMAN by Beau Willomon.
Deborah Klugman – ArtsBeatLA
In the title role Dana Delaney transforms Beau Willomon’s middling comedy into a crackling satire that makes trenchant commentary on the abuse of power. Delaney plays Chloe, the wife of an ambitious lawyer (Steven Weber) on the short list to be the President’s pick for attorney general. Chloe is a woman of leisure. While her husband Tom is out doing whatever ambitious D.C. lawyers do, she lolls about – reading, shopping, and having affairs.
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