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KING LEAR at The Wallis

Photo by Jason Williams
May 21, 2022Steven Leigh Morris – Stage Raw Shakespeare’s play gets a Wooster Group-ish makeover in John Gould Rubin’s modern dress staging for the Wallis. Tech is omnipresent, almost omniscient. Narrow, vertical panels on both sides of the stage provide screens for Keith Skretch’s projection design, featuring striking images of fires and floods now generally associated with
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LADCC Announces Officers and Members for the 2022-2023 Season

LADCC
May 20, 2022The 2022 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle is pleased to announce its current officers and members for the upcoming 2022- 2023 season. Founded in 1969, the Circle currently includes 17 critics covering productions across the Greater Los Angeles area. The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle has held its first election since the COVID lockdown. The
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HADESTOWN at the Ahmanson Theatre

Photo by T Charles Erickson
May 18, 2022Jonas Schwartz-Owen – Theatermania There’s a gargantuan myth surrounding the opening of Hadestown at the Ahmanson Theatre. Not the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, which this musical does borrow, but the legend of the juggernaut Broadway production that opened in April 2019. Arriving with 14 Tony nominations and eight awards in tow, the production
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TAMBO & BONES at the Kirk Douglas Theatre

Photo by Craig Schwartz Photography
May 13, 2022Terry Morgan – Stage Raw If one reads in the press that a new play is a “minstrel show,” it might give one pause about seeing said show. Historically, minstrel shows were racist entertainment in which White people wearing “blackface” makeup depicted African-Americans in a derogatory way. These shows were mostly popular in the 19th
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THREE TABLES at the Zephyr Theatre

Photo by Jenny Graham
May 12, 2022Steven 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.
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TOOTSIE at the Dolby Theatre

Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
May 5, 2022Harker Jones – BroadwayWorld The musical TOOTSIE, based on the 1982 film of the same name, is a contemporary take on an old trope: a man unconvincingly passes himself off as a woman, everyone in his world buys it, and hilarity tries to ensue. It’s been done countless times, going back past Shakespeare to the
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To hell (and back?) in TOOTSIE and HADESTOWN: Plus, A Heated Discussion, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Doll’s House Part 2, Masao and the Bronze Nightingale, Jane Austen Unscripted

Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
May 4, 2022Just over a month ago, millions of us witnessed a dramatic descent into chaos onstage at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. At the Oscar ceremony, the usual back-patting was upstaged by the unscripted cheek-slapping of Chris Rock by Will Smith. Now fresh drama has returned to the Dolby. Last Tuesday, the stage musical adaptation of
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Archive for The Lounge Theatre

MAYAKOVSKY AND STALIN at the Lounge Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Tuesday, July 31st, 2018
(Photo by Ed Krieger)

(Photo by Ed Krieger)

Neal Weaver  – Stage Raw

Murray Mednick’s play, having its world premiere, is a tale of two suicides: that of the Russian Futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, who shot himself in the heart in 1930, and that of Nadezhda Alliluyeva (Nadya), the second wife of Joseph Stalin, who shot herself in her bedroom during a Communist Party gathering, supposedly in disgust at the way her husband’s brutal collectivist policies had produced mass famine.
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Ellen Dostal – Broadway World

There are plays that tell a story and there are plays that ponder ideas. Murray Mednick’s latest world premiere MAYAKOVSKY AND STALIN is the latter, an intellectual dissection of two Russian revolutionaries who were as integral to Eastern European history as beets are to borscht.   Read more…

Now running through August 19

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THANKSGIVING at the Lounge Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, June 23rd, 2017
Photo by Cali Bloomberg

Photo by Cali Bloomberg

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw

Holiday gatherings frequently serve as framework for plays about dysfunctional families, and Thanksgiving, written by Tiffany Cascio and directed by Kitty Lindsay, is one of them. Although not nearly as clever as it tries to be, it features several choice roles for women, a few good laugh lines and, in the case of this Hollywood Fringe premiere production, one outstanding performance.

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Rob Stevens – Haines His Way

Everyone has probably had that family get together—a wedding, a funeral—or more likely a holiday dinner that they wish they could avoid. The saying goes we can choose our friends but we are stuck with the family we are given.

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Now running through June 23

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THE INVENTOR AND THE ESCORT at the Lounge Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Thursday, April 6th, 2017
Photo by Keenan Henson

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

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INLAND EMPRESS at the Lounge Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Thursday, January 28th, 2016
Photo by Ed Krieger

Photo by Ed Krieger

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw

In Tom Cavanaugh’s implausible melodrama, the unsettled lives of a family of women grow more turbulent when their former breadwinner shows up after seven years in prison. Read more…

Now running through February 28

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WIT at the Lounge Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, January 14th, 2015
WIT-135

Photo courtesy: Stage Against the Machine

Neal Weaver  – Stage Raw

English Professor Vivian Bearing, Ph.D. (Kelly Carlton), the central figure in Margaret Edson’s clever and provocative play, has won distinction in the academic world for her masterly critical edition of John Donne’s Religious Sonnets, but scholarship and fame can’t protect her from the ravages of terminal ovarian cancer.

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Running indefinitely

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Hah Nah, The Lounge Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Tuesday, November 20th, 2012

Photo by Amy Texter.

 

Hah Nah by Joy Cha.

 

Mayank Keshaviah – LA Weekly

A Korean U.S. Army field nurse trying to track down her missing father while encamped in his hometown during the Korean War seems like fertile ground. But
the tree that emerges from it, nurtured by writer and performer Joy Cha, unfortunately never bears fruit. Read more…

 

 

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