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I NEVER SANG FOR MY FATHER at Two Roads Theater

Photo by David List
October 4, 2022Harker Jones – BroadwayWorld I NEVER SANG FOR MY FATHER is a moving meditation on aging, elder care, and the responsibility a grown child feels to both his parents and his own life. The hushed show set in 1965 Westchester, New York, aches with loneliness, regret, and melancholy as widower Gene (Shayne Anderson) struggles to
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KIM’S CONVENIENCE at Laguna Playhouse

Clinton Lowe and Yong Kim. Photo by Jackie Teeple.
October 4, 2022Steven Leigh Morris – Stage Raw Born in the 2011 Toronto Fringe Festival, Korean-Canadian scribe Ins Choi’s widely produced family comedy (spurring a spinoff sitcom on Canadian TV and Netflix) is a paeon to family. It clearly fills a hunger to reinforce embattled institutions (family businesses and family bonds), against children’s quest for independence, and
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THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE at the Mark Taper Forum

Cecily Strong. Photo by Craig Schwartz.
October 2, 2022Katie Buenneke – Theatre Digest Your opinion of this solo performance will likely be determined by your opinion of Cecily Strong. Personally, prior to seeing this show, I found her skilled, but not thrilling, and spending 96 minutes with her here reinforces that assessment. Read more… Harker Jones – BroadwayWorld When THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS
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MONIECE CLARK by Barker Room Rep at The Broadwater

Ekeme Ekanem in Moniece Clark. Photo courtesy of Barker Room Rep.
September 28, 2022Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw LaShea Delaney’s drama, Moniece Clark is about the media’s exploitation of crimes against women and the tendency of law enforcement to downplay those crimes if the victim is a woman of color. You don’t have to look far to uncover the deplorable statistics behind those concerns, to be found in
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A GREAT WILDERNESS by Rogue Machine at The Matrix Theatre

John-Perrin-Flynn and Jeffrey-Delfin in A Great Wilderness. Photo by Alex Neher.
September 26, 2022Terry Morgan – ArtsBeat LA In my experience, ninety percent of the time that there’s an issue with a theatrical production, the problem is the play itself. It’s surprisingly rare for the main trouble to be with the acting or direction or design. And so it is with Samuel D. Hunter’s A Great Wilderness. I’ve
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Pig power plays at ‘Animal Farm.’ ‘Everybody’ is talkin’. Alanis and Hammerstein, but no Natives.

Geoff Elliott, top, with L-R Stanley Andrew Jackson III, Rafael Goldstein, Trisha Miller. Photo by Craig Schwartz.
September 23, 2022Don Shirley – Angeles Stage ‘Animal Farm’. ‘Sanctuary City’. ‘Everybody.’ ‘Oedipus.’ ‘Jagged Little Pill.’ ‘Oklahoma!’ How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the ‘Farm’, after they’ve seen…Pasadena? Yes, I’m paraphrasing the lyrics of an ancient pop song to make the point that Pasadena and nearby neighborhoods constitute the hottest cluster of locally-produced theater right now.
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BABE, Echo Theatre Company at Atwater Village Theatre

Sal Viscuso, Wylie Anderson and Julie Dretzin in Babe. Photo by Cooper Bates.
September 21, 2022Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Babe, Jessica Goldberg’s incisive, skillfully wrought play about sexual harassment (and what should or should not be deemed politically correct), is so titled because, in the course of the narrative, it’s applied, rather casually, to Abigail (Julie Dretzin), one of the playwright’s four exceedingly well-drawn characters. Read more… Katie Buenneke
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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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