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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

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 April 2013 – Page 2

The Whale, South Coast Repertory

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013
Photo by Scott Brinegar/SCR.

Photo by Scott Brinegar/SCR.

 

The Whale by Samuel D. Hunter.

 

Deborah Klugman – ArtsBeatLA

In Samuel D. Hunter’s The Whale, Charlie (Matthew Arkin) an obese gay man confronting his own mortality reaches out to the daughter he walked out on years ago. Like Hunter’s play A Bright New Boise (produced to justifiable acclaim last year by Rogue Artists in Los Angeles), this drama is set in Idaho, and centers on one troubled man’s quest to connect with lost kin, and secondarily on a younger man’s overwhelming desire to connect with God.
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The Beaux’ Stratagem, A Noise Within

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Saturday, April 20th, 2013
ANW 12-13 Beaux078

photo by Craig Schwartz.

 

 

The Beaux’ Strategem  Thornton Wilder and Ken Ludwig’s adaptation of George Farquhar’s 18th century farce.

 

Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly

Thornton Wilder and Ken Ludwig both contributed to this adaptation of George Farquhar’s early-18th-century comedy, which touches on the tribulations of the unhappily married and the moral shortcomings of the privileged classes. The story features two penniless rapscallions, Jack (Blake Ellis) and Tom (Freddy Douglas), who set out to seduce rich ladies in order to gain control of their fortunes. Read more...

 

 

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Snapshot, Greenway Arts

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Saturday, April 20th, 2013

Sinnott-2-higher-res

 

Snapshot by Mitzi Sinnott.

 

Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly

Mitzi Sinnott was not yet born when her African-American father was drafted to fight in Vietnam. Like many soldiers, he returned a shattered man haunted by guilt and unable to emotionally connect with his wife and daughter. First performed in 2004, Sinnott’s solo show juxtaposes family history and her experience as a person of mixed-race heritage with her attempts to locate and reconnect with her vanished dad.   Read more...

 

 

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Orange Flower Water, Creative Collection Production

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Saturday, April 20th, 2013

Photo credit Keith Myers.

 

Orange Flower Water by Craig Wright.

 

Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly

In Craig Wright’s 80-minute domestic drama, a pair of mid-western married couples face the dissolution of their respective marriages. David and Cathy Calhoun (Jeff Denton and Leslie Liberman) and Brad and Beth Youngquist (Mick Thyer and Sarah Ann Schultz) have been friends for a few years before David comes to the realization that he and Beth have been married to the wrong people, instigating an adulterous affair.    Read more…

 

 

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Billy & Ray, Falcon Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, April 12th, 2013
Photo by Chelsea Sutton.

Photo by Chelsea Sutton.

 

Billy & Ray by Mike Bencivenga.

 

Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA

Boasting a superb clowny performance by Kevin Blake as Hollywood filmmaker Billy Wilder, Billy & Ray 
is a light comedy about the making of the groundbreaking motion picture Double Indemnity. Mike Bencivenga’s enjoyable new play is currently running at the Falcon Theatre in Toluca Lake. A producer at Paramount Studios, Joseph Sistrom (Anthony Starke), has just purchased to rights to James M. Cain’s sordid novella Double Indemnity, based on a sensational real-life murder case from 1927. He’s desperate to oversee the making of a hit movie, or risk losing his job. But the studio needs to pass the stringent codes imposed by the Hays Office censors… No sex, no depiction or murder or violence and no dead bodies. A pretty tall order for a slice of crime ‘fiction…’ With its chiaroscuro lighting and tough dialogue, Double Indemnity went on to become the benchmark against which all subsequent film noir movies were compared.   Read more…

 

 

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Neverwhere, Sacred Fools Theatre Company

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, April 12th, 2013

Photo by Jessica Sherman.

 

Neverwhere by Robert Kauzlaric, adapted from the novel written by Neil Gaiman.

 

Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly

After assisting a distraught and injured woman named Door (Paula Rhodes), a milquetoast office worker named Richard (Bryan Bellomo) embarks on a journey that draws him into a fantastical subterranean world that lies beneath London. Neil Gaiman’s Wizard of Oz-esque story promises a magical subculture of strange characters, terrifying beasts and exciting twists and turns, but director Scott Leggett’s disappointing production delivers a meandering fairytale of a series of myth-like quests that lack tension or genuine threat.  Read more…

 

 

 

Terry Morgan – LAist

Over the years I’ve come to respect Sacred Fools Theater Company as one of the most adventurous theatre groups in town. Its history is full of big shows that seem too ambitious for the space and financial means, but time and again the company triumphs, from shows such as The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Gorey Stories in the past to Watson and Stoneface in the present. They’ve done it again with Neverwhere, a big-canvas fantasy that, while rough around the edges, still preserves the charm and magic of Neil Gaiman’s novel.   Read more…

 

 

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Dreamgirls, DOMA Theatre Company

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, April 12th, 2013

Photo: Michael Lamont.

 

Dreamgirls by Tom Eyen and Henry Krieger.

 

David C. Nichols – L.A. Times

Reviewing the 1981 premiere of “Dreamgirls,” critic Frank Rich wrote, “When Broadway history is being made, you can feel it.” To paraphrase him, when Equity-waiver history is being made, it can feel you.  Read more…

 

 

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The Nether, Center Theatre Group

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013

Photo by Craig Schwartz.

 

The Nether by Jennifer Haley.

 

Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA

A creepy, futuristic mystery drama, Jennifer Haley’s The Nether starts off in a grey interrogation room starkly lit by neon lighting, but soon gets very complicated indeed. It transpires that a man named Sims (Robert Joy) is being held for questioning regarding a virtual crime. That is to say, crimes that were perpetrated in a virtual realm of his creation. Is he being held for the crimes or for clandestinely creating a lucrative offshore business? His highly interactive digital site, called “The Hideaway,” is a secret and encrypted realm; a popular retreat where paying users can indulge their fantasies of sex and violence with minors while preserving their anonymity. Everything from sounds, smells and touch have been lovingly (and creepily) recreated.   Read more…

 

 

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Photo Essay — 44th Annual Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards evening

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Monday, April 1st, 2013

The entire nineteen-member troupe of Chance Theater’s West Side Story recreate “The Rumble.”

 

A splendid time was had by all who attended the 44th Annual Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards event. A group of professional theater critics, the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle (LADCC), annually gives awards for excellence in theater.

The 44th Annual Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards ceremony took place Monday, March 18, 2013 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in Downtown Los Angeles. Home-grown productions handily held their own against touring fare at the 44th annual Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards, presented at the Los Angeles Theatre Center on Monday night.

Photos by Jayne Calucag.

Here follows a photo essay of some of the awards presenters, winners and performers:

 

The 44th Annual Awards ceremony was hosted by theater and TV star French Stewart.

 

Awards chair and Variety critic Bob Verini.

 

 

Bonnie Bailey-Reed (L) and Anne Gee Byrd accept the award for ensemble for The Savannah Disputation.

 

Celebration Theatre receives the Margaret Harford Award for sustained excellence. Managing director Michael O’Hara, co-artistic directors Michael Matthews and Michael Shepperd, and former artistic director John Michael Beck.

 

Alan Mandell, one of the winners for lead actor, for his performance in Waiting for Godot.

 

Career achievement winner and set designer Stephen Gifford presenting with LAist critic Terry Morgan.

 

Artistic director of Pasadena Playhouse, Sheldon Epps presents awards to design recipients.

 

 

Troy Kotsur signs as he receives his award for lead performance in Cyrano.

 

Casey Kramer, Tim Cummings, Becky Zajko, and Lisa Pelikan receive the Ensemble award for their work in The New Electric Ballroom.

 

Fight choreographers Kelly Todd and David McCormick accept the award for the fight sequences in “West Side Story.”

 

Artistic director of Center Theatre Group, Michael Ritchie, accepts a special award for an excellent season.

 

John Iacovelli accepts his award for set design for Waiting for Godot.

 

 

 

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