David C. Nichols – LA Times Fair is foul and foul is fair in “Macbeth” at A Noise Within. William Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy of lethal ambition receives an emphatically respectable albeit uneven production. Read more… Now running through May 11.
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 … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Salani (Jennifer Hubilla), the central character in Velina Hasu Houston’s charmless chick lit musical, is a lovely orphaned teen, an upright individual who must contend with poverty, hard labor, and arrogant or lustful employers before triumphantly attaining freedom and self-realization. The story is set in British Ceylon circa 1939; Read more… Neal Weaver – … Read more
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net Beloved pop songwriter-singer Barry Manilow (“Copacabana,” “Mandy”) and his longtime collaborator, lyricist-librettist Barry Sussman, are fulfilling a longtime dream with “Harmony,” their seriocomic musical. The show was introduced in an appealing production in 1997 at La Jolla Playhouse in Southern California. This project had always aimed for Broadway, though additional … Read more
The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle has announced the winners and special awards for excellence in Los Angeles and Orange County theatre for the year 2013. The 45th Annual Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards ceremony took place Monday, March 17 at the Colony Theatre in Burbank, and was hosted by Nicole Parker. The award … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times In Greg Pierce’s “Slowgirl” at the Geffen Playhouse, 17-year-old Becky (Rae Gray) comes to visit her Uncle Sterling (William Petersen), who left the U.S. years earlier for Costa Rica. She’s freaked out by his primitive jungle lifestyle, which is charmingly evoked by Richard Woodbury’s sound design and the tropical leaves … Read more
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA In TALHOTBLOND:, a working man falls for a hot woman he meets in an internet chatroom. His increasing obsession has a dramatic impact on his work and home lives. Playwright Kathrine Bates has developed an oeuvre taking real life crimes as the starting point for her dramas. Her most notable work is The Manor, a hugely popular and … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA Poor Dog Group’s ambitious Five Small Fires explores the phenomenon of cults, particularly the behavior of those who find a haven within them. The Cal Arts–rooted collective professes to have been exploring cults and ritual for a long time, though if it has been thinking much about the types and motivations … Read more
Deborah Klugman – ArtsBeatLA Sporting a message of sisterhood and tolerance, Wendy Graf’s well-intentioned but clumsy drama builds around two half-sisters: Julia (Diarra Kilpatrick), an ambitious attorney living and working in Manhattan, and Neyla (Yvonne Huff), her newly discovered sibling, whom Julia’s father had sired when he was a soldier in Iraq. Read more… Dany Margolies – Arts … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times In “Stand-Off at Hwy #37,” a world premiere by Native Voices at the Autry, playwright Vickie Ramirez probes the ambiguous political landscape between Native and non-Native American territories… The issues are well laid out, each of the performers is strong and the script is often pointed and witty, but Ramirez’s … Read more