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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…  

LA EGOISTA at Skylight Theatre

Lys Perez and Chanel Castañeda. Photo by Jenny Graham.
March 17, 2023Patrick Chavis – LA Theatre Bites West Coast Premiere: La Egoista @ Skylight Theatre – 8.2 out of 10 – Good Show! LA Theatre Bites Recommended! More…  

HAROLD AND MAUDE at Group Repertory Theatre

Clara Rodriguez and Landon Beatty. Photo by Doug Engalla.
March 17, 2023Rob Stevens – Haines His Way. GRT’s production uses projections on the back wall and on smaller screens that come and go from the wings in an attempt to open up the action. Unfortunately, they don’t add much to the show and Larry Eisenberg’s lackadaisical direction lets the production drag on. Most scenes just meander
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SNOWHITE at Santa Monica Playhouse

Photo courtesy of Santa Monica Playhouse
March 15, 2023Lara J. Altunian – Stage Raw When it comes to classic fairy tales, there’s always room for updated adaptations — particularly when it comes to introducing one with antiquated values to a new generation of audiences. Santa Monica Playhouse’s rendition of the Brothers Grimm’s Snow White spins the narrative of a helpless young girl into
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MEAN GIRLS at Segerstrom Center for the Arts

Photo by Jenny Anderson
March 13, 2023Dana Martin – Stage Raw …Mean Girls is updated from the movie in order to reflect an era of smartphones and selfies but still manages to feel dated. Even the most feared book in school, the almighty Burn Book, loses a bit of its sting. Yet — Mean Girls doesn’t talk down to its audience
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LOVE AND INFORMATION at Antaeus Theatre Company

Photo by Jenny Graham
March 9, 2023Katie Buenneke – Theatre Digest Through some unlucky combination of script, direction, cast, set design, and video design, this felt more like sitting through a scene study class than a professional play. Somehow, I hadn’t seen a play by Caryl Churchill before, but I’m in no rush to see another. Read more… Patrick Chavis –
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY MCKENNA at the Hudson Backstage Theatre

Photo by Steven Silverman
March 7, 2023Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw Playwright-director Steven Silverman’s dark yet amiable comedy offers up a multi-ethnic family whose members, despite living or being raised in racially turbulent Chicago, have no apparent animus over each other’s skin colors. No, these folks are dealing with more explosive issues common to many a kith and kin, regardless of
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Archive for March 2014 – Page 2

CINNAMON GIRL at Greenway Court Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, March 19th, 2014
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Photo by Blake Boyd

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  – ArtsInLA

The heroine of this world premiere musical, with book and lyrics by Velina Hasu Houston and music by Nathan Wang, is the beautiful adolescent Salani (Jennifer Hubilla), who was born and raised on a cinnamon plantation in Ceylon. Her life becomes unmoored and she is set adrift when her mother is killed in a mysterious fire. Salani seems to be unaware that her mother was the mistress of the master of the plantation, Ranil (Dom Magwilli), but Salani suspects that he is responsible for her mother’s death. Read more…

Now running through April 6.

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SLOWGIRL at the Geffen Playhouse

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Tuesday, March 18th, 2014

"Slowgirl"

Photo by Katie Falkenberg

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 that hang above Takeshi Kata’s delicate, bare-bones set, configured tennis-court style with the audience on either side (an approach that heightens naturalism but also impedes sightlines). Read more…

Dany Margolies  -  Arts In LA

Two very human, rather intriguing characters reveal their wounds and their coping mechanisms in this Greg Pierce play. Under Randall Arney’s direction, their story plays out with universality and specificity. But the crux of the work is in the seconds when nothing is said, building to an electrifying moment of crushing silence.  Read more...

Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter

Sterling (William Petersen), a former lawyer turned recluse in the Costa Rican jungle is surprised by the arrival of the 17-year-old niece he barely knows, Becky (Rae Gray), a loquacious high-schooler apparently hot-footing it out of town for a week’s obscurity in the wilderness. Unaccustomed to being communicative, Sterling slowly acquires a sense of Becky’s travail, disconcertingly analogous to his own retreat from the hurly burly of the censorious opinions of others, and their individual remorse over each’s moral negligences.  Read more…

Pauline Adamek  – ArtsBeatLA

“OMIGOD! Like, whatEVER!” A taciturn man in exile shares the stage with a gratingly garrulous teen in Greg Pierce’s one act two-hander Slowgirl, now playing at the Geffen until April 27.

Slowgirl is about a guy who, we learn, ran away from some scandal in the US seven years previously and retired to Costa Rica. William Petersen plays ‘Uncle Sterling.’ He has built a labyrinth on his property that he walks in a meditative way daily.  Read more…
Now playing through April 27.

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HARMONY at the Ahmanson Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Tuesday, March 18th, 2014
Photo by Craig Schwartz

Photo by Craig Schwartz

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 work on the piece was clearly called for in that initial rendition. Read more…

Jonas Schwartz -  TheaterMania

In the new musical with music by Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman, Jews and gentiles find Harmony together, celebrating their differences in a fascistic world that stomps on individuality. The play may still need a little fine-tuning, but as a whole, Harmony is an enriching experience with several memorable numbers. Many flaws can be overlooked due to this production’s excellent cast and insightful staging by Tony Speciale. Read more…

Neal Weaver  – Stage Raw

This potent new musical, with music by Barry Manilow and book and lyrics by Bruce Sussman, focuses on a fascinating, little-known footnote to history. It tells the largely factual tale of the Comedian Harmonists, the six-man singing group who were the first boy-band to become, in the 1930s, an international success. (Composer Manilow calls them the Beatles of their day.)  Read more..

Don Shirley – LA Observed

Center Theatre Group has been obsessed with young guys’ bands in recent years. Just since 2013 began, CTG offered the forgettable new musicals “Backbeat” (about the early Beatles) and “The Black Suits” (about a Long Island garage band.) The 2011-12 season at CTG’s Ahmanson Theatre included post-Broadway runs of the dramatically threadbare “American Idiot” (with a Green Day score) and “Fela!” (about the Afro-pop star.) Read more…

Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter

 A long-gestating dream project by composer Barry Manilow and his collaborating wordsmith Bruce Sussman (Copacabana: The Musical, the neglected Disney animated feature Oliver and Company), Harmony is an ambitious musical doggedly committed to mimicking its betters: near beer Sondheim, watered down Kander & Ebb, tempered Rodgers & Hammerstein. Read more…

Now running through April 13.

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Award recipients for the 2013 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards

By Sharon · Comments (0)
Tuesday, March 18th, 2014

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 recipients for the 2013 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards are as follows:

Production

  • One Night in Miami…, John Perrin Flynn and Roxanne Hart, Rogue Machine Theatre
  • Our Class, Son of Semele Ensemble, Atwater Village Theatre
  • The Scottsboro Boys, Center Theatre Group, Ahmanson Theatre
  • Walking the Tightrope, Debbie Devine and Jay McAdams, 24th Street Theatre

McCulloh Award for Revival

  • Dreamgirls, Mike Abramson and Dolf Ramos, DOMA Theatre Co. at The MET Theatre
  • The Normal Heart, Deborah Lawlor and Stephen Sachs, The Fountain Theatre

Direction

  • Jessica Kubzansky, R II, The Theatre @ Boston Court
  • Matthew McCray, Our Class, Son of Semele Ensemble at Atwater Village Theatre

Writing

  • Jennifer Haley, The Nether, Kirk Douglas Theatre

Writing (Adaptation)

  • Richard Alger, Track 3, Theatre Movement Bazaar and Bootleg Theater at Bootleg Theater
  • Nancy Keystone, Alcestis, The Theatre @ Boston Court and Critical Mass Performance Group at The Theatre @ Boston Court

Musical Score

  • John Kander and Fred Ebb, The Scottsboro Boys, Ahmanson Theatre

Music Direction

  • Corey Hirsch, A Man of No Importance, Good People Theater Company at Lillian Theatre
  • Ross Seligman, One Night With Janis Joplin, Pasadena Playhouse

Choreography

  • Matthew Bourne, Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty, Ahmanson Theatre

Lead Performance

  • Tim Cummings, The Normal Heart, The Fountain Theatre
  • Mary Bridget Davies, One Night With Janis Joplin, Pasadena Playhouse
  • Constance Jewell Lopez, Dreamgirls, DOMA Theatre Co. at The MET Theatre
  • Paige Lindsey White, Walking the Tightrope, 24th Street Theatre

Featured Performance

  • Sabrina Elayne Carten, One Night With Janis Joplin, Pasadena Playhouse,
  • Michael Nehring, Our Class, Son of Semele Ensemble at Atwater Village Theatre
  • Patrick Stafford, Red, International City Theatre

Ensemble Performance

  • One Night in Miami…, Rogue Machine Theatre
  • Our Class, Son of Semele Ensemble at Atwater Village Theatre
  • We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884–1915, Matrix Theatre

Solo Performance

  • Lorenzo Pisoni, Humor Abuse, Mark Taper Forum

Set Design

  • Adrian W. Jones, The Nether, Kirk Douglas Theatre

Lighting Design

  • Paule Constable, Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty, Ahmanson Theatre
  • Jeremy Pivnick, R II, The Theatre @ Boston Court

Costume Design

  • Lez Brotherston, Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty, Ahmanson Theatre
  • Michael Mullen, Dreamgirls, DOMA Theatre Co. at The MET Theatre

Sound Design

  • John Zalewski, Walking the Tightrope, 24th Street Theatre

Video Design

  • Adam Flemming, The Normal Heart, The Fountain Theatre
  • Kaitlyn Pietras (Projection Design), R II, The Theatre @ Boston Court

Movement/Fight Choreography

  • Ned Mochel, Cops and Friends of Cops, VS. Theatre

Illusions/Magic Design

  • Johnny Thompson, Play Dead, Geffen Playhouse

 Special Awards

  • The Ted Schmitt Award for the world premiere of an outstanding new play was awarded to Kemp Powers for One Night in Miami … The award was accompanied by an offer to publish by Samuel French, Inc.
  • The Polly Warfield Award for an excellent season in a small to mid-size theatre was awarded to Actors Co-op. The award was accompanied by an honorarium, funded by the Nederlander Organization.
  • The Margaret Harford Award for sustained excellence in theatre was awarded to L.A. Theatre Works.  The award was accompanied by an honorarium, funded by The Knitting Factory Entertainment Company.
  • The Joel Hirschhorn Award for outstanding achievement in musical theatre was awarded to David Elzer.  The award was accompanied by an honorarium, funded by an anonymous donor.
  • The Milton Katselas Award for career or special achievement in direction was awarded to Bart DeLorenzo. The award was accompanied by an honorarium, funded by The Beverly Hills Playhouse.
  • The Kinetic Lighting Award for outstanding achievement in theatrical design was awarded Angela Balogh Calin, for her sustained achievement in costume design.  The award was accompanied by an honorarium, funded by Kinetic Lighting.

 

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TALHOTBLOND: at the Ruskin Group Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Saturday, March 15th, 2014

THB-RimerPatrickGavin

Photo by Ed Krieger

 

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 long running production that takes audiences on a tour of one of Los Angeles most majestic and storied homes, Greystone Manor in the Trousdale Estates.

For TALHOTBLOND:, however, Bates takes a true-life story that feels a little past its use-by date…

Read more…

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FIVE SMALL FIRES at Bootleg Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, March 14th, 2014
fsf

Photo by Jesse Bonnell

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 of people who join up, and how cult living changes them, such musings don’t enter into the scope of this new work. Read more…

Now running through March 28.

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CLOSELY RELATED KEYS at the Lounge Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Monday, March 10th, 2014
Photo by Ed Krieger

Photo by Ed Krieger

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 In LA

Two strong women come to grips with their shared family history in this world premiere by Wendy Graf. But in comparing and contrasting their reactions to the play’s events, Graf packs in so many ideas that each idea starts to feel superficially presented. In addition, Graf makes one of the women so in need of an arc, the audience can predict where their story is going. Read more…

Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter

An interesting story told with intelligence and sensitivity, if not quite command and control, Closely Related Keys is poised precariously on the cusp of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a moment in time when residual paranoia remained as raw as the vulnerability suppressed by its protagonist…Read more…

Now running through March 30.

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STAND-OFF AT HWY #37 at the Autry Museum

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Sunday, March 9th, 2014

st

 

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. Read more…

Now running through March 16.

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A NICE INDIAN BOY at East West Players

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Saturday, March 8th, 2014
Photo by Michael Lamont

Photo by Michael Lamont

 David C. Nichols – LA Times

“Modern Family” goes Bollywood in “A Nice Indian Boy,” now receiving a stalwart premiere at East West Players. Although Madhuri Shekar’s same-sex variant on the time-honored culture-clash comedy has its unfinished aspects, it’s pleasantly funny entertainment. Read more…

Now running through March 23.

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HENRY V at Pacific Resident Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, March 7th, 2014

hn

Photo by Erika Boxler

Margaret Gray – LA Times

The Pacific Resident Theatre’s new production of Shakespeare’s “Henry V,” directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos, is about as spare and unvarnished as the theater gets. The set consists of a few folding chairs in the blackest, boxiest of conceivable black-box stages.

There’s one prop: a tinny-looking crown. Read more…

Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter

Forget the spectacle of the movie versions of Henry V by Laurence Olivier or Kenneth Branagh (each making their film directing debuts). This is a Shakespeare of the imagination, consistent with a text originally conceived for a less than lavish playhouse, the Bard of resourceful invention and indefatigable conceit. Eleven actors, seven in multiple roles, commence with a paperback and loose sides at a reading table that is quickly cast aside as the Chorus (Alex Fernandez) exuberantly conjures up in our fancy the scale of great nations inexorably impelled to conflict upon a sanguinary battlefield. Read more…

Neal Weaver  – ArtsInLA

Shakespeare spread the story of King Henry V over four plays. We first hear of him, but don’t see him, in Richard II, as Prince Hal, the wastrel prodigal son of King Henry IV. In Henry IV, Part 1, we see Prince Hal’s adventures among the London lowlife and his friendship with the fat rogue Sir John Falstaff. Hal saves the life of King Henry in the war against the rebel lords, kills the warrior Hotspur in single combat, and begins to earn the respect of the king and restore his tainted reputation.
Read more…
Now running through May 11.

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DERBY DAY at the Elephant Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, March 7th, 2014
Photo by Alex Moy

Photo by Alex Moy

Margaret Gray – LA Times

For much of Samuel Brett Williams’ “Derby Day,” in its L.A. premiere at the Elephant Theatre (which gave Williams’ “Revelation” its world premiere last year), the sole sympathetic character onstage is Becky (Kimberly Alexander), a waitress at Oaklawn Park Race Track in Arkansas. Read more…

Neal Weaver  – ArtsinLA

You might call this one Arkansas Racetrack Gothic. Samuel Brett Williams’s play centers on the irascible Ballard clan of Hot Springs, Ark., whose hard-drinking and internecine warfare give a bad name to dysfunction. As one of the characters observes,  “We don’t play well with others.”  Read more…
Now running through March 22.

 

 

 

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MY NAME IS ASHER LEV at the Fountain Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, March 5th, 2014

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Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter

Chaim Potok’s 1972 bestseller My Name is Asher Lev has been deftly adapted by Aaron Posner and receives a peerless realization by a splendid cast. Posner reduces the novel to its essential conflicts, yet rather than diluting the impact he effectively intensifies the immediacy of the emotional payoffs. Read more…

Don Shirley – LA Observed

…….at the Fountain Theatre in east Hollywood, “My Name Is Asher Lev” explores another form of Jewish liberation — only here the escape isn’t from slave masters but from the family-enforced strictures of a Chasidic brand of orthodox Judaism itself. Read more…

Neal Weaver  – ArtsInLA

The novel My Name Is Asher Lev, by the late Chaim Potok, is a bildungsroman about the youth and coming of age of a young artist, whose vocation as a painter puts him at odds with his religious faith, his family, and his community. The novel offers an interior drama, as well as an expansive view covering a period of 20 years with a multitude of characters. Read more…

Now running through April 13.

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