Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly In Elizabethan England, the twelve days of Christmas were festivity days – none more so that the twelfth when the partying could get really crazy and masters and servants, in a frenzy of masquerade, would sometimes exchange roles. It’s from this tradition that Shakespeare is assumed to have derived the … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times Whatever the course, the end is the renown in “All’s Well That Ends Well” in Topanga Canyon. Although it has some stylistic quirks and still-refining aspects, this affable, accessible revival of the Bard’s rambling comic study of class distinctions, romantic ambition and hard-earned wisdom is a representative outing for … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw People are always doing things to Chekhov. At least since the 1950s, when Joshua Logan reset The Cherry Orchard to the post-Civil War American South in a short-lived adaptation called The Wisteria Trees, the Russian playwright has been adapted, spoofed, satirized, de-constructed, re-conceived, re-thought, re-written and plagiarized. Chekhov Derivatives and Recycling has become … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Playwright/director Jonas Oppenheim’s attempt to cast light on the problems of infertile couples while making comic hay in the fashion of a British sex farce is a sore disappointment. Missing the crisp humor abundant in the work of Ayckbourne, Frayn and Orton, the show’s on-stage antics along with much of … Read more