Paul Birchall – Stage Raw Welcome to Fringe Season, when there are so many shows, and all of them taking place within the same 30 block area, you almost need 50 heads to see them all. With so many shows (300 or so) going on, you almost wish you could bend time and space to … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly One of the Hollywood Fringe Festival’s many venues is an old van laden with graffiti and suitcases, with shrinelike decorations in the back. The vehicle, like the show that occurs within and around it, is called Hamlet-Mobile, a notion written and directed by Lauren Ludwig and presented by a company … Read more
Jon Magaril – Curtain Up Broadway is commonly viewed as a middle-of-the-road mecca for lite, tourist-friendly fare. But a surprisingly significant number of current smash hit musicals focus on singing revolutionaries battling stinging oppression. Elphaba defies the the duplicitous Wizard and Miss Morrible; Jean Valjean, France’s Orleanist monarchy; and Elder Price, the Ugandan despot General … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly So you’re a theater having a hard time getting audiences. A new plan under way by the ever-tempestuous L.A.-based theater website Bitter Lemons allows you to pay the website directly for a published review, with the reviewer receiving the lion’s share of that payment — no guarantee of a good review, … Read more
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net First presented in 1980, “Marry Me a Little” offers an entertaining compilation of songs by master composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim, which he originally wrote for other musicals. Each song was dropped, for one reason or another, from its premiere production. Read more… Now running through June 28.
Bob Verini – Arts In LA “Waterfall,” the new cross-cultural, lushly romantic tuner at the Pasadena Playhouse, has admirable ambition, visual splendor and patchy dramaturgy. Working from a Thai source novel, stage veterans Richard Maltby Jr. (words) and David Shire (music) seek to explore cultural identity in personal and political contexts, set against a complex historical backdrop. Read more… Melinda Schupmann … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Katharina Bora was a Cistercian nun who fled the convent and ended up married to Martin Luther. She bore him 6 children and adeptly managed their estate while he took on the business of revolutionizing Christian theology and with it, the whole of Europe. Read more… Now running through June 27.
Margaret Gray – LA Times Here’s a deal, L.A. theaters: We’ll happily watch all the liquored-up-dysfunctional-family-reunion dramas you care to stage, as long as you cast Anne Gee Byrd as the mother. Read more… Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Like his other plays, Samuel D. Hunter’s A Permanent Image is set in the arid cultural wasteland of northern Idaho. Read … Read more
Jonas Schwartz – TheaterMania La Mirada Theatre presents a truncated version of the hit Broadway musical Mary Poppinsunder the direction of Glenn Casale. Audiences can hear the songs they remember from the movie, like “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” and “A Spoonful of Sugar,” but this production exorcises the magic from the production. Read more…
Shirle Gottlieb – Gazette Newspapers I can’t count how many productions I’ve seen of “Death of a Salesman” over the years — including, of course, the inevitable movie that packs the theater whenever or wherever it plays. Read more… Now running through June 20.