Layout Image

Archive for August 2015 – Page 2

GOD’S MAN IN TEXAS at 2nd Stage

Photo by Michael Lamont

Photo by Michael Lamont

Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA

Media exposure to the tumult in evangelical mega-churches brought about by the clash of money, power, and ego makes David Rambo’s 1999 cautionary tale a familiar story to modern audiences. The examination of faith, conscience, and ambition is great fodder for drama.  Read more…

Les Spindle –  Frontiers L.A.

Writer-director David Rambo‘s seriocomic 1999 play is about men of the cloth who experience personal soul-searching amid institutional power struggles, and this production surpasses the Geffen Playhouse’s 2002 L.A.-premiere rendition.  Read more…

Margaret Gray – LA Times

The ensconced veteran reluctant to give up the spotlight. The impatient successor nipping at his heels. This scenario has launched plots from “Paradise Lost” to “The Late Shift.” Read more…

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw

Power can be a heady drug – and when mixed with religion even headier still.   For example, can a man who perceives himself as a conduit for God’s grace easily relinquish that identity? Maybe not. Read more…

Now running through September 5.

ALWAYS…PATSY CLINE at the Sierra Madre Playhouse

Photo by Gina Long

Photo by Gina Long

Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly

Country Music Hall of Famer Patsy Cline was celebrated not only for her melodic voice and versatile repertoire but for her warmth, humility and readiness to promote the careers of others, especially women.  Read more…

Now running through September 27.

ALL AMERICAN GIRL – InterACT Theatre Company at the Lounge Theatre

Photo by Rick Friesen

Photo by Rick Friesen

Jenny Lower – LA Weekly

In All American Girl, a world premiere from InterACT Theatre Company, radical Islam doesn’t take hold of its main character’s life all at once. For Katie, or Karima, as she comes to be known, Islam follows a conservative Christian upbringing, volunteer work in Boston’s slum-poor Dorchester neighborhood, and a stint at Fordham University. When she meets Igbal, a brooding Indian immigrant and wrestling champion, he educates her on the ways Muslims are brutalized by Hindus in his home country. Read more…

Now running through August 30.

SNEAKY OLE TIME at the Ruskin Group Theatre

Photo by Ed Krieger

Photo by Ed Krieger

Myron Meisel – Stage Raw

I listen to a lot of country music (Charlie Louvin on the turntable at the moment), though for the most part I cannot abide what plays under that pretense on the radio. Most of that seems irretrievably suburban, though one imagines that’s what become of most of the actual countryside over the past half century.

Les Spindle –  Frontiers L.A.

There’s lots of flirtin’ and fussin’ and Country/Western twangin’—plus 10 characters in search of a credible plot—in this sitcom-level world-premiere musical, written byStephen Mazur. Developer-director Michael Myers’ production shoehorns in 24 existing songs by Grammy-winning tunesmith Paul Overstreet, primarily dealing with the battle of the sexes. em>Read more…

Read more.

Through September 19

HAIRSPRAY at the James Armstrong Theatre

Photo by Alex Madrid

Photo by Alex Madrid

Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze

Thank goodness we’re not living in the 1960s, when racism was at a peak, women were shamed for being overweight, and men with poofy lacquered hair and big mouths grabbed huge TV ratings.

Read more…

Now running through August 16.

OFF BOOK at the Secret Rose Theater

T32-16-REVIEW-Off-Book-701x336

Bob Verini  -   Stage Raw

A modest variation on Noises Off with a hat tip to the musical Mystery of Edwin Drood, Khai Dattoli’s Off Book seemed to inspire considerable mirth in the small but indomitable crowd at the Secret Rose Theater on a recent Friday evening. I wish I could have shared more of that mirth, but I want to encourage the plucky young Falling Apples Theater Company because there’s an energy there that should be prized and refined.

Read more…

Now running through Aug. 22.

GHOST LIGHT at Atwater Village Theatre

Photo by Troy Blendell

Photo by Troy Blendell

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw

There’s an old superstition that an empty theater should never be left dark – hence the term ghost light, referring to the solitary light that illuminates the house after everyone’s gone home.

Read more…

Now running through August 27.

CITIZEN: AN AMERICAN LYRIC at the Fountain Theatre

Photo by Ed Krieger

Photo by Ed Krieger

Myron Meisel – Stage Raw

Citizen: An American Lyric by poet Claudia Rankine, was published to great acclaim last year, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize for poetry. In this theatrical realization, it represents an uniquely valuable tool not merely for a keener awareness of the ubiquity of everyday racism but for the precious need of every human being for self-examination, if any of us is ever truly to become whomever we truly are. Read more…

Now running through September 14.

NO HOMO at the Atwater Village Theater

Photo by Corwin Evans

Photo by Corwin Evans

Pauline Adamek  – Stage Raw

Brandon Baruch’s dramedy No Homo, ostensibly about the gay scene in L.A., was a multi-award winner at last year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival. The play went on appear at to New York’s International Fringe fest and underwent some reworking, including an altered ending. It now returns to L.A. for a short season at Atwater Village Theatre, but No Homo hasn’t quite made the complete transition from rough-and-ready fringe to polished, legit stage. Read more…

Now running through August 23.

LUKAS ROOM – Rogue Machine at Theatre/Theater,

luka_JohnPerrinFlynn

Photo by John Perrin Flynn

Les Spindle –  Frontiers L.A.

Rob Mersola‘s dicey new comedy Luka’s Room benefits from the efforts of a splendid ensemble cast under the crisp direction of Joshua Bitton.  Read more…

Myron Meisel – Stage Raw

His father’s finances suddenly gone south (or perhaps merely hidden during the pendancy of his most recent divorce), 19 year old Luka Lupatelli (Nick Marini) must transfer from Arizona State to a San Fernando Valley community college and occupy the old paternal bedroom at addled Grandma Franca’s (Joanna Lipari) meager digs, across the hall from his ne’er-do-well Uncle Nick (Alex Fernandez), recently sprung from another short stint in County Jail. Read more…

Now running through Sept. 23

DARKSIDE at the Garage Theatre

hoto by Matt Kollar

hoto by Matt Kollar

Dany Margolies  -  Long Beach Press-Telegram

Emiily is in an ethics class with her fellow classmates when her teacher Mr. Baggot poses a thought experiment conducted by Ethics Man, a superhero moral philosopher. Ethics Man posits a train, hurtling toward a washed-out bridge. But if he switches the tracks, he will certainly kill one boy standing on those safer tracks.  Read more…

Now running through Sept. 5.

AUGUST OSAGE COUNTY at the Theatricum Botanicum

August-Osage-County_5

Steven Leigh Morris  – Stage Raw

Perhaps it’s Quixotic, but I find Theatricum Botanicum to be a kind of beacon, a shining light on the hills of Topanga Canyon. The alfresco venue was co-founded by TV actor and Old Leftie Will Geer, whose fame was cemented – if fame is ever cemented – by his role as grandfather Zebulin Tylor Walton in the 1970s TV-series The Waltons. Read more…