Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Big Night is one of those sitcom-like stage comedies that tries super hard to tackle big themes but trips on the very glibness it purports to satirize. Read more… Katie Buenneke – Stage Raw Big Night is a play with aspirations bigger than it can deliver on. The new work by playwright Paul … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw Theatre is an inherently magical experience. When done correctly, a stage, a set and some actors become a world. The audience offers up its suspension of disbelief, and art is created. The question is: Is a magic show inherently theatrical? In the talented hands of close-up card magic virtuoso Siegfried … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw La Razon Blindada, Argentinian playwright Aristides Vargas’s soulful, songful play (performed in Spanish with English captions) now in revival at the 24th Street Theatre, concludes with a dedication “to those who find their dreams unjustly encircled by walls.” Read more… Now running through October 15
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Playwright Simon Stephens (Heisenberg, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) deconstructs Bizet’s opera Carmen in an attempt to illuminate contemporary issues of loneliness, isolation and all-around anomie. He includes a couple of Bizet’s arias, the “Habanera” and the “Seguidilla,” as well as a snippet of the Toreador Song, but otherwise … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw Playwright Oliver Cotton’s elegiac and unexpectedly thrilling drama carries the weight of the world on its shoulders — not just the pain and sadness of growing older, or of lost or squandered love, but the legacy of the Holocaust itself. Read more… Now running through October 30
Katie Buenneke – Stage Raw Mounting the first regional production of a show that recently played on Broadway puts the creative team between a rock and a hard place: Is it better to do a new take on the material, or is it better to emulate the original production? With Once, playing at the South … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times Joe Morton, best known these days as Rowan “Papa” Pope, Olivia Pope’s fiercely protective father on the ABC series “Scandal,” is in the posh Founders Room of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. It’s where next month he will open “Turn Me Loose,” a play … Read more
Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens has been a staple of western literature since its publication in 1859, and has been adapted many times over—as movies, television mini-series, radio shows, a short-lived Broadway musical, … Read more
Hoyt Hilsman – Huffington Post There can be no doubt that the amphitheater at the Getty Villa is a spectacular venue for the presentation of any play, but most especially a play by one of the ancient Greeks.Read more… Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze Ancient Greek dramatist Euripides’ play “Iphigenia in Aulis” could seem … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Capital & Main The 2007-08 financial crisis and the collapse of the housing bubble created lots of heartache for lots of people. Playwright Stephanie Alison Walker was among the one in 54 homeowners nationwide to receive a foreclosure notice in 2008. The experience prompted her to write American Home…. Read more… Now running … Read more