LADCC Critics 
Katie Buenneke – Stage Raw Nice Iranian Girl, Layla Rumi (a.k.a. Layla Kaleigh)’s one-woman show at the Whitefire Theatre, feels half-baked. The 50-minute monologue, which plays weekly in Sherman Oaks as part of Whitefire’s Solofest, follows Rumi from her early years growing up in Tehran to 2009, when her daughter was born in Los Angeles. Read … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw I am taking an online class from my old college about comparative fairy tales – not the cutesy Disney stuff, but the darker, more horrifying tales of little children falling into wells and drowning, or witches being shoved into ovens and roasted alive. So perhaps it was no surprise that, … Read more
Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen In the opening scene of The Found Dog Ribbon Dance, a world premiere play by Dominic Finocchiaro currently being presented by the Echo Theater Company, a man wearing a Lucha mask uses a webcam to record himself dancing, with ribbons, of course, to “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” by … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw In 1985 police dropped a bomb on a predominantly black middle-class neighborhood in Philadelphia. They were targeting MOVE, a strange radical group known for staging vociferous profanity-laden demonstrations against the Establishment. Read more… Now running through February 18
Jonas Schwartz – TheaterMania finds Virginia (Penny Fuller) alone in her home for the first time after her husband, Ed (they were childhood sweethearts), passes away. Worse, she discovers that Ed’s business has been failing for years. As president of the company now, Virginia finds herself on the hook for almost $2 million… Read more… … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw It may be one of the unintended consequences of the 2017 Presidential Ascension of the Infernal One that we have a chance to witness the blooming of art in protest and an attempt to confront and shake up the new status quo. If we are lucky, there will be many … Read more
Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze Nine short plays by nine playwrights fit together snugly to make a brisk evening of theater in Little Fish Theatre’s 15th annual “Pick of the Vine” play festival. Read more… Now running through February 11
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Henry (Juan Lozano), a reclusive hermit, is asleep in his bed in a remote cabin in the wilds of Alaska during a white-out blizzard. The door bursts open and a young woman, Rosannah (Roxanna Kaye), enters, wearing a wedding gown complete with veil. Read more… Now running through February 11
Katie Buenneke – Stage Raw The Last Vig is billed as a show starring Burt Young, the Academy Award-nominated actor who played Paulie in the Rocky series. Unfortunately, Young’s performance is one of many big problems in the show, which plays through February 19 at the Zephyr Theatre. Read more… Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Mobsters, especially Italian ones, … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw A worldly 50-something lesbian from the Bronx moves in with a naïve 50-something woman in Iowa and changes her roommate’s life. That’s the gist of Jen Silverman’s stilted one-act, whose main appeal is its focus on the lives of older women, usually given short shrift in American film and theater. … Read more