LADCC Critics 
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Sparkles (Barkley Romero) is a 17-year-old Latina who lives with her mother, Lisa (Lena Marie), in a Highland Park house which tends to slide downhill whenever they miss a mortgage payment. (This is magic realism with a vengeance!) Read more… Now running through November 13
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw The Geffen Playhouse has had a fruitful relationship with playwright Donald Margulies, resulting in memorable productions such as Shipwrecked! An Entertainment, Dinner with Friends and Collected Stories. It’s only natural the theatre would want to continue this successful streak, which leads to the current revival of Margulies’ earlier work, The … Read more
Jonas Schwartz – TheaterMania During its 25th anniversary season, A Noise Within revives Molière’s madcap play The Imaginary Invalid after first performing it in 2001, but this time with Constance Congdon’s 2007 adaptation. Zany as a Marx Brothers movie, the farce delves into hypochondria and the perversity of the patriarchy. Though some of the modern speech in Congdon’s text … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw In The Recommendation, playwright Jon Caren offered a searing take on class and privilege. In The Need to Know he examined how the behavior of an unconventional person might trigger suspicion and paranoia in others. Read more… Now running through October 30
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw Sometimes a play can go up a little too early — and I am afraid that is the case with this drama co-written by Alicia Adams and Peter Monro. Its bones are in all the right places, but its narrative is slight and its tone is heavy and flat. Read … Read more
Lovell Estell III – Stage Raw Irish playwright-performer Pat Kinevane returns to the Odyssey Theater with a new piece that explores “life lived on the fringes of society.” Kinevane’s previous works, Forgotten and Silent, were performed at the Odyssey in 2011 and 2012, and with Underneath, the third piece in the trilogy, he brings us a very unconventional ghost … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw It’s been a familiar gambit for some time for actors to take a famous play and turn it into a one-person show ‑ essaying all the roles to display his or her virtuosity — but I’d never heard of the reverse being done until now. Read more… Dany Margolies – The … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw This lightweight comedy, largely about legacy, by TV veteran and former sportscaster Ken Levine revolves around the hopes and fears of four L.A. sportswriters who are covering a baseball game that’s gone into extra innings. Read more… Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA The sitcom originated in the early days of … Read more
Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze It’s a shame to reveal how “he Tragedy of JFK (as told by Wm. Shakespeare)T” gets recounted, but it seems impossible to write about it without divulging the basis for this genius concept. Read more… Now running through November 6
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw William Wycherley’s The Country Wife premiered in 1675. Charles II had then been on the throne for 15 years and his libertine court was in full swing. Wycherley’s play about a womanizing trickster who pretends to be a eunuch so he might go around seducing married women without provoking their husband’s suspicions … Read more