LADCC Critics 
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw What happens to a working-class alpha male when he loses his work? The consequences of such are on brilliant display in playwright/performer Raymond J. Barry’s Foreclosure or Yelling at Women Walking Their Dogs, a taut penetrating one-act that rivets around a fractured American family and the never-ending battle between philistinism and … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times The first time Derek DelGaudio performed at the Geffen Playhouse — in the 2012 show “Nothing to Hide,” which he created with co-star Helder Guimarães and director Neil Patrick Harris — DelGaudio ended up staying longer than expected: The magic act, originally slotted for a one-month run, packed the house for 18 weeks. Read more… … Read more
Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA Love, marriage, birth, and death are fodder for Dan LeFranc’s fast-paced narrative spotlighting a couple who meet, marry, and produce several generations in the space of 90 minutes. Read more… Now running through May 22
Margaret Gray – LA Times Craig Wright’s often-produced play “The Pavilion,” now in a lovely revival at Malibu Playhouse, takes place in the early 2000s, in the fictional town of Pine City, Minn. (That’s where Wright, who also has a long list of TV writing credits including “Six Feet Under,” “Lost” and “Dirty Sexy Money,” … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly The American Dream is an unforgiving myth. Birthed in rural America in the early 19th century, it galloped to prominence in the Gilded Age, championed by Horatio Alger’s novels and the ever more ubiquitous notion that wealth and opportunity are equally available to everyone and that any deserving individual who … Read more
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw Moments before heading out to witness Alan Mandell’s staging of Endgame at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, just before sundown, I lit my first yahrtzeit candle to commemorate the first anniversary on the ancient lunar calendar of the death of my father. Leaving it to burn in my absence permitted me to approach Samuel Beckett’s … Read more
Jenny Lower – Stage Raw Lunatics & Actors, the latest world premiere by Jeremy Aluma’s clowning troupe Four Clowns, is less a fixed narrative than a series of funny, unpredictable, and menacing vignettes that excavate the distinction between creative performance and insanity. Playwright David Bridel, dean of the USC School of Dramatic Arts, has crafted … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Sometimes a play registers as up front and personal; one’s immediately drawn into the experience of its characters, heartrending or comic or both as the case may be. Read more… Now running through June 5
Lovell Estell III – Stage Raw Michael Weller has a knack for writing about specific cultural time periods. In Moonchildrenhe peered into the turbulent, “hell no, we won’t go,” drug-fueled, free love 1960’s via a year in the life of a group of idealistic college students. Here, the spotlight is on the tenuous hangover days of … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw There are many reasons that Brian Friel’s elegiac character study Dancing at Lughnasa has become a theatrical staple. One is that the Tony award-winning play is an excellent and affecting work, while another is that it offers terrific roles for five actresses. Read more… Now running through June 12.