Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw LA Opera has launched its new season by bringing back their 2006 staging of La Traviata. Director and designer Marta Domingo’s chic concept reimagines and transposes Giuseppe Verdi’s timeless romance to the decadent Roaring 20s. The…
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Playwrights under 40 write mainly about love and politics, or so the adage goes; playwrights over 40 write mainly about death. By the time Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days premiered in 1961, the great Irish bard was…
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Jeong, a Korean concept not easily translatable to English, is an integral theme in playwright Julia Cho’s potentially absorbing family drama. As explained by Sah-Jin (Sharon Omi), a widowed immigrant from Korea, to her desperately…
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net Also known as “Cockfight Play,” a perhaps less threatening title preferred in some media outlets, Mike Bartlett’s Olivier Award winning British play, “Cock,” makes its L.A. debut in a taut and terrific staging. Read more… Margaret…
Bob Verini – Arts In LA It’s been 43 years since Helen Reddy rocked the charts with her announcement “I am woman, hear me roar,” the foremost pop anthem echoing the feminist revolution of the 1970s. Divas have continued to…
David C. Nichols – LA Times The delicate art of origami provides both metaphor and motor for “Animals Out of Paper” at the David Henry Hwang Theater, and it enfolds the viewer with deceptive simplicity and considerable craft. Read more… Pauline…
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly David Mamet’s play Race, about a rich, white guy seeking a law firm to defend him from accusations of raping a black woman, ought to feel ripped from the headlines — even though it premiered…
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw The current production of The Tempest at South Coast Repertory is the best version of the play I’ve ever seen. It does something seemingly obvious, yet not so obvious that I’ve seen it before: It focuses on the magic.…
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Improvising a new play every night is Impro Theatre’s hallmark promise, whether they’re parodying Chekhov, Shakespeare, Jane Austen or, in the case of their latest production at the Falcon Theatre, the American Western genre. Read more……
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw One of the hits of this summer’s Hollywood Fringe Festival is back at Theater Asylum. For her hilarious play Women, playwright Chiara Atik has re-imagined the stripped down plot of thebeloved roman à clef Little Women as viewed through…