Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly Aaron Francis’ bold scenic design has the audience seated in school desks for Gidion’s Knot, getting you into the right frame of mind for Johnna Adams’ intense one-act showdown between a fifth-grade teacher and a parent.…
Bob Verini – ArtsInLA With two weekends to go until Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde vacates Actors Co-op in Hollywood, those who enjoy horror stories brought to the stage don’t have many chances to take it in. But they should…
Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA Mel Brooks’s very funny 1974 film became The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein in late 2007. Receiving mixed reviews from the critics, it nonetheless played on Broadway for more than 500 performances, and…
Bob Verini – Arts in LA This world premiere musical, now at Kirk Douglas Theatre, manages to get plenty of new wine into very old, if not downright dusty, bottles. The saga of the making of the eponymous garage band…
Terry Morgan – LAist Having seen a couple of plays written by Bruce Norris, (Clybourne Park and The Parallelogram) I’m beginning to detect a theme in his writing. He seems to find the purportedly liberal beliefs of certain rich white…
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly There are glints of the Oresteia in Marcus Gardley’s poetic, sweeping drama, the road weeps, the well runs dry, which takes place in a 19th-century Oklahoma town settled by fleeing African-American freedmen and their Native…
Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. The world premiere of a new musical, When You Wish: The Story of Walt Disney—celebrating the life and career of the legendary animator/mogul Disney (1901-1966)—seems well-timed to the upcoming release of a holiday season film, Saving Mr.…
Bob Verini – ArtsInLA Amy Herzog’s 4000 Miles comes to us with a considerable reputation as a Pulitzer Prize finalist, but whatever virtues this intergenerational seriocomedy may possess, they certainly don’t come through in South Coast Repertory’s version.Read more… Now…
Bob Verini – ArtsInLA “She didn’t say much but she said it loud.” That’s Eva Peron (1919–1952) as assessed by nemesis Che Guevara during the prologue of Evita. But as it happens, the accusation of saying very little, very loudly…
David C. Nichols – LA Times Mikhail Bulgakov meets Sergei Eisenstein at Andy Warhol’s Factory in “Moskva.” This ornate take on Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” is a nobly ambitious, surreally unhinged deep-dish bowl of dramaturgical borscht.Read more… Pauline Adamek …