LADCC Critics 
David C. Nichols – LA Times In its basic contours and execution, Ian MacAllister-McDonald’s “The Sexual Life of Savages” at the Beverly Hills Playhouse is an edgy dramedy of postmillennial eroticism that certainly keeps us watching. Read more… Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter A couple planning on romance is instead waylaid by argument, a fundamental … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter If I pale at writing this review, it’s because I’ve just seen a Ghost. Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin won an Oscar for the 1990 film as did Whoopi Goldberg, supporting Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. The film was also nominated for best picture back when there were only five a … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly In Elizabethan England, the twelve days of Christmas were festivity days – none more so that the twelfth when the partying could get really crazy and masters and servants, in a frenzy of masquerade, would sometimes exchange roles. It’s from this tradition that Shakespeare is assumed to have derived the … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times Whatever the course, the end is the renown in “All’s Well That Ends Well” in Topanga Canyon. Although it has some stylistic quirks and still-refining aspects, this affable, accessible revival of the Bard’s rambling comic study of class distinctions, romantic ambition and hard-earned wisdom is a representative outing for … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw People are always doing things to Chekhov. At least since the 1950s, when Joshua Logan reset The Cherry Orchard to the post-Civil War American South in a short-lived adaptation called The Wisteria Trees, the Russian playwright has been adapted, spoofed, satirized, de-constructed, re-conceived, re-thought, re-written and plagiarized. Chekhov Derivatives and Recycling has become … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Playwright/director Jonas Oppenheim’s attempt to cast light on the problems of infertile couples while making comic hay in the fashion of a British sex farce is a sore disappointment. Missing the crisp humor abundant in the work of Ayckbourne, Frayn and Orton, the show’s on-stage antics along with much of … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter If you feel that the Oedipus myth starts with the riddle and ends with the cathartic revelation, that’s just the beginning: here Oedipus (Ramon de Ocampo) blinds himself with Jocasta’s (Rhonda Aldrich) earrings barely an hour into a nearly three-hour evening. Read more… Terry Morgan – Stage Raw One of … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times Aeschylus meets Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid in “ABBAMEMNON,” the latest deconstruction from Troubadour Theater Company. The classic Greek playwright, Swedish pop group and incomparable troupe may never be quite the same again, and neither will audiences. Read more… Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly There are no sly topical winks … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Land Line, a world premiere play by Stephen Dierkes, is about a dying man and his efforts to marshal his courage and his sanity through a relationship with his life-long friend. Read more… Now running through July 21.
Terry Morgan – Talkin’ Broadway Theatre has many functions, and sometimes its job is to remind or teach people about history. The trick, of course, is to do it in such a way that the piece still works as theatre, so it isn’t essentially a PowerPoint presentation with actors instead of graphics. Playwright has an … Read more