SMOKE AND MIRRORS at Lankershim Arts Center
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA “When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?” asks Albie at the top of this show. “And what were you afraid of?” These questions cleverly plunge the…
LADCC Critics
Read MoreSMOKE AND MIRRORS at Lankershim Arts Center
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM at Ivy Substation
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA Why is this Night different from all other Nights? To start with, it’s smart, it’s imaginative, it’s beautiful, it makes sense of the peculiar world Shakespeare created. It takes the titular dream to heart,…
THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK at Noho Arts Center
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Easily the most poignant moments in this dramatized telling of the Anne Frank story come in its epilogue, when Holocaust survivor Otto Frank (Jack Kandel) returns to his family’s hidden dwelling to discover his youngest…
GARBO’S CUBAN LOVER at Macha Theatre
Neal Weaver – LA Weekly Writer-director Odalys Nanin’s fictionalized bio-play zeroes in on Mercedes De Acosta, who in the 1930s was celebrated as a poet, playwright and novelist, though nowadays she’s remembered mostly for her lesbian affairs with famous actresses…
POINT BREAK LIVE! at the Dragonfly bar
Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly Creating a raucous, rocked-out party atmosphere by blasting preshow music (think “Welcome to the Jungle” at ear-splitting volume), the hilarious spoof show Point Break Live! offers super-soaked excitement in a grungy Hollywood nightclub setting. What…
THE MUSIC MEN: MEREDITH WILLSON AND GENE DEPAUL at Sterling’s Upstairs at the Federal
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net The latest cabaret offering produced by Bruce Kimmel’s Kritzerland Records at Sterling’s Upstairs at the Federal in North Hollywood, is “The Music Men: Meredith Willson and Gene de Paul,” a pleasing array of vintage…
NINE at DOMA Theatre Company at the MET Theatre
Bob Verini – ArtsInLA The fiendishly difficult (to stage, and hence usually to watch) Nine proves beyond the range of DOMA Theatre Company. It’s a shame, given the company’s mightily effective Dreamgirls earlier this year, but Arthur Kopit’s gloppy gloss on Fellini’s film 8½ has proved…
BRENDAN at Theatre Banshee
Terry Morgan – LAist If, as the old adage has it, “you can’t go home again,” then that truth deserves another, which is that wherever you’re from is always with you. Regardless of the relative importance of nature or nurture,…
OPEN HOUSE at the Skylight Theatre
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Los Feliz’s Skylight Theatre has become the home for L.A. scribe Shem Bitterman, who’s had his plays staged in this city for decades. His latest, a real estate mystery named Open House, premiered last…
TRIO LOS MACHOS at Casa 0101
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Lalo (Miguel Santana), Paco (Henry Madrid) and Nacho (Roberto Garza) have been friends for 50 years. Former field workers, they escaped a life of hard labor by forming a trio and earning a living as…