LADCC Critics 
Terry Morgan – LAist Audience identification is an interesting phenomenon. It’s the fact that audiences will have sympathy for a possibly repellent character simply because he or she is the protagonist in a story—perhaps it’s an artistic variant of Stockholm Syndrome? This explains the continual fascination with characters such as Richard III, Sweeney Todd and … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times A comforting mix of the familiar and unexpected floats the smooth 25th anniversary revival of “Aspirin & Elephants” at the Santa Monica Playhouse. Despite some formulaic aspects, playwright Jerry Mayer’s boulevard comedy about intergenerational marital issues on a cruise ship is a surefire date show, a high-end sitcom with … Read more
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA Striking a perfect balance between scares and laughs, Play Dead delivers plenty of delicious thrills, macabre chills and giggles. The one-act show features Todd Robbins as our ghoulish host and runs through December 22 at the Geffen Playhouse.Read more… Bob Verini – ArtsInLA Back in the heyday of the great movie … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Writer Betty Tokudani’s cliché-ridden comedy centers on four elderly women whose curmudgeonly cluelessness we are supposed to find endearing. Vain, stylish Tomi (Jeanne Sakata) is mourning her middle-aged son, a mama’s boy who for years gobbled her high-cholesterol food, then died young of a heart attack. Her friends strive to … Read more
Neal Weaver – LA Weekly Irish playwright Fionnuala Kenny’s Elvis’s Toenail is set in Dublin in 1961, when the Catholic Church still maintained its stranglehold on Irish society — but the first signs of resistance and rebellion were beginning to appear. Rita (played with touching simplicity and conviction by Lenne Klingaman) is pregnant but unmarried. … Read more
Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly Young and naive, Girlie (Sandy Yu) has moved from her Philippines village to the city to train at a regional call center for a major American airline. Obsessed with the TV soap Dallas, Girlie fantasizes about moving there to live a dream life. But her single-minded pursuit and ultimate triumph … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Actor John Barrymore, star of theater and screen for a quarter of a century until his death in 1942, was thrown out of prep school after having been seen entering a brothel. This detail isn’t in William Luce‘s 1996 two-person show based on the actor’s reminiscences, Barrymore, though the play does … Read more
Neal Weaver – LA Weekly When playwright Tom Dudzick was growing up in Buffalo, N.Y., in the 1950s, one local landmark was a 20-foot shrine for the Blessed Virgin, beside a small barbershop. According to local legend, the shrine was erected by the barber after the Blessed Mother appeared in his shop one Christmas Eve. … Read more
Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly Katie Rubin’s energetic solo piece presents a typical tale of the struggling actor who, yearning for success, ventures on a journey of spiritual discovery and then cobbles together a string of experiences and calls it a show. The result is a meandering yarn featuring miscellaneous miracles and offering little insight … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times Charles Dickens meets Lewis Carroll, literally, in “A Perfect Likeness” at Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena. This beautifully appointed two-hander about the authors of “Great Expectations” and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” isn’t exactly deep-dish, but it should appeal to those seeking a pleasantly literate 90 minutes in the … Read more