LADCC Critics 
Pauline Adamek – LA Stage Times Didn’t get enough of Watson at Sacred Fools Theater in late 2010, or when it returned in the summer of 2011? Don’t worry — the saga continues. Writer/director Jaime Robledo’s sequel Watson and the Dark Art of Harry Houdini, reportedly darker and more personal, opened last Friday night.Read more…
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA Book by Frank Smith, Ryan Harrison, Lauren Ludwig and Dylan Ris; Music and lyrics by Dylan Ris, Mikey Wells, Ryan Harrison, Frank Smith and Rich Ramberg. The Lost Moon Radio kids are back at the Fringe with yet another one of their hilarious musical spoofs. This time it’s the alleged playback of an old BBC children’s television show from the seventies … Read more
Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly There’s a certain fragility mixed with permanence in Maria Irene Fornes’ melancholy tragedy Mud, and the characters seem to exist beyond the performance that unfolds before us. In seventeen short (sometimes brutally short) scenes, Fornes depicts a squabbling couple, Lloyd (Riley Smith) and Mae (Annie Hamilton), who seem stuck in some kind of rural poverty. … Read more
Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly Joe Green’s derivative, amateur and R-rated musical assembles all the beloved maids from TV sitcoms, past and present, and parades them through his nostalgic tribute. The slim premise has divorcee and mother of two teens Ashley (Lani Shipman) vying for an audition on a reality TV show.Read more…
Neal Weaver – LA Weekly Chris Phillips’ cannily written play examines the need to stand up against oppression and avenge violence with violence versus the necessity for love and forgiveness. The six scenes are alternately comic, brutal and surreal. The piece initially seems fragmented, but the interrelatedness of the scenes, and their thematic unity, gradually emerge.Read … Read more
Bob Verini – ArtsInLA If you revel in fine actors’ pushing the envelope of what performance can do, or have an interest in investigating important historical experience via theatrical means, this ungainly-named but unforgettable work is *the* production of the summer, just as Son of Semele’srecently closed Our Class was *the* production of the spring. In both, a … Read more
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA In this three-person show—originally the work of writer-actors Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield—three actors enact highlights of, summarize, or at least mention the title of all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays. First up are highlights, or lowlights, of Romeo and Juliet. Next, Titus Andronicus is boiled down to … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times With summer here, the whirligig of time brings in “The Taming of the Shrew” at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, and it proves a blissfully madcap occasion. This rip-roaring take on William Shakespeare’s ever-popular romantic comedy opens the 40th anniversary season at this incomparable outdoor venue with marvelous forward momentum.Read … Read more
David C. Nichols – L.A. Times “This is either the longest suicide note in history, or the juiciest, dirtiest, most delicious confession you’ll ever hear,” begins “Hungry Woman” at Casa 0101. Food, family and post-feminist freedom are the chief thematic ingredients in playwright Josefina López’s witty, compelling fantasia, and though still refining, it’s perhaps her … Read more
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA Before you hear this production described as “sitcomish,” know it was written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, the writers of the 1980s British television series Yes Minister and then Yes, Prime Minister. And if the humor of those series was good enough to keep the Brits giggling, it’s … Read more