LADCC Critics

A TERMINAL EVENT at Victory Theatre Center

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Terry Morgan – Stage Raw Playwright Richard Willett has interesting things to say about the current state of the medical industry, though the difficulty inherent in writing a “message play,” such as this one – a world premiere production at the Victory Theatre Center — is that of balance. Can an author’s polemic sustain as … Read more

DOG at The Broadwater – Hollywood Fringe Festival

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Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Ben Moroski won a Best of Fringe award in 2012 for The Vicious Minute and a Top of the Fringe award in 2014 for his solo performance of The Wake. This year he’s back at The Fringe with his latest solo piece, Dog— a downer of a tale nonetheless presented with the same singular, mesmerizing … Read more

UNCLE VANYA at Pasadena Playhouse

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Terry Morgan – ArtsBeat LA As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Technology zooms forward, but human nature remains stubbornly persistent. Thus a play such as Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, which premiered in 1899, can still speak to us today, can still cause us to laugh or cry at its … Read more

Put a ‘Tiger’ in your tank, LA Times

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Don Shirley – Angeles Stage Why didn’t the LA Times review the hilarious “Tiger Style!” or “Our Town” at South Coast Repertory? Plus thoughts on “Man of God,” “Metamorphoses,” and more.  “Tiger Style!” deserves the exclamation point in its title. Mike Lew’s satire is the funniest new play I’ve seen since theaters started re-opening last … Read more

MAN OF GOD at Geffen Playhouse

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Peter Debruge – Variety The lights come up on four Korean American teens crowded around a hotel bed. They’re members of a So Cal church group on a mission to Bangkok, Thailand — though the location only matters is the abstract. Audiences never leave the hotel room in “Man of God,” although director Maggie Burrows’ … Read more

SLEEP WITH THE ANGELS, Latino Theater Co. at The Los Angeles Theatre Center

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Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw In Sleep With the Angels, directed by Jose Luis Valenzuela, playwright Evelina Fernandez portrays a fragmented family of Latinx extraction — but the truths she seeks to convey might resonate anywhere. Read more… Now through June 26

BELOVED at The Road Theatre

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Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Beloved, a world premiere play by Canadian playwright Arthur Holden, opens in a waiting room outside a counsellor’s office at a posh school, where an affluent upper-middle-aged couple await news of their son. Thirty minutes have gone by since they’ve arrived, and no one has summoned them in, or explained why … Read more

UNTITLED BABY PLAY at IAMA Theatre Company at Atwater Village Theatre

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Dana Martin – Stage Raw Nina Braddock’s new work, Untitled Baby Play, is a whole pandemic in the making. The play seeks to address the question every reproductively abled person is confronted with: “Are you going to have a baby?”  IAMA Theatre Company’s world premiere production bravely confronts the subject of whether or not to reproduce, but too … Read more

HAMLET at Antaeus Theatre Company

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Terry Morgan – Arts Beat LA At this point, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a theatrical peak so frequently attempted that you can see, as on Everest, the frozen bodies of thespians who chanced and failed the perilous ascent on the way. And yet this dissuades absolutely no one to take on the challenge, seemingly again like Everest in … Read more

METAMORPHOSES at A Noise Within

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Tracey Paleo – BroadwayWorld In a word…Delicious. A Noise Within winds down its 2021-22 season with playwright Mary Zimmerman’s primal retelling of Ovid’s METAMORPHOSIS. It is nothing short of spectacular. Read more… Rob Stevens – Haines His Way In 1996, playwright/director Mary Zimmerman adapted some Greek myths from the classic poem Metamorphoses by Ovid. A full production was … Read more