Margaret Gray – LA Times Culture shock, like grief, progresses through distinct stages: There’s the honeymoon period, when an expatriate is enchanted by a new country. Bliss gives way to withdrawal and hostility, the adjustment and, ultimately, acceptance. This journey happens to have a pleasing narrative structure that works well onstage. Read more… Now running through … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw The upside to reinterpretations of classic works is a fresh look at how that art still speaks to us and remains vital. The downside produces Coriolanus on Mars. Read more.. Now running through April 10.
Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. In the debut of his solo vehicle, multi-talented James Mellon gives a crash course on his remarkable life, blending fascinating anecdotes and irresistible musical sequences. Read more… Now running through March 5.
David C. Nichols – LA Times At the outset of “Lear,” now receiving an austerely lunatic West Coast premiere at City Garage, a projected PBS-style host drolly relates the narrative of William Shakespeare’s immortal tragedy, up to Lear’s banishment and Gloucester’s blinding. Read more… Now running through March 13.
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw If you google the town of Pocatello in Southwest Idaho, you’ll get images of dusty hills and a downtown whose architecture might have served as nostalgic backdrop for The Last Picture Show. The place is changing though; look long enough and you’ll see a shot of a Ross store as well, … Read more
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw A couple meet, fall in love and marry. But do Whitney and Jake live happily together forever and ever thereafter? Not in Dean Farell Bruggeman’s heart-wrenching drama they don’t. Read more… Now running through March 12.
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw This play, by writer-director Paul S. Flores, sets out to examine the life of Salvadoran immigrants in the U.S., but it’s also part of an attempt to stop gang violence. It examines, among other things, the role of placas in gang life. (“Placas” is barrio slang for body tattoos that … Read more
Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze The curtain rises to reveal a New York stoop, as the overture blossoms into an iconic score and eight young men in jeans and tennies burst into a dance of seething frustration and endless energy. Unmistakably, this is “West Side Story.” Read more… Now running through February 28.
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Franz Altman (Michael Laskin), the protagonist of playwright Charles Dennis’s deft solo drama, is an elderly Viennese Jew born just before the turn of the 20th century. Now nearly 100 years old, he owns a second-hand store called King Solomon’s Treasures, located in mid-town Manhattan, circa 1990. Read more… Margaret Gray – … Read more
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw Robert Lawrence Nelson’s melodrama about two lonely people finding a connection disappoints on almost all fronts. While the performances from the two leads — Julie Dolan as Samantha and Chad Addison as Toby — are solid, with both actors plumbing some complicated emotional depths, the production as a whole fails … Read more