Don Shirley – LA Observed How to attract young-adult audiences to LA’s professional theaters? Plenty of pondering about this subject occurs at theater conferences and in theater journals. I won’t address the logistics of marketing to millennials here. But I’m welcoming two new productions that seemingly target them yet also offer lively experiences to those … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly As in Death of a Salesman, his 1949 Pulitzer Prize winner (and my personal favorite) Arthur Miller’s All My Sons looks at an American family in crisis and weaves their story into a broader vision of a morally bankrupt culture. Read more… Paul Birchall – Stage Raw Arthur Miller’s powerful 1947 family drama has aged … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Donald Wollner’s comedy about a hapless little guy done in by the system and his own unmanageable urges isn’t exactly cutting edge satire. But it is diverting enough to entertain. Read more… Now running through October 25.
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA Martín Zimmerman’s one-act drama Seven Spots on the Sun explores the impulse of revenge, and the notion of redemption, against the backdrop of a horrifying civil war. The lives of two couples in two separate (but nearby) South American villages are presented as mirror images. Read more… Margaret Gray – LA Times We … Read more
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw Writer-director-producer Chrisi Talyn Saje’s parody is a fluffy stage production with the intentional nutritional value of a bowl of sugary cereal. The sets and costumes zing with bright, comic book colors and the humor is broad and punny. Read more… Now running through October 18.
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw My Uber driver was concerned for my safety when I told her where I was going for the play I was reviewing this week. Of course I am used to going to some dodgy places to see plays. This time, however, I had been assigned to see a show in the … Read more
Jenny Lower – Stage Raw Like most of the gangsters it features in its slick, style-obsessed production at the Atwater Village Theatre, Get. That. Snitch., the debut effort of Great Minds Creative Productions, talks a big game. But like the “very bad men” who one by one fall to their knees in a pool of their … Read more
Bob Verini – Stage Raw Lisa Loomer writes Issue Plays. She may not set out to do so quite so baldly, but there it is. Her works tend to be identifiable, and tend to last in the memory, as copiously researched treatments of specific ongoing problems in contemporary American life. And, by the way, she … Read more
Jonas Schwartz – Arts In LA Rarely are the words zany and film noir in the same sentence. However, Something Truly Monstrous is a madcap send-up of 1940 murky melodramas like High Sierra, Johnny Eager, and The Maltese Falcon—taking a longstanding rumor and twisting the backstory to involve three Warner Bros. prestigious movie actors. Read more… Now running through November 8.
Margaret Gray – LA Times Some of us try to jury-rig meaningful lives using the disheartening fragments at our disposal; others dream of wiping the slate clean and starting anew. Both approaches prove painfully unsatisfying to the lonely characters in Samuel D. Hunter’s play “A Bright New Boise,” the 2011 Obie Award winner being revived … Read more