Paul Birchall – Stage Raw In a dramatic about-face, playwright Tommy Smith on Wednesday abruptly retracted allegations that Echo Theater Company had “stolen” his short play Ghost Light, which had starred Deborah Puette and opened August 5 to rave notices. The production was the playwright’s third collaboration with Echo artistic director Chris Fields, whose stagings of … Read more
Dany Margolies – The Daily News There’s a right way to deal with bullies. And then there’s Carrie’s way. The 17-year-old high school senior, whose upbringing by her hyper-religious mother has guaranteed that she will be ridiculed by her classmates, has a supernatural power and bullying brings it out in force. Read more… David C. … Read more
Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA Playwright John Bishop, a longtime member of New York’s Circle Repertory Theatre, wrote a number of plays and screenplays, among them this comic spoof of manor house murder mysteries. It follows in the tradition of screwball comedies popular in the 1930s and ’40s. Read more… Now running through October 18.
Bob Verini – Arts In LA Greenway Court Theatre’s Breathing Room is a 70-minute metaphysical self-help session, scored to electric violin and synthesizer and incorporating quantum theory. It insists that people are debilitated by overwhelming technological change, and it recommends an extended time-out to develop a fresh perspective on the natural world. Read more… Myron Meisel – Stage … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times Two weeks remain to catch “The Best of Enemies” in its West Coast premiere at the Colony Theatre in Burbank. The production is mandatory viewing for anyone who values the stage’s ability to provoke thought about serious social issues. Read more… Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw C..P. Ellis was … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times In “ICU,” playwright Fielding Edlow diagnoses dark humor in the most dysfunctional family this side of Eugene O’Neill’s Tyrone clan. Here, they’re upper-middle-class New York Jews, snarling and kvetching through the striking environmental staging by Circle X Theatre Company at Atwater Village Theatre. Read more… Now running through October … Read more
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net In “Appropriate,” the initial conventionality in introducing the characters and basic storyline elicits raucous and sardonic laughs, as the depth of resentments among the siblings and their family members gradually come to light. Yet, there’s far more than garden-variety family baggage afoot here, Read more… Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA … Read more
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw …it is piquantly paradoxical that such a determined ironist as Jean Anouilh (Becket, Waltz of the Toreadors, The Lark), the most commercially and critically successful French playwright internationally immediately following the Second World War, now can be seen to exemplify some of the pitfalls of logical colloquy. Read more… Now running … Read more
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw First Date, with songs by Alan Zachary & Michael Weiner and book by Austin Winsberg, completed a modest 200-performance Broadway run in 2013, perhaps largely buoyed by the presence of a television star. Read more… Now running through October 11.
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Playwright David McMillan’s Watching O.J. cogently encapsulates the passions and perspectives surrounding the murder trial of ex-professional football star and actor O.J. Simpson – an event which captivated America and much of the Western world this month, 20 years ago. Read more… David C. Nichols – LA Times Tomorrow you can be white … Read more