Paul Birchall – Stage Raw Playwright Jon Jory’s adaptation of Voltaire’s novella Candide is, to cynically paraphrase the satire’s implacable optimist, Professor Pangloss, work that is the best of all possible worlds. Which is to say that it is all right-ish, if not especially powerful or inspired. Read more… Now running through Oct. 17.
Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. There’s a hint of Gone With the Wind and a touch of vintage nighttime soap opera, merged with appealing musical interludes, in this ambitious stage adaptation of Carole Eglash-Kosoff‘s sprawling historical novel. Read more… Now running through Oct. 4.
Margaret Gray – LA Times Los Angeles can be careless with its history, unsentimentally bulldozing the past to make room for the future. Unlike certain cities I could mention — Athens, say, or Rome — Los Angeles could never be accused of hoarding. Read more… Now running through Oct. 4.
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Playwright Miki Johnson’s discerning but uneven one act takes place in small-town America and calls to mind Thoreau’s phrase “lives of quiet desperation.” Read more… Now running through Oct. 11.
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw I Like Mondays. What is nicer than a Monday night show? If I were a theater producer I would always slip a Monday night performance into the schedule, just on principle. For one thing, all the critics will come, as they really won’t have anything else to do that night, except … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times No Prince Charming — or any other man, for that matter — appears onstage in the revival of “Real Women Have Curves” at the Pasadena Playhouse. Nevertheless Josefina López’s crowd-pleasing play is a Cinderella story, with a touchingly pure faith in the power of a makeover. Read more… Jonas Schwartz – … Read more
The Marsh, in San Francisco, is the Bay Area’s answer to Son of Semele’s Solo Creation Festival in L.A. The San Francisco venue, however, is a year-round breeding ground of solo performances. Echo Brown’s Black Virgins Are Not for Hipsters was supposed to run through August, and has been extended through October, understandably so given the blend … Read more
Dany Margolies – The Daily News Each year for the past decade, the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades has commissioned a Los Angeles theater company to adapt an Ancient Greek play for the Getty’s outdoor amphitheater. This year, the Pasadena-based Theatre @ Boston Court sets the Euripides tragedy “Medea” in modern-day Boyle Heights. Enter “Mojada: … Read more
Dany Margolies – The Daily News Theatergoers are rarely able to observe characters growing up over the course of several plays. Shakespeare’s Prince Hal provides one notable exception. Playwright Neil Simon offers another. In his Brighton Beach Memoirs, we met Eugene Jerome, the hilariously genial youngster in 1940s New York, torn between becoming a professional baseball … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Sometimes staging Shakespeare in a period piece setting adds color and spark. Other times, this sort of stage dressing proves either a distraction and/or irrelevant to the production as a whole. Both is the case with director Ellen Geer’s current mounting of As You Like It, which is set in mid … Read more