Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly A solo show’s a little show where people talk about their life, “Like battling the bottle. Or slicing themselves with a knife, “They tell their tale with wigs or props, with easels to communicate, “Like being gay or being bi or being trans or being straight! Read more…
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net In its shimmering revival of William Inge’s steamy 1953 classic, “Picnic,” the classics-focused Antaeus Theatre Company serves up a theatrical feast. Read more… David C. Nichols – LA Times The intimacy of small-town life and its stifling limitations permeate “Picnic,” which the thoughtfully representative staging at Antaeus Theater Company underscores without … Read more
Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. Howard Skora’s zany dark comedy, directed by Jim Fall, stars veteran actress Patty McCormack (who is well-remembered as an 11-year-old Oscar nominee, playing a murderous moppet in the classic 1956 thriller The Bad Seed). Read more… Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Howard Skora’s black farce is constructed like a TV sitcom, but … Read more
Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze This sprawling epic about life, guilt, forgiveness, transformation, redemption, and the French revolution gets a skilled, moving, but scenically sparse production by Encore Entertainers. Read more…
Margaret Gray – LA Times Struggles over inheritance are always painful — unless, of course, they take place in a French farce, in which case they are endlessly prankish and ribald. Read more… Myron Meisel – Stage Raw David Ives’s“translaptation” of Jean-Francois Regnard’s 1708 farce The Heir Apparent (Le Legataire Universel), at International City Theatre, also involves a … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Sophocles was thought to be near 90 when he wrote Oedipus at Colonus, which tells of the iconic figure’s quest for redemption and a final resting place as his tortured life drew to a close. Read more… David C. Nichols – LA Times It’s fairly unusual for a 30-plus-year-old experimental theater … Read more
Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze Appallingly feuding but passionately attracted couples are not new to the stage. Shakespeare drew them in The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing. Edward Albee penned them in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Read more… Now running through July 17.
Jenny Lower – Stage Raw If Smudge is a horror story, it’s more the sort that lurks in the recesses of future parents’ brains than a Rosemary’s Baby — although Colby (Whitney Wellner), mother of the titular offspring, probably could have used some coping strategies from Mia Farrow. Read more…
David C. Nichols – LA Times Talk amongst yourselves,” says a wild-eyed Lester Bangs as he hammers away at his typewriter, gesturing us into his unkempt apartment, Black Sabbath blaring from the turntable. “And nobody touch my records.”Read more… Dany Margolies – Arts In LA The lesson to be learned here is not how to … Read more
Jenny Lower – LA Weekly Among the many contentious ideas explored during Bad Jews, Joshua Harmon’s delicious pressure cooker of a show now playing at the Geffen, is how a religious or cultural identity can become the sole bedrock upon which some people base their identity. Read more… Myron Meisel – Stage Raw I can remember the … Read more