Bob Verini – Arts In LA Book musicals and musical revues are two different animals, and it’s a rare theater songwriter or team that can crank out both. Many of the very best— Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Stephen Sondheim, and Frank Loesser come to mind—are responsible for brilliantly unified scores for world-class musical … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage and Cinema In his solo show, playwright Nicholas Guest describes his life and travels around the world. He’s accompanied by Hillary Smith on the cello and by Tony Carafone on the guitar (in the play, not his travels) – and they turn out to be a helpful pair, too, because Guest … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Off the Rails, Randy Reinholz’s engaging adaptation of Measure for Measure, interweaves strands of American history, chiefly the Native American struggle to preserve tribal identity, with the themes and cadences of Shakespearean comedy. The play is presented by Native Voices, the country’s only equity company devoted to plays by Native Americans. Read … Read more
Jonas Schwartz – TheaterMania A revival of Arthur Miller’s 1967 The Price, in which a room full of furniture triggers a catharsis between a frustrated man, his wife, and his estranged brother, is now running at the Mark Taper Forum. Old wounds are pulled open and family trauma is finally able to mend in this stirring play, … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Like many plays that deal with our mortality, those about dementia can be extraordinarily affecting. They speak to a loss of self nearly as complete and devastating as our physical demise. Read more… David C. Nichols – LA Times The first glimmer of it comes on a Friday. They’ve flown me … Read more
Bob Verini – Stage Raw On a stage — and as often as not, in everyday life, but certainly on a stage — when a character announces, “I’m dying of boredom,” there’s always something else, something deeper going on. With those four spoken words, a character can communicate almost anything: “I’m hot to do something … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Some years before Judy Garland’s death, she appeared at a star-studded benefit for the Actors Studio in New York, alongside Carole Channing, Ava Gardner, Shelley Winters and Josephine Premice — and Judy’s children, including Liza Minelli. Judy wore a black satin evening suit, which emphasized her matchstick legs, the result … Read more
The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle views the impending changes of policy concerning the small theaters of the greater Los Angeles area with alarm. We are concerned that the inevitable result of such changes will be a drastic reduction in the amount and quality of local theater. Indeed, we foresee what could be the virtual … Read more
Sharon Perlmutter – Talkin’ Broadway There are two things that doom A Noise Within’s production of The Threepenny Opera. The first is enunciation. The cast seems so concerned with keeping up their British accents throughout the proceedings, they don’t go a good job actually putting the dialogue and lyrics across. At intermission and after the show, … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Al Pacino and Robert Duvall are among the performers who have played Teach, the deluded, out-of-control conman who spurs much of the seamy shenanigans in David Mamet’s American Buffalo. While I’ve never been privileged to see either in the role, I’d put money on the competitive excellence of Troy Kotsur, … Read more