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
Bob Verini – Variety Any qualms about the propriety or taste of a “9/11 musical” prove unfounded in the case of “Come From Away,” the superb new show premiering at La Jolla Playhouse. Out of the true story of a small Newfoundland community playing host to 38 commercial aircraft after the World Trade Center attacks, Canadians Irene Sankoff … Read more
Shirle Gottlieb – Gazettes.com If you’ve ever seen anything written by Rajiv Joseph, you know that this brilliant young playwright is fascinated by the concept of why things happen. In other words, why do different people do what they do? In each work, he courageously explores a different facet of human behavior by slowly peeling … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw Welcome to Fringe Season, when there are so many shows, and all of them taking place within the same 30 block area, you almost need 50 heads to see them all. With so many shows (300 or so) going on, you almost wish you could bend time and space to … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly One of the Hollywood Fringe Festival’s many venues is an old van laden with graffiti and suitcases, with shrinelike decorations in the back. The vehicle, like the show that occurs within and around it, is called Hamlet-Mobile, a notion written and directed by Lauren Ludwig and presented by a company … Read more
Jon Magaril – Curtain Up Broadway is commonly viewed as a middle-of-the-road mecca for lite, tourist-friendly fare. But a surprisingly significant number of current smash hit musicals focus on singing revolutionaries battling stinging oppression. Elphaba defies the the duplicitous Wizard and Miss Morrible; Jean Valjean, France’s Orleanist monarchy; and Elder Price, the Ugandan despot General … Read more