Neal Weaver – Stage Raw What happens when you construct a mashup of Shakespeare with a Quentin Tarantino movie? The result is a convoluted plot, with pseudo-Elizabethan dialogue, and masses of violence, throat-cuttings, and general death and destruction, delivered via blunderbus, sword, dagger, or in one case by an overdose of cocaine. Read more… Now running … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw We’ve all known folks with outsized perspectives on their own talent or worth. Justin Tanner’s funny hour-long play turns on an encounter between Ginny (Laurie Metcalf), a screechy community theater performer with diva aspirations, and Nate (French Stewart), a reserved but financially pressed vocal coach who reluctantly agrees to give … Read more
Jonas Schwartz – Arts In LA Gigi Bermingham is well-known in Los Angeles for her performances, comedic and dramatic. Recently, these have included leading roles in Terrence McNally’s Master Class at International City Theatre and Non-Vital Organs at Skylight Theatre. She also directs, lately for Antaeus Theatre Company (You Can’t Take It With You) and Sierra Madre Playhouse (An … Read more
Jonas Schwartz – TheaterMania In 2003, the Latin-American troupe Culture Clash presented Chavez Ravine, a mixture of history, comedy, and outrage, at the Mark Taper Forum. Now the group has, in its own words, “remixed, relived, reloaded” its sociopolitical piece, this time at the more intimate Kirk Douglas Theatre. Read more…
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly …With diamond studs in her horned-rimmed glasses, the purple-wigged, megalomaniac alter ego of 80-year-old Australian Barry Humphries spends much of the evening goading her Ahmanson Theatre audience. Read more… Bob Verini – Arts In LA Dame Edna! The mere title and name connote rapier wit, lightly off-color insults, and self-obsession, … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times The world-premiere play “The Missing Pages of Lewis Carroll,” at Boston Court Performing Arts Center in Pasadena, was inspired by a historical mystery: Three entries from June 1863 were cut out of the diaries of Charles Dodgson, the Oxford math professor who wrote “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” under his pen … Read more
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw Philip Ridley, whether as playwright (The Fastest Clock in the Universe, Mercury Fur, Tender Napalm) or filmmaker (The Mysterious Skin, Heartless), remains ever distinctively individual, and this revival of his first play, 1991’s The Pitchfork Disney, produced locally in 2006 by Company of Angels (and subsequently in 2011 at Next Stage), … Read more
Jenny Lower – Stage Raw If its Pulitzer Prize nomination is any indication, Howard Korder’s Boys’ Lifemust have caught something in the zeitgeist when it debuted on Broadway in 1988. Read more… Now running through March 7.
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw One element that’s always appealed to me in the Tristan and Yseult story [this version, anyway] has to do with how King Mark – a betrayed ruler and cuckolded husband – declines to violently avenge himself on the erring lovers. Although the opportunity is there, he forbears from plunging a dagger … Read more
Bob Verini – Stage Raw For one more weekend, through Sunday Feb. 8, there’s an absolutely smashing revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s 1970 Company in town. If you detect a note of surprise in that announcement, no offense is meant to the Cabrillo Music Theatre, which presents it, and especially not to Nick DeGruccio, who … Read more