Shirle Gottlieb – Gazette Papers As you take your seat in the Carpenter Center, the first thing you notice is the curtain has been raised. The bare stage is dark and there is no scenery — only a grand piano, plus empty chairs and music stands silhouetted against a royal blue backlight. Then the musicians … Read more
A marvelous time was had by all who attended the 45th Annual Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards event. A group of professional theater critics, the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle (LADCC), annually gives awards for excellence in theater. The 45th Annual Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards ceremony took place on Monday, March 17, 2014 at the Colony Theatre in Burbank, and … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter At an expiring retirement home on the outskirts of a small town in northern Idaho, the staff prepares to relocate its few remaining residents, when a dementia-impaired nonagenarian music professor, Ken (Richard Doyle), goes missing off the premises as a fierce blizzard completely isolates them from any outside assistance. … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly What happens when an illness of tsunami-like proportions lays waste to your life? In Emilie Beck’s family drama Sovereign Body, Anna (Taylor Gilbert), a chef and restaurateur, lives happily with her husband (Kevin McCorkle), mom (Bryna Weiss) and two daughters: 20-year-old Callie (Dani Stephens), bursting to be out on her own, … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA Johnna Adams’s Gidion’s Knot, as presented by the Furious Theater Company in Pasadena, was one of the more scintillating local attractions of 2013. It brought together two women under great strain—a mother whose little boy had committed suicide, and the teacher charged with looking out for him—and in the course … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Tom Hartley’s comedy concerns teenager Miguel (Armando Broncas) who’s in deep denial about his homosexual feelings, ‘till his girlfriend Nuria (Catherine Mersereau) gives him a mysterious pair of sunglasses through which he can see the aura of those around him. Straights, it seems, have blue auras, while gays have red … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw One thing the theater is particularly good at is exploring the ramifications of an argument, be it interpersonal, philosophical or political: Simply look at the works of George Bernard Shaw or David Hare. Hugh Whitemore’s take on the subject of the validity of Christianity or any religion is called God Only … Read more
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw That director Ron Sossi decided to remount White Marriage might be an attempt to recapture the hit production for the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble that Sossi almost 40 years ago. In the here and now, however, the urgency of the play’s point is muted largely by Sossi’s own re-staging. Read more… Neal Weaver – … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter Like many of the best things in life, overindulgence, even with the classics, can lead to irritability. One could well be sated for life with A Midsummer Night’s Dream (probably the most frequently mounted of all Shakespeare comedies) after landmark productions by Max Reinhardt, Peter Brook and Peter Hall, the Benjamin Britten opera, the George Balanchine ballet, not … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times That rarefied place where craft, collaboration and content create theatrical poetry is everywhere in “The Last Act of Lilka Kadison” at the Falcon Theatre. Indeed, this delicately potent West Coast premiere, a co-production between the Falcon and Chicago’s Tony-winning Lookingglass Theatre Company, often seems to be composing itself before … Read more