Bob Verini – Arts in LA One of the most ambitious art musicals of recent years, Floyd Collins by Adam Guettel (music and lyrics) and Tina Landau (book and additional lyrics) is receiving an outstanding mounting from helmer Richard Israel and the management of the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts. The producers, who regularly bring … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw For many years, America’s founding fathers were treated so reverentially by historians that they seemed like inhuman figures on a monument. But from the beginning, Benjamin Franklin was the saltiest of them all. Because of his fondness for the ladies, his behind- the-scenes intrigues, his advanced age, and the omnipresent … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw In Robert E. Sherwood’s 1934 play, The Petrified Forest, a world-weary writer, Alan Squier (skillfully etched by John DeMita), happens into a remote café in the Arizona desert, and in the space of a few short hours has stirred the eternal ardor of the café owner’s starry-eyed daughter, Gabby (Leona Britton) … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw Sometimes a great concept is enough to power a play, such as the backwards structure of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal or the three plays intersecting simultaneously in Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests. It doesn’t hurt that those works mentioned also benefited from strong writing, acting and direction. Classic Couples Counseling, a world premiere at the … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times Even the sparest account of the life of Paul Robeson, the lawyer, actor, singer and civil rights activist who died in 1976, has a mythic power: He accomplished more, against greater odds, than seems quite humanly possible. Phillip Hayes Dean’s one-man play “Paul Robeson” (1977), in a revival directed by … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA Noël Coward’s A Song at Twilight first saw the light of day as the centerpiece of 1966’s Suite in Three Keys, a two-night triptych of works set in a single luxurious Swiss hotel suite. Eight years later, with one play jettisoned, Song reached Broadway as part of Noël Coward in Two Keys. Now it stands … Read more
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA Four Larks’ production of Orpheus made its premier last night in Downtown Los Angeles. Previously developed and presented at the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Getty Villa as part of their Theater Lab Series (March 2014), the workshopped production then moved to a Downtown warehouse, where audiences had to traverse a fabric maze before they entered the performance space. … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Set in a Hollywood delicatessen, this new comedy by Sam Bobrick (Norman Is That You?, Murder at the Howard Johnson’s) consists of 12 snarky but good-humored sketches about the movie business and its denizens. Read more… Now running through April 27.
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw Playwright-director Jeff Gould has found a formula that works. Several years ago he had a huge hit with his play It’s Just Sex!, which played off-Broadway and all over the world and enjoyed a two-year run at Studio City’s tiny Two Roads Theatre. Gould has returned to the 56-seat house with … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA For Tartuffe to achieve maximum comic, emotional, and thematic impact, the privileged Orgon must serve as the central figure. He must be a misanthrope (a type not unknown to Molière) well and truly disgusted with the world’s vanities as typified by his frivolous, feckless family. Orgon’s profound despair explains his retreat into … Read more