Neal Weaver – Arts In LA Lee Blessing’s taut and subtle two-character drama proves that a play with a small cast can deal with large issues. Cora Gage (Nan McNamara) is a British ophthalmologist, living in St. Ives, who is approached for treatment by May N’Kame (Inger Tudor), the empress of an unidentified African nation … Read more
Deborah Klugman – ArtsBeatLA One would have thought (perhaps hoped is the better word) that Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee’s 1955 play Inherit the Wind, about the 1925 Scopes “monkey” trial, would have lost some of its relevance by now. Like Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, it was written in response to the close-mindedness and prosecution of freedom of thought that swept through the … Read more
Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA When Aristophanes penned Lysistrata in 411 BC, he could hardly have imagined that his play would have spawned the many innovative modifications that have taken place over the centuries. The concept is irresistible: A group of women band together and withhold sex from their menfolk until the men have taken … Read more
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA This play is more about storytelling than story. It is about the way we make theater and observe theater. It is about words and how they are enhanced by a theatrical production. And yet, as the title character tells us in a surprisingly emotion-stirring moment at the play’s end, … Read more
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA This Matthew Lopez play would have made a fascinating two-hander. But the playwright added a third character and ratcheted up the intrigue, conflict, and shaping, making it an even more fascinating play. Like a fine puppeteer, director Howard Teichman pulls strings to alter the balance among the characters, adding … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts in LA The Echo Theater Company has gone to some lengths to sidestep, in its pre-opening publicity, the subject matter of Tommy Smith’s remarkable new play titled Firemen. The world premiere drama is described as “a different kind of love story” that “explores an unthinkable love relationship,” though what proves unthinkable is … Read more
Neal Weaver – Arts in LA Adam Rapp’s haunting solo-drama startles with its very first line: “Fifteen years ago I killed my sister.” Then the narrator, who is identified only as The Son (Belgian actor George Regout), goes on to reveal the circumstances of the death. When he was 19, he was driving home on … Read more
Deborah Klugman – ArtsBeatLA Oscar Wilde is famous for his sparkling wit, but there’s not much spark to this humdrum production of An Ideal Husband, Wilde’s moral-minded comedy about a prominent public figure facing a choice between sacrificing his principles or destroying his career. Read more… Now running through February 23.
Bob Verini – Arts in LA So you’re a distinguished playwright in your early 60s: a very Chekhovian age; an age when the mind drifts toward dreams once grasped, then compromised, then lost, and fixates on memories of simpler, happier times. You look around your Bucks County farmhouse and think, “Gosh, this looks a lot … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times “A Cat Named Mercy,” a new play by Josefina López (“Real Women Have Curves”) premiering at Casa 0101 Theater, is full of reformist passion but feels underbaked. Perhaps it was rushed into production to capitalize on the Obamacare controversy. A cautionary tale about U.S. health insurance, “Cat” has the fervor and subtlety … Read more