Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. Following its aptly acclaimed 2000 world premiere run at the Hudson Theatre in Hollywood, the groundbreaking bare: A Pop Opera (now retitled bare: A Rock Musical) met with success off-Broadway and in regional theaters, developing a strong cult following. The passionate and musically vibrant pop-rock piece returns to L.A. following … Read more
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA Robert Begam and Art Shulman wrote this play as a courtroom drama. Their story could also pass for a gothic tale. Unfortunately, it totters between styles, and director Rick Walters makes a simultaneous case for both. And so this production sits precariously, leaving its audience wondering how to react.Read … Read more
Bob Verini – ArtsInLA As Greek tragedies go, Prometheus Bound poses something of a staging nightmare. There’s no betrayed wife out to murder her own children and her rival, no king brought to understand the truth about the older woman he married. Instead, it’s a solemn religioso pageant in which the god who created mortal … Read more
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA Coyotes don’t play fetch and greet us at the door and guard us in our homes. Coyotes are the predator version of our snuggly pups. They are the canines with the need to kill, excused—but not usually forgiven—because they’re programmed that way. Do we know of people like that?Read … Read more
Neal Weaver – LA Weekly Writer-director Steve Sajich’s play consists of four tenuously interrelated scenes, centering on the murder of a hooker. For reasons best known to Sajich, the four scenes are juggled in performance, with the audience deciding what their order will be. But this seems like a mere gimmick, designed to keep us … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly As Bottom, performer Katherine Griffith may be the best reason to see this amusing but somewhat quotidian presentation of Shakespeare’s seasonal classic. Cast across gender by directors Melora Marshall and Willow Geer, Griffith’s likable blowhard garners a plurality of the laughs, along with his proletarian colleagues, whose presentation of Pyramus … Read more
Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly Each of two average, kitchen-sink tragedies, with some levity throughout, take as their focus the troubled relationship between adult daughters and their wayward, alcoholic parents. In You’ll Just Love My Dad, written by Stephanie Jones and Peter Schuyler, an old homeless guy breaks into a home and starts snooping around … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day was first presented as a workshop in 1985 at New York’s Theatre 22, before receiving its premiere at San Francisco’s Eureka Theatre in 1987, directed by Oskar Eustis — who runs New York’s Public Theater. It’s no coincidence that in 1990, Eustis … Read more
Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. The works of veteran playwright-actor Sam Shepard (True West, The Curse of the Starving Class, A Lie of the Mind) are largely thought of as brooding portraits of severe family dysfunction in America’s heartland. His characters often face an inescapable legacy of decline and despair. Their psychological baggage leads them … Read more
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net A favorite pastime of Broadway musical fanatics is sharing stories of infamous musical flops. Of course, the perception of a “flop” can reflect a box-office calamity or an artistic failure, or a combination of the two. The measure of artistic worth is subjective.Read more… Now running through September … Read more