86′d by Jon Polito and Darryl Armbruster. David C. Nichols – L.A. Times Would that all indie films translated to the stage as well as “86’d” at Theatre 68. Jon Polito and Darryl Armbruster’s dark comedy about collective moral equivalency in a late-night diner weathers some blips in tone and casting to hold us in uncomfortably laughing thrall. Read more…
Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage. Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA A persuasive melodrama, Intimate Apparel is perhaps Lynn Nottage’s best known play, although she won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Ruined in 2009. Written and first staged at Center Stage in Baltimore almost ten years ago, Intimate Apparel has a pleasing contemporary relevance. Although Nottage’sdrama is set in New York City in 1905, in the love letter romance … Read more
Hah Nah by Joy Cha. Mayank Keshaviah – LA Weekly A Korean U.S. Army field nurse trying to track down her missing father while encamped in his hometown during the Korean War seems like fertile ground. Butthe tree that emerges from it, nurtured by writer and performer Joy Cha, unfortunately never bears fruit. Read more…
Fuddy Meers by David Lindsay-Abaire. Shirle Gottlieb – Gazette Newspapers Some theater enthusiasts are still shaking their heads in disbelief. After so many years of featuring Agatha Christie-type mysteries and British living-room comedies, it’s hard to believe the Long Beach Playhouse is producing provocative, cutting-edge plays. Read more…
A Bright New Boise by Samuel D. Hunter. Dany Margolies – ArtsInLA.com This Samuel D. Hunter script is saying something, and other people say they hear its message. But some of us do not hear it. Why not? The play pleased a New York publication enough to win an Obie. The play then merited the interest of Rogue Machine theater company … Read more
Teatro ZinZanni: Love, Chaos & Dinner by Norman Langill, Kevin Kent, Joe de Paul, Mat Plendl, Juliana Rambaldi, Duffy Bishop, Manuela Horn, Hans Teuber and Jane Langill. David C. Nichols – L.A. Times Federico Fellini and Toulouse-Lautrec meet Garrison Keillor and Wolfgang Puck by way of Bricktop and Bob Fosse in Teatro ZinZanni’s “Love, Chaos & Dinner,” now catapulting its way around the collective id of Costa Mesa. This latest high-concept spectacle from the iconoclastic … Read more
Red Barn by David Melville andMelissa Chalsma. Dany Margolies – ArtsInLA.com Captivating storytelling hallmarks this world premiere musical in Los Angeles that centers on an 1827 crime in the English countryside. David Melville andMelissa Chalsma, better-known to summer-Shakespeare audiences as the makers of Independent Shakespeare Company’s outdoor seasons, wrote the book for Red Barn, in part because the story, told to Melville by his mother … Read more
Nora by Ingmar Bergman. David C. Nichols – Backstage It’s seldom that a revision of a classic carries the riveting punch of Nora, now getting its overdue Los Angeles debut at Pacific Resident Theatre. This stark black-box take on Ingmar Bergman’s searing 1981 reduction of Henrik Ibsen’s immortal A Doll’s House grabs its viewers from the outset and never lets go. Read more…
The Muesli Belt by Jimmy Murphy. Dany Margolies – ArtsInLA.com This U.S. premiere of an Irish import is a gentle little script that probably would speak to Dubliners of the late 1990s. But playwright Jimmy Murphy offers not much to Angelenos of the new millennium, who would be thrilled with increasingly large offers to purchase any property we might … Read more
Their Eyes Saw Rain by West Liang. Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly Playwright West Liang also stars in his astonishingly intense ensemble drama, set in a fictitious small country town. The specter of tragedy hangs over the townspeople of Castle, emblematized by an ever-present decay caused by months of relentless rain. Or is that really the cause? Stern and … Read more