Bob Verini – Arts In LA On the heels of Spike Jonze’s award-winning film Her comes another whimsical, futuristic, seriocomic speculation about artificial intelligence’s commercial and emotional potential. This one is Jordan Harrison’s world premiere play at the Taper, titled Marjorie Prime, and concededly it lacks the heft of Jonze’s celebrated Oscar winner, not to mention its unforgettable … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times The delicate art of origami provides both metaphor and motor for “Animals Out of Paper” at the David Henry Hwang Theater, and it enfolds the viewer with deceptive simplicity and considerable craft. Read more… Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA The paths of three loner characters intersect in Rajiv Joseph’s Animals Out of … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly David Mamet’s play Race, about a rich, white guy seeking a law firm to defend him from accusations of raping a black woman, ought to feel ripped from the headlines — even though it premiered on Broadway nearly five years ago. Read more… Melinda Schupmann – Showmag A David Mamet play … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter The last of Neil Simon’s trilogy of quasi-autobiographical accounts of his coming-of-age years in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, Broadway Bound stands among his plays as perhaps the most free from easy nostalgia, and therefore the most honest. In this sturdy 1986 drama, the requisite comedy arrives more or less … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Is it sexual abuse when one of the participants experienced it as a love affair? Or does that merely make it more abusive? This is just one of the disturbing and provocative questions that emerge from Neil LaBute’s gripping three-character play. It is, as the playwright has observed, his most … Read more
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA At the beginning of his one-person play The Wake, Ben Moroski — posing as ‘Pete Harrisburg’ — rushes in, introduces himself with a self-deprecating “I’m the asshole doing this play,” and then hands audience members flyers for this show. Moroski thus places an important distance between him — the writer and performer … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter If one cares about the movies, and about comedy (and what can life be without them?), the soul of Buster Keaton (played here by French Stewart) needs must be spliced into one’s DNA. One cannot help but feel proprietary about one’s personal relationship to the bottomlessly expressive, impassive Keaton, … Read more
Pauline Adamek – ArtsbeatLA Four monologues written by diseuse Ruth Draper are brilliantly performed by Annette Bening as a 90-minute one act evening of entertainment. This new show at the Geffen begins nicely enough, with a couple of odd character pieces. The first is a slightly bizarre speech and movement class and lesson “in Greek … 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
Margaret Gray – LA Times In Greg Pierce’s “Slowgirl” at the Geffen Playhouse, 17-year-old Becky (Rae Gray) comes to visit her Uncle Sterling (William Petersen), who left the U.S. years earlier for Costa Rica. She’s freaked out by his primitive jungle lifestyle, which is charmingly evoked by Richard Woodbury’s sound design and the tropical leaves … Read more