Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA In TALHOTBLOND:, a working man falls for a hot woman he meets in an internet chatroom. His increasing obsession has a dramatic impact on his work and home lives. Playwright Kathrine Bates has developed an oeuvre taking real life crimes as the starting point for her dramas. Her most notable work is The Manor, a hugely popular and … Read more
Deborah Klugman – ArtsBeatLA Sporting a message of sisterhood and tolerance, Wendy Graf’s well-intentioned but clumsy drama builds around two half-sisters: Julia (Diarra Kilpatrick), an ambitious attorney living and working in Manhattan, and Neyla (Yvonne Huff), her newly discovered sibling, whom Julia’s father had sired when he was a soldier in Iraq. Read more… Dany Margolies – Arts … Read more
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA A steady rain falls on the lives of two Chicago cops, but it can’t wash away the pain and hatred and guilt that live in them. Though one seems to be the “good cop” and the other “bad,” nothing is clear-cut in this Keith Huff play. Read more… Pauline Adamek – … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter Possibly his most recognized work, Noel Coward’s screenplay for David Lean’s 1945 British film Brief Encounter, with its proper and decent married lovers resolutely resisting adultery, was indubitably the adult romance of its time, with the swells of Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto counterpointing the personal sacrifice of ardor for order … Read more
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA Continuing their commitment to presenting high quality theater for children, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is staging another imported show. The award-winning Catherine Wheels Theatre Company from Scotland presents White, a magical and delightful production for the very young, in the Wallis’ smaller space, the intimate Lovelace Studio Theater. Read more… Dany Margolies – Arts In LA … 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
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
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
Jonas Schwartz – TheaterMania The model for Bernard Weinraub’s play Above the Fold, premiering at the Pasadena Playhouse, is Tom Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize winner Bonfire of the Vanities. Though parallels can be seen between both works, the indictment of politicians, the press, and Caucasian and African-American leaders for instigating and celebritizing the racial divide, Weinraub’s work also maintains … Read more