Bob Verini – ArtsInLA The fiendishly difficult (to stage, and hence usually to watch) Nine proves beyond the range of DOMA Theatre Company. It’s a shame, given the company’s mightily effective Dreamgirls earlier this year, but Arthur Kopit’s gloppy gloss on Fellini’s film 8½ has proved the undoing of many a producing organization. Read more… Now running through August 18.
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly In her book Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich detailed her sojourn into the world of the working poor, illuminating (as no recounting of statistics ever could) the struggle, heartache and resilience of this often forgotten and/or disrespected class of Americans. Read more… Melinda Schupman – ArtsInLA Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2001 book, Nickel … Read more
Bob Verini – ArtsInLA If there’s a more sheerly interesting playwright in the United States these days than Bruce Norris, I don’t know who it is. In a continuing series of audacious, ambitious comedies, he has remained resolutely non-P.C. in questioning some of our culture’s most cherished assumptions on race (his Pulitzer winner Clybourne Park), … Read more
How might you know a play is a farce? Normally, the set offers a clue, and in particular the set will include several doors that allow characters to barrel into situations and then quickly escape the consequences. This production of Ken Ludwig’s Lend Me a Tenor boasts six doors. Hilarity, you can be sure, ensues.Read … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times Old Hickory gets a charge of anarchistic electricity in “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” at the Chance Theater in Anaheim Hills. This sublimely raucous take on Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman’s savage emo rock evisceration of American politics via the seventh president of the United States is an in-your-face triumph.Read … Read more
Bob Verini – ArtsInLA Director-writer Nancy Keystone doesn’t exactly crank ‘em out quickly through her Critical Mass Performance Group, but they sure are worth the waiting for. Her 2006 Theatre @ Boston Court staging of Suzan-Lori Parks’s The America Play made keen sense out of that peculiarly remote text, and now, with Alcestis, Keystone and … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Although the wow factor is missing, aficionados of John Lennon probably will appreciate this tribute to the iconic musician, which juxtaposes renditions of his most famous songs with a narrative of his life. Read more… Melinda Schupman – ArtsInLA Tribute band concerts have become more and more common, particularly when the … Read more
Bob Verini – ArtsInLA A nation should know and experience its classic dramatic texts. Yet the major virtues of many of ours remain virtually unknown, even to many serious theatergoers, solely because the casts are too large for almost any contemporary producer to afford.Read more… Now running in repertory through September 28.
Bob Verini – ArtsInLA ModRock is a train wreck, the waste of a perfectly good idea for a jukebox to rifle, namely the array of 1950s and ’60s British hits that transformed the pop music scene worldwide and eventually made its way to our shores as the “British invasion.” As British invasions go, ModRock is … Read more
Terry Morgan – LAist When one thinks of Arthur Miller’s body of work, one doesn’t immediately think “chronicler of Italian-American experience,” but with A View From The Bridge, he revealed a further breadth of his talent. The lead characters of most of Miller’s plays are imperfect men, from Willy Loman and John Proctor, and Eddie … Read more