Jonas Schwartz – Arts In LA The concept framing Long Beach Opera’s Candide, of life as a first rehearsal, is apt. We’re given little stage direction and then blindly stumble through this world. So the title character—after discovering that life is tragic, cruel, and random—learns that the best one can do to survive is to find … Read more
Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA The U.S. premiering Act 3 is the story of a couple of a certain age who have been together for nearly 13 years without benefit of marriage. They have been married before, but not to each other. Things are getting monotonous and stale, so something needs to happen to liven up … Read more
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA It’s 1935, and Mrs. Abramowitz’s 12-year-old daughter has been cast as Jesus in her school’s Christmas pageant. Oy. So goes Coney Island Christmas, Torrance Theatre Company’s holiday season offering, written by Donald Margulies based on Grace Paley’s short story “The Loudest Voice.” Read more… Now running through December 13.
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA Originally characters in 1930s single-panel cartoons and then the basis of a 1960s television sitcom, the Addams family consists of the bizarrely gothic, macabre, but close-knit clan created by cartoonist Charles Addams. Read more… Now running through October 26.
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA It cannot be said that Rajiv Joseph’s West Coast premiere Guards at the Taj is entertaining. Neither is it cheering, inspiring nor pleasantly distracting. But it thoroughly provokes thoughts and emotions like few other “entertainments” do. Read more… Now running through November 15.
Jonas Schwartz – Arts In LA Rarely are the words zany and film noir in the same sentence. However, Something Truly Monstrous is a madcap send-up of 1940 murky melodramas like High Sierra, Johnny Eager, and The Maltese Falcon—taking a longstanding rumor and twisting the backstory to involve three Warner Bros. prestigious movie actors. Read more… Now running through November 8.
Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA Playwright John Bishop, a longtime member of New York’s Circle Repertory Theatre, wrote a number of plays and screenplays, among them this comic spoof of manor house murder mysteries. It follows in the tradition of screwball comedies popular in the 1930s and ’40s. Read more… Now running through October 18.
Bob Verini – Arts In LA Greenway Court Theatre’s Breathing Room is a 70-minute metaphysical self-help session, scored to electric violin and synthesizer and incorporating quantum theory. It insists that people are debilitated by overwhelming technological change, and it recommends an extended time-out to develop a fresh perspective on the natural world. Read more… Myron Meisel – Stage … Read more
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA First of all, this is indeed your father’s The Sound of Music, in its national tour now launching here. The stage version birthed the film, which retained much of the theatrical book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Read more… … Read more
Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA When Awake and Sing! was produced in 1935, it was a transformative experience for theatergoers. Playwright Clifford Odets was an early member of the Group Theatre in New York, a lab for Stanislavski’s system of acting with a shared commitment among the collective for social change through theater. Read more… Now … Read more