Bob Verini – Arts In LA Smack dab in the middle of our current, if not our ongoing, theatrical austerity crisis comes Murder for Two, a musical whodunit whose bold, albeit thrifty, conceit is to have all the roles played by two actors. Read more… Jon Magaril – CurtainUp This madcap musical mystery shoots a cap at … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly At 60 years old, the spry, lean, silver-haired Sal Lopez could well be Puck’s dad. And it could be argued that Lopez’s picaresque autobiographical one-man show, This Is a Man’s World at Los Angeles Theatre Center, is a memory play. That’s because it opens with Lopez screaming on a hospital bed … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts in LA If you took in the luminous revival of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone at the Taper in 2013, you’ve already come face-to-face with the force of nature that is John Douglas Thompson, for my money one of the truly great actors in the English-speaking world today. Read more… Margaret Gray … Read more
Bob Verini – Stage Raw Most people’s command of international finance and investment, I think it’s fair to say, probably cuts not much deeper than the “Money makes the world go around” lyrics from Cabaret. Yet in telling the sorry true-life saga of the titular Houston energy giant and its catastrophic demise, Lucy Prebble’s Enron coolly takes for granted … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA In Not That Jewish we encounter something distinctly unexpected: a first-person memoir by a former standup comic that actually feels like a real play. Read more… Paul Birchall – Stage Raw If you like your humor with a Kosher sensibility, Monica Piper’s delightful, if lightweight solo show is far … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA Angelenos have two late-spring opportunities to experience the staged version of Green Day’s—and they’ll be able to do so outside of the context of Michael Mayer’s original three-stories-high, multimedia-thick, turbocharged original. Read more… Now running through June 7.
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA So, Picasso and Einstein walk into a bar. In this tiny bar in Paris in 1904, they begin to ponder what the 20th century might be like. They suspect their individual contributions will change the world. Read more… Now running through June 14.
Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in 80 Days has been made into films, most notably twice: in 1956 in Mike Todd’s celebrity-studded epic with David Niven and Cantinflas, and in Disney’s 2004 version with Steve Coogan and Jackie Chan. The novel has been adapted for the theater several times, along with this version by … Read more
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA The iconic musical Hair embodied the 1960s and that decade’s make love, not war, philosophy. A Chorus Line epitomized the 1970s and that decade’s obsession with self-analysis. What musical best represents the 1980s? Perhaps it’s Cats. Read more… Now running through May 10.
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Sometimes it’s OK to be predictable if what you have to say bears saying again. Immediate Family, Paul Oakley Stovall’s first play now making its L.A. debut at the Mark Taper Forum, starts out as a high-spirited comedy, a kind of super-polished sitcom that centers on a group of African-American … Read more