Terry Morgan – Stage Raw If one were to attempt to find a work comparable to Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, it would likely be Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Both plays deal with the mundane and the sacred, and both delve into the complexities of small communities.Read more… Now running through August 25
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw Caring for an infant is an important part of life, yet its difficulties are rarely depicted in the arts. While there is no lack of stories about pregnancy and birth, once the child is born, the drama seems to be considered less interesting. Playwright Molly Smith Metzler begs to differ…….Read … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw It’s Los Angeles in 1939. Count Basie and his band are scheduled to play at the Palomar Ballroom — one of the first African-American groups to perform there. Next door, at Bimini Baths, two employees, African-American Amen (Noel Arthur) and Mexican-American Zenobio (Adrian Gonzalez) have been given the onerous job … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw Steve Apostolina’s Forever Bound is an uncommon play that begins in one genre and ends in another. It’s always difficult to market something that doesn’t fit neatly into one category, so writers are often encouraged not to create anything like that. However, the results of such experiments are usually intriguing artistically. Such … Read more
Ellen Dostal – BroadwayWorld The air between the words is so thick you could cut it with a knife in Daniel Talbott‘s shadowy play about three siblings attempting to survive their dysfunctional family. Each is broken in his or her own way and, as the hairball unravels, the audience must piece together their fragmented story over … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw In the interests of full disclosure, let me say that I am not very knowledgeable about computers and programming, so much of the technical jargon and inside humor in Marek Glinski’s play went right over my head. Glinski’s play might be called a cyber-satire, or a madcap comedy for the … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Capital & Main Directed by Chris Fields, Yusuf Toropov’s An Undivided Heart, co-produced by the Echo Theater Company and the Circle X Theatre Co., is an aspiring work that aims to be deep but doesn’t get there. Read more… Terry Morgan – Stage Raw Any play that starts with a kid standing next to a burning typewriter … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw This adaptation of Moliere’s Tartuffe abridges Richard Wilbur’s translation to a succinct 90 minutes and transforms a witty satire into a heated ballast-filled melodrama.Read more… Now running through February 28
Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze It takes guts, or gleeful insanity, to tackle the three pillars of civilization: the Judeo-Christian Bible, Shakespeare’s “King Lear” and audition songs. Whatever the motivation, Phil Swann and Ron West do exactly that in “deLEARious,” Open Fist Theatre Company’s revival of its 2008 production, playing through Dec. 16 in … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times At first, Erin Courtney’s play “A Map of Virtue” presents itself as a quirky love story: Sarah (Megan Branch) and Mark (Sam T. West) stand side by side onstage and deliver alternating accounts of the first time they saw each other, as if answering an unseen interviewer’s questions.Read more… Now … Read more