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BEST OF BEST OF THIS WEEK THIS WEEK, Open Fist Theatre Company at Atwater Village Theatre

Photo by Chris Phipps
March 22, 2023Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw Following in the satirical footsteps of Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show, this Open Fist Company production takes the past year’s cream of the crop of its Thursday night comedy sketch show, This Week This Week, and skewers our calamitous society with mostly hilarious results. Creator and director Ron
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TWELFTH NIGHT At The Broadwater Studio Theater

Photo courtesy of Foolish Production Co.
March 22, 2023Tracey Paleo – BroadwayWorld Notwithstanding that they fell into many textbook Shakespeare traps, and that there was zero chemistry between any single one of the characters, the Foolish Production Company cast actually knew what they were doing. And mostly their 1-hour rendition of TWELFTH NIGHT (playing in rep with MEASURE FOR MEASURE at The Broadwater)
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CARDENIO at City Garage Theatre

Photo by Paul Rubenstein
March 22, 2023Rob Stevens – Haines His Way City Garage, the resident theatre company at Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station Arts Center, built their thirty-plus year reputation for doing heavy lifting with productions of Greek tragedies and the works of Brecht and Beckett among other dramatists. With their latest offering, Cardenio, they prove they can let down their
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THE THIN PLACE, Echo Theater Company at Atwater Village Theatre

Caitlin Zambito. Photo by OddDog Pictures.
March 22, 2023Harker Jones – BroadwayWorld Tony-nominated playwright Lucas Hnath’s THE THIN PLACE is an eerie meditation on grief, regret and the need for closure, though it is undermined by the lack of a satisfying conclusion… Obie Award- and Outer Critics Circle Award-winning Hnath (“Red Speedo”; “A Doll’s House, Part 2″) carefully delineates each character with precise
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ONCE at Laguna Playhouse

Photo by Jason Niedle
March 22, 2023Socks Whitmore – Stage Raw In Dublin, a struggling Irish musician bumps into a young Czech woman and his life changes forever. This is the premise of the 2007 musical film Once, and likewise the stage musical of the same name, both featuring songs by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová (including the infamous “Falling Slowly”),
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TWILIGHT: LOS ANGELES, 1992 at the Mark Taper Forum

Sabina Zúñiga Varela. Photo by Craig Schwartz Photography.
March 22, 2023Dana Martin – Stage Raw Center Theatre Group meets the moment with Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, conceived, written and revised by Anna Deavere Smith. The original production premiered on Broadway in April, 1994. Smith wrote it as a solo piece, which she developed from hundreds of interviews following the 1992 L.A. uprising. This updated version
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THE LONELY FEW at Geffen Playhouse

Lauren Patten. Photo by Jeff Lorch.
March 18, 2023Patrick Chavis – LA Theatre Bites World Premiere: The Lonely Few @ Geffen Playhouse – 8 out of 10 – Good Show! LA Theatre Bites Recommended! More… Jonas Schwartz-Owen – Theatermania The Lonely Few, a world premiere rock musical at the Geffen Playhouse, does away with conventional narrative. It immerses its audience in rock clubs
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Archive for Broad Stage

SHAKESPEARE HIS WIFE AND THE DOG at the Broad Stage

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, January 24th, 2018

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Ellen Dostal – Broadway World

It takes an awfully long time to get to the point in Philip Whitchurch’s original one act play directed by Julia St. John. Set during a fictional night in the lives of William Shakespeare (played by Whitchurch) and his wife Anne (Sally Edwards) at their home in Stratford-upon-Avon, the story reveals a couple in their later years, bickering but still clearly in love…
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Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze

“You cannot talk without it being puns or snatches of your plays,” William Shakespeare’s wife complains in “Shakespeare his wife and the dog.” The audience might feel likewise.

But in this 65-minute work by Philip Whitchurch, ending Sunday at the Broad Stage, when these two get down to the troubles ordinary humans face — illness, lovelessness — we feel every bit of their pain.
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Now running through January 28

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13 THINGS ABOUT ED CARPOLOTTI at the Broad Stage

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, January 20th, 2017

 

Meghan Moore

Meghan Moore

Jonas Schwartz -  TheaterMania

finds Virginia (Penny Fuller) alone in her home for the first time after her husband, Ed (they were childhood sweethearts), passes away. Worse, she discovers that Ed’s business has been failing for years. As president of the company now, Virginia finds herself on the hook for almost $2 million...Read more…

Now running through January 29

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KING LEAR at the Broad Stage

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Monday, November 10th, 2014
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Photo by Ellie Kurttz

Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly

 A production of Shakespeare’s King Lear imported from the Globe Theatre in London stirs all sorts of expectations. Surely no one can do Shakespeare better than the Brits. And besides, the play is one of the most highly regarded works of literature in the English language. Read more…

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Dany Margolies  -  Arts In LA

This production purportedly re-creates an Elizabethan-style touring version of one of Shakespeare’s most-famous plays, presumably staging it the way the Bard’s contemporaries would have seen his plays. All the action is packed onto a small, portable, two-story structure. The motley costuming probably harkens to the days when actors wore their own clothing. The production uses no “theatrical” lighting, and the actors make their own sound effects. Read more…

 

Now running through November 16.

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THE MAGIC FLUTE at the Broad Stage

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, October 10th, 2014
Photo by Angela Kase

Photo by Angela Kase

Pauline Adamek  – ArtsBeatLA

Joyful & exuberant — Isango Ensemble’s afrobeat version of Mozart’s fairytale opera The Magic Flute is a unique and beautiful experience. You will probably have never experienced anything like it before, and perhaps never will again — it’s that special. Read more…

 

Now running through Oct. 12.

 

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MAN IN A CASE at the Broad Stage

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Monday, April 28th, 2014

Photo by T. Charles Erickson

Photo by T. Charles Erickson

Hoyt Hilsman  -  Huffington Post

Even in this subdued and somber rendering of a pair of Chekhov stories, Mikhail Baryshnikov and his creative partners from the Big Dance Theater display a magical grace and style that transcends the bleakness of Chekhov’s tales. Big Dance Theater directors Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, who also adapted the Chekhov stories, fuse techniques from theater, dance, music and video into a mélange performance. Read more…

Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly

Man in a Case, a Big Dance Theatre production conceived and directed by Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar and featuring former Russian dance super-star Mikhail Baryshnikov, dramatizes two of Anton Chekhov’s short stories, layering his narratives with videography, music and dance. The aim, presumably, is to deepen and expand the Chekhovian experience. But while the multimedia effects may be imaginative, in the end their chaotic sturm und drang creates distance and disinterest rather than the empathy the writer sought to create.  Read more…

Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter

Experimental art of all kinds requires the will to fail, necessarily more often than not. Nevertheless, there is a lot of interesting and innovative experimental theater afoot, but the avant-garde is not immune to trends, nor even to its own alternative brands of conformity.  Read more…

Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA

The works of Anton Chekhov, arguably one of the greatest writers of short fiction, have been twisted and bent into countless play productions, attempting either to capture the soul of the work or to find an inventive approach that speaks to theatrical craft. Baryshnikov Productions’ conception of the stories at Broad Stage appears to be trying to do both and have moderate success in the main. Read more…

Now running through May 10.

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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM at the Broad Stage

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Monday, April 7th, 2014

Photo by Simon Annand

Photo by Simon Annand

Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter

Like many of the best things in life, overindulgence, even with the classics, can lead to irritability. One could well be sated for life with A Midsummer Night’s Dream (probably the most frequently mounted of all Shakespeare comedies) after landmark productions by Max Reinhardt, Peter Brook and Peter Hall, the Benjamin Britten opera, the George Balanchine ballet, not to mention a classic Czech animated feature or a recent starry Hollywood version. That is to say, there had better be a compelling reason to tour any new version internationally.  Read more…

Dany Margolies  -  Arts In LA

Something is unusual about a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which Hippolyta is the most interesting character on the stage. While the audience enters the theater in this Bristol Old Vic touring production directed by Tom Morris (one of the original directors of War Horse), Saskia Portway, who plays Hippolyta, is onstage, laboring in what appears to be a weather-beaten atelier. Portway is engrossed in sculpting or fixing something. Read more…

Now running through April 19.

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The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart at the Broad Stage

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, January 22nd, 2014
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Photo by Drew Farrell

Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter

The smaller room at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica has been repurposed as a tavern with the audience seated at the bar or small round tables throughout the room. A quintet of rambunctiously versatile performers begin playing traditional melodies on the auld instruments on a postage stamp stage befitting a rustic pub, but all the world’s a stage for The National Theatre of Scotland as they present David Greig’s knowing appropriation of “Border Ballads,” Robert Burns and all manner of Gaelic culture, Highland and low. Audience participation will be demanded throughout, beginning with tearing up napkins to make “snow” for a blizzard to frequent interaction with the players, call-and-response and sing-a-longs.
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Bob Verini -   ArtsInLA

Theatricality, that broad and vague but unmistakable quality, comes in many forms. When it’s embraced, and when the devices are wholly appropriate to the material at hand, it can offer excitement like almost no other entertainment source.
The National Theater of Scotland, which blew everyone’s socks off during its 2007 tour of Black Watch, is back with The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, currently occupying the smaller space at Santa Monica’s Broad Stage. Though the two productions are very different, both are marked by the same components of theatrical magic: that is, they delight us by putting to use the full range of technical means at their disposal; and they drive human actors to their vocal, physical, and emotional limits in order to get a story told. Read more…

Now running through February 8.

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An ILIAD at the Broad Stage

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, January 22nd, 2014
Review: A poet embedded among troops lives to tell ‘An Iliad’

Photo by Lawrence K. Ho

Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter

If war and conflict must be begrudgingly considered the natural condition of Mankind, then The Iliad of Homer, voiced and written some 2,800 years ago, remains the most profound exploration of these primal drives to domination and destruction. The act of combat has never been more piercingly described (not even by Tolstoy or Mailer, let alone Lone Survivor), nor its qualities of rage, savagery and comradeship more intensely conveyed.
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Bob Verini -   ArtsInLA

An Iliad, at Santa Monica’s Broad Stage, is a staggering theatrical event, and if you’re reading this you doubtless have an interest in such things and should purchase a ticket without delay. Actor Denis O’Hare (American Horror Story; True Blood; Broadway’s Take Me Out) and director Lisa Peterson (The Geffen’s The Escort and CTG’s Water & Power) have distilled a crackerjack 100-minute narrative out of Homer’s epic, one which yields potent commentary on war and the men who fight wars, even as it just plain enthralls.   Read more...
Now running through February 2.

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HENRY VIII (Enrique VIII) at the Broad Stage

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Monday, September 30th, 2013

Dany Margolies – Arts In LA

"Henry VIII / Enrique VIII"

Photo by Ellie Kurttz

It’s not the first play of Shakespeare’s canon to spring to mind, but Henry VIII was reportedly among the last he wrote (co-credited to John Fletcher). At least all of us know of this king, the one with the outsized appetites—including six wives. At the end of Shakespeare’s version, which concludes with his celebration of Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn and the birth of baby Elizabeth, one might wonder where his first wife is.  Read more…

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DULCE ROSA at the Broad Stage

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013
Photo by Robert Millard

Photo by Robert Millard

 

DULCE ROSA - co-written by composer Lee Holdridge and librettist Richard Sparks, based on the short story by Isabel Allende.

 

Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA

A gorgeous new opera made its world premier last Friday at The Broad Stage, in a co-production with LA Opera, conducted by LA Opera’s general director Plácido Domingo. Performed in English with projected English supertitles, Dulce Rosa, was co-written by composer Lee Holdridge and librettist Richard Sparks, and is based on the short story by Chilean novelist Isabel Allende entitled “Una Venganza” (“An Act of Vengeance”). Uruguayan soprano María Eugenia Antúnez shines in the title role of a young woman who plans her revenge against a merciless attacker following the aftermath of a violent political uprising in her (unspecified) South American country.
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