Our Dear Dead Drug Lord @ KIRK DOUGLAS THEATRE

Terry Morgan – Stage Raw “I very much wanted to like Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, but even Pablo Escobar could tell that this package is suspiciously light.” Read more…   Jonas Schwartz – Theatermania Children shouldn’t play with dead things. But it’s a warning that four high school teens of a banished school club … Read more

Fetch Clay, Make Man @ Kirk Douglas Theatre

Jonas Schwartz – Theatermania Power is an illusion in Will Power’s startling play Fetch Clay, Make Man, now running at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles. All the characters believe they have control of their destinies, but each is desperate to break free from someone’s influence — even Muhammad Ali, marvelously played by Ray … Read more

Center Theatre Group to lay off staff, pause Taper programming

A Statement from Center Theatre Group: Center Theatre Group (CTG)—along with arts organizations across the country—continues to feel the aftereffects of the pandemic and has been struggling to balance ever-increasing production costs with significantly reduced ticket revenue and donations that remain behind 2019 levels. We are still facing a crisis unlike any other in our … Read more

Center Theatre Group Selects CTG Leadership Circle Cohort 2023

Center Theatre Group is continuing its mission to uplift, celebrate, and support early- and mid-career staff members at Los Angeles’ largest theatre company by selecting its newest cohort of employees who identify as BIPOC, as well as individuals from intersectional and marginalized identities. The latest cohort, which started in December 2022 and will run through … Read more

A SOLDIER’S PLAY @ Ahmanson Theatre

Tracey Paleo – BroadwayWorld Don’t get me wrong. The production values are absolutely stellar. Lighting and sound are magnificent. The stage appropriately dressed. So well in fact, that the two-tiered set of upper walkway and then lower floor barracks that turned into various offices, not only amplified the story, but in a way, the hierarchy … Read more

Center Theatre Group presents: A TRANSPARENT MUSICAL @ Mark Taper Forum

Jonas Schwartz – Theatermania A Transparent Musical is special — more for what it is about than what it actually is. The ambition and sentiment are admirably high, but the execution needs serious work. Director Tina Landau gathers an excellent cast who perform strongly, but the text gives them too little with which to produce … Read more

CTG’s Desai decision…and the Ahmanson’s 1776. Hitting the Road in Scintilla.

Don Shirley – Angeles Stage Plus ‘Private Lives’ and ‘Ava’ Snehal Desai is approaching a high wire. No tightrope in LA theater is higher than the balance beam that challenges the artistic director of Center Theatre Group — the job that Desai will assume in August, after leaving his similar position at the much smaller, … Read more

1776 at the Ahmanson Theatre

Katie Buenneke – Theater Digest. I would not, normally, choose to be watching the musical 1776. Just thinking about it brings back memories of watching the movie in my US history class, junior year of high school, with Abigail Adams wistfully singing about saltpeter to Mr. Feeny. It did not work for me then, when … Read more

Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Announces 2022 Award Recipients

The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle is proud to announce the award recipients for 2022. On the Other Hand, We’re Happy (Rogue Machine), The Inheritance (Geffen Playhouse), The Lehman Trilogy (CTG/Ahmanson Theatre), and Uncle Vanya (Pasadena Playhouse) received the prestigious Production award, with additional honorees named in 17 other categories. In total, 18 different productions … Read more

20th-century tumult in ‘Ragtime’ and ‘Twilight’. A healing ‘Tempest’ and two new musicals.

‘Walter Paisley,’ ‘Lonely Few,’ ‘La Egoista,’ ‘Lifespan of a Fact’ Don Shirley – Angeles Stage. Both “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” and “Ragtime” are panoramic theatrical creations. Experienced in close sequence, which you can do right now in Greater LA, they bookend powerful stories from opposite ends of the previous century. But they employ diametrically different … Read more