Jonas Schwartz – TheaterMania Middletown, a delicate, essentially plotless play about Anywhere, U.S.A., and how human connection is essential for our survival, requires actors to be able to fill the void that playwright Will Eno has left in the script. Read more… Now running through May 19
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way I have never been much of a video game player. Truthfully I haven’t played one since the very early versions of Pong and PacMan started replacing pin ball machines in bars to give customers something to do while drinking. So I was a bit leery about seeing the new … Read more
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way I have never been much of a video game player. Truthfully I haven’t played one since the very early versions of Pong and PacMan started replacing pin ball machines in bars to give customers something to do while drinking. So I was a bit leery about seeing the new … Read more
Jonas Schwartz – TheaterMania With only a piano and a small cast, Chance Theater‘s production of Little Women is a pleasurable surprise — a warm and inviting musical, filled with spirited characters and melodic songs. It feels like being home for the holidays with family. Read more… Now running through December 23
Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA Love, marriage, birth, and death are fodder for Dan LeFranc’s fast-paced narrative spotlighting a couple who meet, marry, and produce several generations in the space of 90 minutes. Read more… Now running through May 22
Margaret Gray – LA Times Some of us try to jury-rig meaningful lives using the disheartening fragments at our disposal; others dream of wiping the slate clean and starting anew. Both approaches prove painfully unsatisfying to the lonely characters in Samuel D. Hunter’s play “A Bright New Boise,” the 2011 Obie Award winner being revived … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times When women have babies, expectations are born at the same time – dream children, made up of assumptions and hopes, that grow up alongside the real ones. Read more… Now running through May 31.
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw The prophet Ezekiel, preaching to the Babylonian exiles, decried the maxim that “the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth turn out,” insisting that each generation was responsible for its own sins. While as moralists we might agree, if we eschewed the concept, where would the modern theater … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA Ill-advised, intrusive direction plagues the Chance Theater’s She Loves Me, and the casualty is the easy, unforced enjoyment traditionally associated with this jewel box of a musical, adapted from the 1940 Lubitsch classic The Shop Around the Corner. Read more… David C. Nichols – LA Times The three essential qualities invoked in … Read more
Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA When Aristophanes penned Lysistrata in 411 BC, he could hardly have imagined that his play would have spawned the many innovative modifications that have taken place over the centuries. The concept is irresistible: A group of women band together and withhold sex from their menfolk until the men have taken … Read more