CIGARETTES & CHOCOLATE at Pacific Residents Theatre

Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze In their West Coast premieres, two one-act radio plays by Anthony Minghella grace the smaller stage at Pacific Resident Theatre. Though the two are produced as radio plays, the actors speaking from music stands, Michael Peretzian directs with enough subtext and reactions to start the audience’s imagination moving and … Read more

RHINOCEROS at Pacific Resident Theatre

Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze How can people be rhinoceroses? Ask that in the literal and figurative senses and you have Eugene Ionesco’s 1959 landmark play, “Rhinoceros.” Read more… Lovell Estell III — Stage Raw It’s difficult to imagine a timelier and more fitting play for the “Make America Great Again,” era than Eugène Ionesco’s … Read more

ANIMAL FARM at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum

Dany Margolies  –  Arts In LA While Big Brother watches over Broadway as George Orwell’s 1984 plays there through this summer, our own Topanga Canyon is putting the neigh in neighbors with Orwell’s Animal Farm. The legendary author’s decades-old writing remains horrifyingly pertinent. Read more… Now running through October 1

HEISENBERG at the Mark Taper Forum

Hoyt Hilsman  –  Huffington Post In the finest tradition of the theatrical two-hander, British playwright Simon Stephens (adapter of the Tony-award winning Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night) has imagined a random encounter between a forty-something eccentric woman and a very ordinary seventy-five year old butcher. Read more… Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly British playwright Simon … Read more

THE CONDUCT OF LIFE at the Rosenthal Theater at Inner-City Arts in Los Angeles

Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze In days gone by, people made names for themselves by doing something useful for society. María Irene Fornés wrote plays that broke old rules, broke barriers and taught something, whether to other playwrights or to audiences. Read more… Now running through June 25

THE PRIDE at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

Jonas Schwartz –  TheaterMania Alexi Kaye Campbell’s The Pride juxtaposes homosexuality in both the repressed world of 1958 London and the more liberated 2008. Whether people are trapped by society’s morality or by their own self-sabotaging instincts, love proves to be a true test of wills. Though the script can be didactic and overlong, the new production … Read more

ACTUALLY at the Geffen Playhouse

Margaret Gray – LA Times He said, she said. Then he said more, and then she said more. They both kept saying things. But no matter how much they said, it was impossible to determine what had actually happened between the two freshmen in the Princeton University dorm room when they were very drunk. Was it consensual … Read more

THE SWEETHEART DEAL at the Los Angeles Theatre Center

Deborah Klugman – Capital & Main Written and directed by Diane Rodriguez, The Sweetheart Deal is an amiable blend of political agitprop and audience-pleasing melodrama that unfolds against the backdrop of the struggle to empower the United Farm Workers union. Read more… Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze In 1970, when Americans had causes to fight for, we … Read more

THE BODYGUARD at the Pantages Theatre

Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen Not many musicals literally start with a bang. In the case of The Bodyguard: the Musical, now playing at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles, an opening gunshot was both very startling and pretty effective at getting the stragglers to settle into their seats. Read more… Rob Stevens – Haines … Read more