David C. Nichols – LA Times At the outset of “Lear,” now receiving an austerely lunatic West Coast premiere at City Garage, a projected PBS-style host drolly relates the narrative of William Shakespeare’s immortal tragedy, up to Lear’s banishment and Gloucester’s…
Bob Verini – Stage Raw In the vast scheme of Tennessee Williams’ long career, the 1978 Vieux Carré stands as one of his lesser plays, derivative and ill-shaped. Among the works of his final two decades, however, it’s one which can still…
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw Playwright Gabriel Rivas Gomez’s eccentric, uneven drama is loosely based on themes from Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Filtered through a prism of modern corporate capitalism, it’s a tale of American kindness — or more accurately, about…
David C. Nichols – LA Times Christmas Carol” is upon us, and its winning A Noise Within production is a keeper. Amid worthy area stagings of Charles Dickens’ immortal classic about miserly Ebenezer Scrooge’s Christmas Eve journey to redemption, this…
David C. Nichols – LA Times Edmond Rostand meets Hermann Hesse at the Village Vanguard in “Miravel” at Sacred Fools. Author-performer Jake Broder’s mash-up of Rostand’s deathless “Cyrano de Bergerac” and Hesse’s novel “Gertrude” has some post-larval quirks, yet a…