David C. Nichols – LA Times The fluff and fold of old-school boulevard comedy typifies “Washer/Dryer” at East West Players. Indeed, playwright Nandita Shenoy’s study of intercultural newlyweds attempting to co-habit in a New York City co-op is an amiable throwback to the days when “Barefoot in the Park” played the Great White Way. Read more… … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage and Cinema In playwright Stephen Karam’s touching and funny drama, characters are frequently spotted quoting the great Lebanese poet-philosopher Khalil Gabran. “All is well,” they say, often in the midst of the most odious adversity. Of course, all is not well at all: Indeed, all is rather, as the Yiddish expression … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage and Cinema After watching the roaring, sputtering, and cursing along with regretful descriptions of drug use and parental abuse back in the “bad old days,” I had to ask myself, “Wha’ kind of crazy fucking show is this?” Read more… David C. Nichols – LA Times “I was brought up by wolverines,” says … Read more
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw During the notoriously doomed 1984 coal miners’ strike against Maggie Thatcher’s determination to destroy the union and its jobs, motherless 11-year old Billy Elliot (Mitchell Tobin) ditches his 50-pence afterschool boxing classes for ballet lessons, unbeknownst to his picketing father (David Atkinson) and firebrand older brother Tony (Stephen Weston). Read more… … 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
Bob Verini – Stage Raw Jerome Kern, no mean tunesmith, had a famous retort when asked about Irving Berlin’s place in American music. He has none, the Show Boat composer replied; “he is American music.” In a similar vein, one might say that Hershey Felder has no place among performers of musical biographical monologues. Read more… David C. Nichols – … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times A high degree of skill and individuality accompanies “Takarazuka!!!” at East West Players. In its elegant West Coast premiere, Susan Soon He Stanton’s very promising albeit still-forming play with music uses the famed all-female troupe in the titular Japanese city as a backdrop to an intriguing study of gender … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Apparently playwright Tom Yewell wanted to provide a male variation on The Vagina Monologues. The title might suggest that the show is a bit of pornography or an exercise in sensationalism, but the play is neither, despite a brief interlude of male nudity. It is, rather, a series of eight engaging … Read more
David C. Nichols – Stage Raw It’s hard to imagine a more theatrically idiosyncratic or versatile double bill than Henry Purcell’s 17th century English baroque landmark and Béla Bartók’s nightmarish 20th century Hungarian tone poem. Read more… Now running through November 15.
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly “Things aren’t always what they seem” is the main theme of John Biguenet’s play about a strange old woman with magical powers. It’s a piece you want to praise, given how much and how cruelly old women with (or without) magical powers have been maligned over the centuries. Read more… Neal … Read more