Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly While I’m not familiar with all — or even most — of Charles Mee’s work, it’s a safe bet that Adam and Evie, directed by Frédérique Michel at City Garage, is one of his gentler, sweeter plays. Read more… Paul Birchall – Stage Raw Love is madness, just as it is unique … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Capital & Main Writer/director Tim Robbins’ Harlequino: On to Freedom at the Actors’ Gang is a messy, boisterous show that runs nearly two and a half hours before the message it wants to deliver about personal freedom and self-determination comes through simply and clearly. Along the way, however, it features first-class talent, colorful spectacle and enough historical … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw Antaeus Theatre Company inaugurates their lovely new Glendale performance space with this tremendously stylish production of Tennessee Williams’ family drama. The play tells the story of a desperate woman named Maggie (the “cat” of the title) her depressed alcoholic husband Brick, and the battle for the estate of Brick’s father, … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Terence Anthony’s Burners is a two-hander set in the dystopian future. The plot revolves around two people pitted against each other in a precarious war-torn world where a rebellious faction is attempting to overthrow an authoritarian state. Read more… Now running through April 2
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Though it aspires to be profound, Alexander Dinelaris’s’ aptly titled Still Life can’t transcend its commonplace dialogue or the limitations of an inadequately conceived central character. Read more… Now running through April 23
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw As its title implies, Married People: A Comedy concerns the ups and downs of two married couples. Written by Steve Shaffer and Mark Schiff, both long-time standup comics, it’s less a play than a compilation of sitcom shtick with a sizable sprinkling of borscht-belt humor. Read more… Now running through April 2
Margaret Gray – LA Times Ngozi Anyanwu stars in the first play she wrote herself, “Good Grief,” in its world premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. She plays Nkechi, a medical-school dropout who has returned to her childhood home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, after the accidental death of a friend plunges her into intense … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Collective Rage, whose poster features a gal with soft eyes, a flexed bicep and a clenched fist, is subtitled “a play in 5 boops” because all five characters are named Betty Boop, after the cartoon figure conceived by Max Fleischer in 1930. Read more… Frances Baum Nicholson – The Daily Breeze … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Steph Deferie’s Cannibals Alone bears the surface markings of a timely dystopian drama, with an all-female cast of tough characters you wouldn’t want to mess with. The feminist angle is commendable; otherwise, the play lacks cogency and reeks of bad TV melodrama of the sci-fi variety. Read more… Now running through March 5
Deborah Klugman – Capital & Main Somewhere in the middle of Bryonn Bain’s soulful one-of-a-kind show, the playwright/poet/performer recounts an interview between himself and a public defender. Their talk takes place in an interrogation room in a New York City police precinct, where Bain has been wrongly detained on criminal charges. The Nuyorican Grand Slam … Read more