Bob Verini – Arts In LA Kimber Lee’s different words for the same thing, directed by Neel Keller, seems intended as an Our Townfor our time. Like the Thornton Wilder classic, it takes a cross-section of a little burg to investigate themes of love, death, and community, though Lee’s strategy is more tightly focused on a single … Read more
Bob Verini – Variety Stars are called stars because they shine brighter than anyone else. Every time Chazz Palminteri sashays into “Unorganized Crime” as Gotham mob scion Sal Sicuso, cool and sardonic, seething with banked menace, you can’t take your eyes off him. It’s a supporting role, but he’s more than enough reason to travel to Hollywood’s … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly If you’re not much on abstract theory when it comes to interpreting architecture as art, chances are you’ll find Oren Safdie’s False Solution slow-going stuff. A student of architecture before becoming a playwright, Safdie – son of famed architect Moshe Safdie, who designed L.A.’s Skirball Cultural Center – integrates high-toned analytical jargon into … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times Son of Semele Ensemble has selected two startlingly different short plays for “Woman Parts,” a double bill planned, according to the program, as a corrective to the underrepresentation of women in the theater. The first offering, “Sex & God,” by the Scottish playwright Linda McLean, weaves together melancholy monologues by … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Come late to a performance of Impro Theatre’s Shakespeare Unscripted and you’ll likely be greeted with an ironic round of applause from the audience members who have been waiting for you to arrive. Latecomers react with good-natured grins, red-faced embarrassment or something in between. It helps set the stage for the amiable … Read more
Hoyt Hilsman – Huffington Post Even in this subdued and somber rendering of a pair of Chekhov stories, Mikhail Baryshnikov and his creative partners from the Big Dance Theater display a magical grace and style that transcends the bleakness of Chekhov’s tales. Big Dance Theater directors Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, who also adapted the … Read more
BobVerini – Arts In LA The premise of Benjamin Brand’s Taste, as the management of Sacred Fools Theater Company has been unabashedly eager to trumpet in preopening publicity, is a compact made between two men to meet for dinner, at which the guest is to be killed, butchered, cooked, and eaten by the host in what … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly What happens when an illness of tsunami-like proportions lays waste to your life? In Emilie Beck’s family drama Sovereign Body, Anna (Taylor Gilbert), a chef and restaurateur, lives happily with her husband (Kevin McCorkle), mom (Bryna Weiss) and two daughters: 20-year-old Callie (Dani Stephens), bursting to be out on her own, … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times That rarefied place where craft, collaboration and content create theatrical poetry is everywhere in “The Last Act of Lilka Kadison” at the Falcon Theatre. Indeed, this delicately potent West Coast premiere, a co-production between the Falcon and Chicago’s Tony-winning Lookingglass Theatre Company, often seems to be composing itself before … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw In Robert E. Sherwood’s 1934 play, The Petrified Forest, a world-weary writer, Alan Squier (skillfully etched by John DeMita), happens into a remote café in the Arizona desert, and in the space of a few short hours has stirred the eternal ardor of the café owner’s starry-eyed daughter, Gabby (Leona Britton) … Read more