Travis Michael Holder – TicketHoldersLA Philip Kan Gotanda’s groundbreaking play, now in an electrically charged revival at East West Players chosen to honor the company’s prestigious 60th anniversary, was first performed at Berkeley Rep in 1988 before being brought to LATC and journeying on to a much-acclaimed run off-Broadway. The fact that all these years … Read more
Travis Michael Holder – TicketHoldersLA I suspect what has made Lauren Yee’s truly magical play with music such a critically acclaimed production since its debut at South Coast Rep in 2018 has been what former Angeleno theatremaker Chay Yew, now recognized as one of our country’s most noteworthy directors, has brought to the production since … Read more
Travis Michael Holder – TicketHoldersLA The premise of Philip W. Chung’s new play is compelling and eye-opening, but when dependable LA actors as gifted as Arye Gross, Alexandra Hellquist, and Gavin Kawin Lee come off as heavy-handed and unimpressive as they do here, something is terribly wrong. All three deserve better, as does director Jeff … Read more
Jonas Schwartz – Theatermania East West Players, the oldest Asian American Theatre in the US, has often taken Broadway musicals and given them a fresh spin. This season, the theater company has taken on the Tony-winning musical Spring Awakening, based on Frank Wedekind’s play. The production features many excellent performances, and a focus on the … Read more
Don Shirley – Angeles Stage Plus ‘Private Lives’ and ‘Ava’ Snehal Desai is approaching a high wire. No tightrope in LA theater is higher than the balance beam that challenges the artistic director of Center Theatre Group — the job that Desai will assume in August, after leaving his similar position at the much smaller, … Read more
Tracey Paleo – BroadwayWorld. There are defining moments in our lives where we either shrink away in fear or make a stand at all costs. In 2020, at the beginning of a global health crisis, under the order of a shelter-in-place lockdown, Kristina Wong faced such a moment. And in that moment, Kristina Wong became … Read more
Don Shirley – Angeles Stage The ‘Mean’ musical. Mean men in ‘Angry’ and ‘Brothers’. The missing mean in ‘Home Front’. Theater community rallies ’round CA arts funding and massacre survivors. The word “mean” means so many different things. It’s a verb, as in the above sentence, but it also can be an adjective and a … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw Everyone knows that a good ghost story needs to be scary, but to be a great ghost story, it needs to move its audience as well. Where would The Sixth Sense be without the Bruce Willis character slowly realizing his fate or The Haunting of Hill House be without poor, doomed Eleanor? There have … Read more
Plus a merry but muddled ‘Windsor’ at the Theatricum, ‘King James’ and two new musicals on opposite poles of the gender discussion. Don Shirley – Angeles Stage Angeles Stage first appeared a year ago, as masked audiences were beginning to return to LA stages in person, after more than a year of mostly virtual-only activity. … Read more
Jonas Schwartz-Owen – Theatermania The East West Players production of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s brilliant, jagged pill of a musical Assassins is thought-provoking and harrowing. Read more… Rob Stevens – Haines His Way The Stephen Sondheim one-act musical Assassins has gotten mixed reviews and heated pro and con reactions since it debuted in 1990. What else would you expect … Read more