Haines His Way

NO PLACE TO BE SOMEBODY at Waco Theater Center

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Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Charles Gordone’s smoldering drama aptly encapsulates the protest, violence and tumultuous change seen in America’s urban cities in the 1960s. The play debuted off-Broadway in 1969, garnering Gordone a Pulitzer in 1970, the first win by an African-American playwright.Read more… Rob Stevens – Haines His Way Charles Gordone’s 1969 No … Read more

RAGTIME at the Pasadena Playhouse

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Katie Buenneke – Stage Raw Ragtime has got to be up there with Oklahoma! as one of the most undeniably American musicals of all time, and it has finally come home to Southern California. Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s musical made its U.S. premiere at the now-demolished Shubert Theatre in Century City in 1997, before opening on Broadway … Read more

THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN at Antaeus Theatre Company

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Jonas Schwartz – Arts In LA Playwright Martin McDonagh has mastered the art of slamming razor-sharp dark humor into sentimentality. The humor is always fierce, but he allows the audience to connect with the characters even in his works’ most perverse moments.Read more… Rob Stevens – Haines His Way Irish writer Martin McDonagh is now … Read more

THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK at the Dorie Theatre/The Complex

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Lovell Estell III — Stage Raw Some seventy plus years after it was first published, Anne Frank’s heartrending story still tugs irresistibly at the heart. Wendy Kesselman’s adaptation of the original play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett has special significance for our highly contentious political climate.Read more… Rob Stevens – Haines His Way For … Read more

COME FROM AWAY at the Ahmanson Theatre

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Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen On paper, it feels a bit wrong to call a musical about September 11th, 2001 “uplifting.” It is easy to wonder how that could possibly be true…until seeing Come From Away, a true marvel of a show that manages to take a large story everyone knows about one … Read more

FINKS at Rogue Machine

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Terry Morgan  –  Talkin’ Broadway The cost of integrity is never cheap, but it varies. Sometimes one can lose relationships with family or friends, lose a job or, in the direst circumstance, lose one’s life. In the early 1950s, the House Un-American Activities Committee wielded Cold War communist paranoia to attack people whose views they … Read more

THE WOMAN WHO WENT TO SPACE AS A MAN at Son of Semele

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Ellen Dostal – Musicals in LA Maureen Huskey’s new one act play with music takes place wholly in the moment before death. Conceived as a 90 minute suspension of time in which Alice B. Sheldon (Betsy Moore) watches her life pass before her eyes, it blends music, movement, sound, and text to create as enigmatic a … Read more

THE LITTLE FOXES at Antaeus Theatre Company

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Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen Sometimes, family can bring out the worst in us—especially if your relatives would do anything to get to the top.Read more… Terry Morgan  –  Talkin’ Broadway Sometimes a play simply works within its own era, and exists later simply as an accurate representation of that time. But other … Read more

ROPE at Actors Co-op

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Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Rope, Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 suspense thriller at Actors Co-op, commences with an electrifying moment — the sort of cleverly crafted theatrics one might expect from director Ken Sawyer. In a pitch-black theater, the soft strains of a popular love ballad (“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”) can be heard.Read more… Rob … Read more

DEAR EVAN HANSEN at the Ahmanson Theatre

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Frances Baum Nicholson – Stage Struck Review When news the Tony-winning “Dear Evan Hansen” was headed for L.A. on its first national tour, a dash for tickets seeming mildly reminiscent of the “Hamilton” frenzy began. Erin Conley –  On Stage and Screen There have been plenty of musicals about complicated, grieving families over the years, … Read more