Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Plays we now regard as classics aren’t always well-received when they debut. Like The Birthday Party (reviewed on this site in June), Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts was much disparaged when it appeared in 1881— not for being too cryptic, which was the complaint lodged against Pinter, but for being salacious and grossly offensive. Launched in … Read more
Bob Verini – Stage Raw John Logan’s Red has been one of the most produced plays of the last few years, with over 40 mountings at major theaters coast to coast, usually reviewed in deserved superlatives. Yet in all the column inches devoted to the incisive two-hander, few if any of my critical colleagues have made reference … Read more
Nora by Ingmar Bergman. David C. Nichols – Backstage It’s seldom that a revision of a classic carries the riveting punch of Nora, now getting its overdue Los Angeles debut at Pacific Resident Theatre. This stark black-box take on Ingmar Bergman’s searing 1981 reduction of Henrik Ibsen’s immortal A Doll’s House grabs its viewers from the outset and never lets go. Read more…