F. Kathleen Foley – Stage Raw The current playing area — a compact dell at the top of the Old Zoo in Griffith Park — suffices as a stopgap measure for this in-the-round staging until the company’s new stage near the park’s old bear caves is completed. While the dell is a pleasant location in … Read more
Don Shirley – Angeles Stage The free-admission but donation-reliant ISC returns to its Old Zoo space within Griffith Park with “Julius Caesar,” after two seasons in a much smaller dell just to the west, deeper within the park (following the COVID-caused cancellation of ISC’s outdoor activity in 2020). The temporary location was used primarily because … Read more
Ellen Dostal – BroadwayWorld Taking its cue from Orson Welles‘ 1937 Mercury Theatre production of JULIUS CAESAR, Independent Shakespeare Co. exercises its exceptional ability to adapt one of Shakespeare’s massive works for an intimate indoor setting without giving up any of the play’s scope or impact. The critical element is the audience, whose inclusion and participation … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times Every summer I’m surprised by how much I enjoy the Independent Shakespeare Co.’s Griffith Park Free Shakespeare Festival. Performances start at 7 p.m., when the sun is still a bit too bright and the actors are oddly dressed figures in the distance, shouting British things I can’t quite hear over … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Few Americans have a detailed understanding of the history behind Shakespeare’s history plays. We may grasp the themes of his work – the struggle for power and/or the Bard’s reflections on what makes or breaks a king – but many of us are less familiar with the actual historical events, … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times A skirmish of wit attends “Much Ado About Nothing” in Griffith Park, and it proves a notable argument. Independent Shakespeare Company concludes its summer season with an agreeably quirky, riotously funny take on the Bard’s evergreen romantic comedy. Read more… Now running through August 30.
Steven Leigh Morris – Stage Raw That David Melville should bring La Dolce Vita into his family-friendly outdoor staging of Shakespeare’s knotty Italian comedy makes sense. Italian comedies of the 1960s are no less dodgy, regarding their sexual politics, than the amused brutality towards a defiant spouse found in Taming of the Shrew’s central story. Independent-minded, embittered Katherine (Melissa … Read more
Sharon Perlmutter – Talkin’ Broadway I’ll be honest: what initially appealed to me about Independent Shakespeare Co.’s Romeo & Juliet was that it condensed the play. The play is performed with only eight actors. Some of the actors double up on roles; sometimes the lines of one character have been given to another. Thus, for example, Benvolio … Read more
Red Barn by David Melville andMelissa Chalsma. Dany Margolies – ArtsInLA.com Captivating storytelling hallmarks this world premiere musical in Los Angeles that centers on an 1827 crime in the English countryside. David Melville andMelissa Chalsma, better-known to summer-Shakespeare audiences as the makers of Independent Shakespeare Company’s outdoor seasons, wrote the book for Red Barn, in part because the story, told to Melville by his mother … Read more