Jenny Lower – Stage Raw This latest outing from The Groundlings’ main company earns a respectable B. Directed by Kevin Kirkpatrick, the show at its best moments delivers the comedic goods, with writing that’s fresh, taut and clever, and performances of disciplined zaniness. In its weaker moments, ill-conceived sketches peter out or linger too long, … Read more
Jenny Lower – Stage Raw First performed in 2013, the Latino Theater Company’s Latina Christmas Special reunites three comedians — Diana Yanez, Sandra Valls and Maria Russell — who recount their personal tales of Navidades past.Read more… Now running through January 7
Jenny Lower – Stage Raw Antaeus announced Christopher Hampton’s 1987 adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses as the debut of its current season all the way back in June. The director’s note in the program discusses how this pre-revolutionary tale of French aristocratic depravity speaks to our era of the one percent.Read more… Erin Conley – On Stage … Read more
Jenny Lower – Stage Raw Separate Beds, a relationship comedy by that lacks the absurdity of a farce and the insight of a drama, may stir self-recognition among a few long coupled audience members. (If so, you should get yourself to a marriage counselor right away.) Read more… Now running through June 19
Margaret Gray – LA Times The first time Derek DelGaudio performed at the Geffen Playhouse — in the 2012 show “Nothing to Hide,” which he created with co-star Helder Guimarães and director Neil Patrick Harris — DelGaudio ended up staying longer than expected: The magic act, originally slotted for a one-month run, packed the house for 18 weeks. Read more… … Read more
Jenny Lower – Stage Raw Lunatics & Actors, the latest world premiere by Jeremy Aluma’s clowning troupe Four Clowns, is less a fixed narrative than a series of funny, unpredictable, and menacing vignettes that excavate the distinction between creative performance and insanity. Playwright David Bridel, dean of the USC School of Dramatic Arts, has crafted … Read more
Jenny Lower – LA Weekly More than any contemporary playwright who comes to mind, Sarah Ruhl’s characters inhabit worlds wholly her own. Even when she adopts a historical setting, as with In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), her lyrical sensibility fashions heightened realities, where a house of string or a dead man’s perpetually ringing … Read more
Jenny Lower – Stage Raw In just over an hour, Scottish playwright Gary McNair’s affectionate portrait of the rise and fall of an inveterate gambler manages to span 45 years, chart a grandson’s disillusionment and recovery of faith in his hero, mull the randomness of the universe, and probe the legacy of any human life. … Read more
Jenny Lower – Stage Raw “I have a powerful urge to communicate with you, but I find the distance between us insurmountable.” That refrain, repeated at various points throughout Lucas Hnath’s powerful, richly textured The Christians, could be the motto for any number of American ideological divides. Read more… Jonas Schwartz – TheaterMania Religion can be a … Read more
Jenny Lower – Stage Raw Josh Carson’s lovingly crafted theatrical tribute to the action franchise starring Bruce Willis opens in darkness, until an offstage cappella chorus sounds the familiar crescendo and theme music that herald a 20th Century Fox movie. Read more… Now running through December 19.