Katie Buenneke – Stage Raw Kid Gloves’s biggest struggle is that it doesn’t feel like it wants to be a stage show. The plot is comprised of dozens of scenes that switch locations regularly, so the show gets bogged down in scene changes, as we switch from onstage to backstage and back. The scene changes … Read more
Katie Buenneke – Theater Digest Company on tour at the Pantages [LA]. I had seen this production in London in 2018 and really loved it then, but I wasn’t sure how much more it would resonate seeing it 6 years later, as I am much closer to Bobbie’s age in this revival. The answer is—it … Read more
Travis Michael Holder – TicketHoldersLA “Love is Company,” the lyrics of the late-great Stephen Sondheim’s title song of his groundbreaking 1970 classic tells us, and the slice of our collective and most tenuous lives explored in this fresh gender-bending interpretation of his time-defying masterwork could not be more compelling. Read more… Katie Buenneke – Theater … Read more
Travis Michael Holder – TicketHoldersLA Cowabunga, my humor-starved overheated moondoggies, understand this one fact of nature: no one spoofs those ridiculously cheesy early-60s surfer flicks quite as perfectly as Charles Busch—and this smart and colorful remounting of his 1987 off-Broadway hit “Psycho Beach Party” could not possibly be more swellsville, bros. Read more… Katie Buenneke … Read more
Katie Buenneke – Stage Raw This is a unique production, where the sum of the parts may be greater than the show itself. There’s a lot to like about most of the elements of Jelly’s Last Jam, especially for anyone who enjoys hearing and seeing jazz performed at a high level, but Jelly Roll Morton’s … Read more
Jonas Schwartz – Theatermania Reefer Madness, The Musical has risen from the grave in the city where it first slayed for over 18 record-breaking months. Director and choreographer Spencer Liff and a stellar cast make this revival at the Reefer Den in Hollywood a winner, delivering an intoxicating high as potent as the original. Read … Read more
Jonas Schwartz – Theatermania One of the Good Ones, now making it world premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse, employs the tropes of many mid-20th-century stage comedies to explore the generation gap, cultural identity, and nationalism in the Latiné community. Conventional yet charming, this play by Gloria Calderón Kellett reveals the universality of familial strife. Read … Read more
Katie Buenneke – Theater Digest Heroes of the Fourth Turning at Rogue Machine [LA]. I first saw this play on Zoom in October 2020, when Trump was still president, and before Roe v. Wade was overturned. Though the world is quite different on those two fronts now, it still packs a tremendous punch, and I’m … Read more
Harker Jones – BroadwayWorld The most Fractured of Fairy Tales, “Peter Pan Goes Wrong” is the tonic we all need right now. Read more… Katie Buenneke – Theater Digest Peter Pan Goes Wrong at the Ahmanson [LA]. When this show is good, it’s great, and has some of the most side-splitting comedic moments I’ve experienced … Read more
Terry Morgan – ArtsBeatLA In a world in which a repulsive con man can get elected president and turn the entire Republican party into a credulous and insane mob, it’s to be expected that somebody would try to write a play about how the conservative movement has become so unhinged. Will Arbery’s Heroes of the … Read more