Terry Morgan – Stage Raw Every theater company has its ups and downs. It’s the nature of artistic endeavor. Evidence Room, celebrating its 20th anniversary as a company, has an admirable history of successful and award-winning plays, most recently with its producing partner, the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble. Unfortunately, their new show, Martin Crimp’s adaptation of Pierre … Read more
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net In its shimmering revival of William Inge’s steamy 1953 classic, “Picnic,” the classics-focused Antaeus Theatre Company serves up a theatrical feast. Read more… David C. Nichols – LA Times The intimacy of small-town life and its stifling limitations permeate “Picnic,” which the thoughtfully representative staging at Antaeus Theater Company underscores without … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times Struggles over inheritance are always painful — unless, of course, they take place in a French farce, in which case they are endlessly prankish and ribald. Read more… Myron Meisel – Stage Raw David Ives’s“translaptation” of Jean-Francois Regnard’s 1708 farce The Heir Apparent (Le Legataire Universel), at International City Theatre, also involves a … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Sophocles was thought to be near 90 when he wrote Oedipus at Colonus, which tells of the iconic figure’s quest for redemption and a final resting place as his tortured life drew to a close. Read more… David C. Nichols – LA Times It’s fairly unusual for a 30-plus-year-old experimental theater … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times Talk amongst yourselves,” says a wild-eyed Lester Bangs as he hammers away at his typewriter, gesturing us into his unkempt apartment, Black Sabbath blaring from the turntable. “And nobody touch my records.”Read more… Dany Margolies – Arts In LA The lesson to be learned here is not how to … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times Here’s a deal, L.A. theaters: We’ll happily watch all the liquored-up-dysfunctional-family-reunion dramas you care to stage, as long as you cast Anne Gee Byrd as the mother. Read more… Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Like his other plays, Samuel D. Hunter’s A Permanent Image is set in the arid cultural wasteland of northern Idaho. Read … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts in LA If you took in the luminous revival of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone at the Taper in 2013, you’ve already come face-to-face with the force of nature that is John Douglas Thompson, for my money one of the truly great actors in the English-speaking world today. Read more… Margaret Gray … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times Family dysfunction, that age-old staple of the dramatic canon, permeates the walking wounded that populate “The House of Yes” in a respectable, albeit still-gelling 25th anniversary revival at the Zephyr. Read more… Now running through June 14.
Margaret Gray – LA Times When women have babies, expectations are born at the same time – dream children, made up of assumptions and hopes, that grow up alongside the real ones. Read more… Now running through May 31.
Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in 80 Days has been made into films, most notably twice: in 1956 in Mike Todd’s celebrity-studded epic with David Niven and Cantinflas, and in Disney’s 2004 version with Steve Coogan and Jackie Chan. The novel has been adapted for the theater several times, along with this version by … Read more