David C. Nichols – LA Times Summer and Smoke” may stand a little higher in the Tennessee Williams canon after you see an exceptional Actors Co-op revival of the 1947 drama, one of the best offerings in the company’s storied history. Read more… Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A. Tennessee Williams’ sultry and thought-provoking 1947 drama, strongly … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times Is “Women Laughing Alone With Salad” the first play inspired by an Internet meme? In 2011 the feminist website the Hairpin published stock photographs of slender models appearing to exult over forkfuls of mixed greens. We’d all seen these images in advertisements, but we’d never really looked at them, or … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw George Bernard Shaw’s’s turn of the 20th century rom-com, had a rocky start. Set to debut in 1897, it failed to make it to the stage that year, as actors struggled with the material and one leading lady quit, complaining the comedy had neither enough laughs nor enough exits. Not … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times It could be the setup for a Harlequin romance: A beautiful novelist curls on a couch in a bed-and-breakfast in rural Michigan, proofreading a manuscript, completely alone. Heavy snow has deterred other guests, and even the proprietor has been called away on family business. Read more… Jonas Schwartz – Theatermania Laura … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw Padraic Duffy’s rather sweet romantic comedy — the premiere offering at Sacred Fools’ new home at the former Elephant Asylum complex — is a good workmanlike calling card to introduce the company’s style and tone to its new neighborhood. If the play ultimately strikes one as slight, it’s salvaged by … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times Culture shock, like grief, progresses through distinct stages: There’s the honeymoon period, when an expatriate is enchanted by a new country. Bliss gives way to withdrawal and hostility, the adjustment and, ultimately, acceptance. This journey happens to have a pleasing narrative structure that works well onstage. Read more… Now running through … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times At the outset of “Lear,” now receiving an austerely lunatic West Coast premiere at City Garage, a projected PBS-style host drolly relates the narrative of William Shakespeare’s immortal tragedy, up to Lear’s banishment and Gloucester’s blinding. Read more… Now running through March 13.
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Franz Altman (Michael Laskin), the protagonist of playwright Charles Dennis’s deft solo drama, is an elderly Viennese Jew born just before the turn of the 20th century. Now nearly 100 years old, he owns a second-hand store called King Solomon’s Treasures, located in mid-town Manhattan, circa 1990. Read more… Margaret Gray – … Read more
Bob Verini – Stage Raw In the vast scheme of Tennessee Williams’ long career, the 1978 Vieux Carré stands as one of his lesser plays, derivative and ill-shaped. Among the works of his final two decades, however, it’s one which can still credibly command a stage if given a vigorous and mature production. Read more… David C. … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw Playwright Gabriel Rivas Gomez’s eccentric, uneven drama is loosely based on themes from Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Filtered through a prism of modern corporate capitalism, it’s a tale of American kindness — or more accurately, about the lack of it as far as poor immigrants and our underclass are concerned. Read more… … Read more