Bob Verini – Stage Raw On a stage — and as often as not, in everyday life, but certainly on a stage — when a character announces, “I’m dying of boredom,” there’s always something else, something deeper going on. With those four spoken words, a character can communicate almost anything: “I’m hot to do something … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Al Pacino and Robert Duvall are among the performers who have played Teach, the deluded, out-of-control conman who spurs much of the seamy shenanigans in David Mamet’s American Buffalo. While I’ve never been privileged to see either in the role, I’d put money on the competitive excellence of Troy Kotsur, … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly A fugue, in music, is a melody repeated in complex patterns. In psychiatry, it’s a dissociative state of mind. Playwright Tommy Smith infuses both meanings into his ambitious new play, Fugue. Read more… Dany Margolies – Arts In LA This show has quite the pedigree. Its playwright, Tommy Smith, wrote last year’s … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage and Cinema In playwright Stephen Karam’s touching and funny drama, characters are frequently spotted quoting the great Lebanese poet-philosopher Khalil Gabran. “All is well,” they say, often in the midst of the most odious adversity. Of course, all is not well at all: Indeed, all is rather, as the Yiddish expression … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly …With diamond studs in her horned-rimmed glasses, the purple-wigged, megalomaniac alter ego of 80-year-old Australian Barry Humphries spends much of the evening goading her Ahmanson Theatre audience. Read more… Bob Verini – Arts In LA Dame Edna! The mere title and name connote rapier wit, lightly off-color insults, and self-obsession, … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw The church referred to by playwright Allen Barton in his play is never identified, but the details of his story evoke the horror stories told by disillusioned former Scientologists: accounts of demands for total conformity, hefty financial contributions, total commitment, and a willingness to declare all-out war on any member … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage and Cinema This fascinating drama by playwright Zayd Dohrn is set in the bizarre subculture of women who buy dolls that eerily resemble actual babies. Can this possibly be enough material here for a play? Read more… Bob Verini – Arts In LA Roger Ebert once opined, “It’s not what a movie … Read more
Jenny Lower – LA Weekly Before the sun dawns on There Is a Happiness That Morning Is, written by Mickle Myers and directed by Ruth Silveira at Sacred Fools, the glorious stuff of clickbait headlines has already taken place. Read more… Now running through February 28.
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw During the notoriously doomed 1984 coal miners’ strike against Maggie Thatcher’s determination to destroy the union and its jobs, motherless 11-year old Billy Elliot (Mitchell Tobin) ditches his 50-pence afterschool boxing classes for ballet lessons, unbeknownst to his picketing father (David Atkinson) and firebrand older brother Tony (Stephen Weston). Read more… … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly In Serrano The Musical, book and lyrics writer Madeleine Sunshine plucks elements of Edmond Rostand’s iconic romance Cyrano de Bergerac and transposes them into a story set in New York City’s mob-infested Little Italy. Read more… Margaret Gray – LA Times Serrano the Musical,” in its world premiere at the Matrix Theatre, relocates “Cyrano … Read more