Neal Weaver – Arts In LA Playwright Mac Rogers has written an oddball comedy about suicide. But his thinking is so muddled, it’s sometimes hard to tell if he’s for it or against it. Read more… Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly ….Rogers’ new comic drama, presented by Moving Arts at the Bootleg Theatre, is … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly It’s easy to understand why solo performer Chris Lemmon wants to pay homage to his famous father Jack. Celebrity aside, the parent-child bond is a powerful one. Watching and listening to Jack Lemmon Returns at the Broad Stage, I could almost feel the presence of my own irreplaceable dad, who passed from … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly This year was a noisy and divisive one in local theater, punctuated with threats, real and imagined — from sources allegedly ranging from the IRS to the state’s Labor & Workforce Development Agency to the stage actors and stage managers’ union (Actors’ Equity Association) — to disembowel L.A.’s long-standing … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Noel Coward is said to have written Blithe Spirit in less than a week. The play premiered a couple of months after he completed it, in 1941, when the Germans were bombing London, and audiences, no doubt desperate for distraction, stepped gamely over the rubble on their way to the theater. Why … Read more
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw While institutions and their procedural processes may be the backbone of our social organization, they can also tend to compound the dysfunctions they confront with systemic failings of their own, whether they be the police, schools, courts, or in the case of Rebecca Gilman’s engrossing drama Luna Gale, child protective services. Read … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA First things first: Dirty is by no means dirty, at least insofar as habitues of Melrose Avenue’s Zephyr Theatre might expect. That particular venue has hosted more than its share of full-frontal nudity and simulated sex acts over the years. Read more… Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly In its rather earnest … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly If ever there were a writer dedicated to society’s subversion it was Joe Orton. Orton despised the status quo and made it his mission to wreak havoc on its precepts as thoroughly and flamboyantly as possible. In What the Butler Saw, he went after authority figures, psychoanalysis, which he regarded as … Read more
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw Oscar Wilde’s satire of English upper-class society has solemn and feminist undertones to it, making a precursor of the “dramedy of manners.” After all, it was first performed in 1893 at London’s Haymarket Theatre. The titular “Woman of No Importance” turns out to be a survivalist who suffered scandal, estrangement … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly A production of Shakespeare’s King Lear imported from the Globe Theatre in London stirs all sorts of expectations. Surely no one can do Shakespeare better than the Brits. And besides, the play is one of the most highly regarded works of literature in the English language. Read more… Dany Margolies – … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Performer Chuma Gault is at the top of his form in The Gun Show, a play by EM Lewis that deals with Americans and their guns. An unpredictable work that stealthily gathers steam, it begins with a discourse on the national gun debate and gradually evolves into a personal account of … Read more