Myron Meisel – Stage Raw For a considerable time now, it has become exceptionally difficult to shock an audience, a gambit that used to be an important arrow in the artist’s quiver. Nevertheless, in a society where in recent years the most dreaded circumstance has become to feel in any colorable way “awkward”, discomfiting the … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times The first time Derek DelGaudio performed at the Geffen Playhouse — in the 2012 show “Nothing to Hide,” which he created with co-star Helder Guimarães and director Neil Patrick Harris — DelGaudio ended up staying longer than expected: The magic act, originally slotted for a one-month run, packed the house for 18 weeks. Read more… … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly The American Dream is an unforgiving myth. Birthed in rural America in the early 19th century, it galloped to prominence in the Gilded Age, championed by Horatio Alger’s novels and the ever more ubiquitous notion that wealth and opportunity are equally available to everyone and that any deserving individual who … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Religious ideology and its impact on young minds serves as the theme for playwright Jesse Mu-En Shao’s The End Times, a lean narrative enriched with well-grounded performances and a modest but handsome production design. The play, developed jointly by Playwrights’ Arena and the Skylight Theatre, is cogently directed by Jon Lawrence … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Love, muses Richard Cabral during the opening moments of his autobiographical solo show, means different things to different people, and can even be something different for any one person at different stages in his or her life. Cabral’s perception of love as a young boy, he tells his audience, differed … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Phrazzled, by writer/director Phinneas Kiyomura, is a smart character-driven satire that takes aim at the underside of television production. Yes, the terrain is familiar, with the usual suspects — falsehood, greed, betrayal — driving the plot. But Kiyomura, a long time local theater artist who’s also written for television, ventures … Read more
Jenny Lower – LA Weekly More than any contemporary playwright who comes to mind, Sarah Ruhl’s characters inhabit worlds wholly her own. Even when she adopts a historical setting, as with In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), her lyrical sensibility fashions heightened realities, where a house of string or a dead man’s perpetually ringing … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s the exceptional American woman who doesn’t wrestle with image issues, the modern feminist movement notwithstanding. Years ago my own mother lectured my sister and me on the virtues of thinness, and her invocations pursue me to this day. Read more… … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw Ruby Rae Spiegel’s Dry Land succeeds on multiple levels: first, as a dark comedy, second, as a graphic portrayal of the process of a self-administered abortion, and last and most particularly, as a sharp and illuminating character study. This West Coast premiere by the Echo Theatre Company is entertaining and assured and … Read more
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA There are numerous delights to be found in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder — the raucously hilarious musical play that opened last night at the Ahmanson Theatre. The ingenious and lavish puppet theater-like set, designed by Alexander Dodge; the gorgeously detailed period costumes, designed by Linda Cho; the clever book and … Read more