Zadran Wali
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
Playwright Michael Weller’s messy marital drama transpires over the course of one night, during which time a married couple unleash all the frustration, disappointment and unrequited passion they’ve kept bottled inside for 18 long years.
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Now running through April 7
(Photo by Billy Baque)
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
Bugaboo (Bug) is the nickname of a feisty blue-collar woman (Heidi Sulzman) who’s incarcerated in the Henderson County, West Virginia jail on a drug charge. She’s been alone in her cell for 42 days, which is hard on her because she’s a compulsive non-stop talker and has been deprived of an audience.
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Now running through February 24
(Photo by Logan S. Hufford)
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
John Patrick Shanaley is practically unique among American playwrights in that although he has consistently hewed to a distinctly personal vision and style, he has achieved impressive commercial success as a screenwriter (Moonstruck, Doubt) and a director (Doubt).
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Now running through September 24
Photo Credit: John Geronilla
Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen
In a typical suburban home, a woman folds laundry—a young child’s clothes—as she chats with her sister. It’s all typical enough until the sister hesitantly reveals she is pregnant. As we quickly learn, this is a difficult and loaded topic because her nephew, the woman’s child, was recently killed in a tragic accident. Read more…
Now running through May 14
Photo: Courtesy of When Lives Matter: The Play)
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw
It may be one of the unintended consequences of the 2017 Presidential Ascension of the Infernal One that we have a chance to witness the blooming of art in protest and an attempt to confront and shake up the new status quo. If we are lucky, there will be many plays like playwright/director Monti Washington’s passionate and thought-provoking meditation on race in the U.S., including ruminations on the philosophy surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement. Read more…
Now running through January 22
Photo by Ed Krieger
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly
Siamese Sex Show is one of those offbeat musicals where it doesn’t seem to matter that one or two plot threads are a little hard to follow. The choreography by April Thomas is so exuberant, the costumes by Michael Mullen are so fanciful, and the story and spectacle so deliciously weird that a bit of confusion about the narrative can readily be dismissed as not all that significant. Read more…
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
Donald Trump has repeatedly been accused of vulgarizing our public discourse with his abusive attacks on women, Muslims, African-Americans, Latinos, the disabled, and anybody else who doesn’t share his high opinion of himself. And the charges are most certainly borne out by the facts. But there’s one thing Trump has remarked on which is all too true: he hasn’t said anything that hasn’t already been said by rappers and hip-hop artists. Read more…
Now running through November 13
Photo by J. Coldize
Terry Morgan - Stage Raw
Matt Morillo’s compelling comedy/drama All Aboard The Marriage Hearse depicts what happens when a longtime couple discovers they fundamentally disagree about the concept of matrimony. Read more…
Now running through June 19
Photo by Ed Krieger
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw
The shadow of Eugene O’Neill looms large over the plot and writing of playwright Chris Collins’ angry family drama. That’s not a bad thing, mind you, as Collins lays the sadness and rage on so thick that Long Day’s Journey almost seems like a situation comedy in comparison. Read more…
Now running through May 8
Photo by Emilie Svensson.
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net
“A Good Family,” playwright Marja-Lewis Ryan’s third new work to debut at the Lounge Theatre in Hollywood, following “Dysnomia” (2011) and “One in the Chamber” (2014), once again takes a look at an apparently idyllic American family rocked by sudden events that depict timely contemporary social issues. Read more…
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
As with One in the Chamber, a drama which premiered to high praise in 2014, Marja-Lewis Ryan’s latest work revolves around a controversial social issue and its impact on a middle-class American family. Read more…
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA
Marja-Lewis Ryan is taking a familiar approach with her storytelling in A Good Family. Once again, the playwright tackles a topical and emotionally charged subject and examines its affects on the family unit. Her previous play, One In the Chamber, focused on a family dealing with the aftermath of the accidental shooting of their 9-year-old son at the hands of his 10-year-old brother. This time the hot topic is campus rape. Read more…
Now running through December 20.
Photo by Rick Friesen
Jenny Lower – LA Weekly
In All American Girl, a world premiere from InterACT Theatre Company, radical Islam doesn’t take hold of its main character’s life all at once. For Katie, or Karima, as she comes to be known, Islam follows a conservative Christian upbringing, volunteer work in Boston’s slum-poor Dorchester neighborhood, and a stint at Fordham University. When she meets Igbal, a brooding Indian immigrant and wrestling champion, he educates her on the ways Muslims are brutalized by Hindus in his home country. Read more…
Now running through August 30.
Photo by Rick Friesen
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw
Why the devil do we do the things we do? And what kind of answers are genuinely responsive and illuminating to that question of “Why?” Easier to examine the confounding deeds of other people and endeavor to find clues in the motivations we attribute to (or project upon) them for insights into our murkily intricate webs of rationalization and justification. Read more…
Now running through July 26.
Photo by Ed Krieger
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw
The most interesting scene in this production of Donald Margulies’s 1992 play involves an encounter between Jonathan (Jason Weiss), a successful Jewish-American painter having a much-touted exhibition in London, and Grete (Casey McKinnon), an art journalist of German extraction who is interviewing him. Read more…
Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A.
The career of accomplished playwright Donald Margulies (Dinner with Friends, Collected Stories) first kicked into high gear with this 1992 Obie-winning dramedy, which explores pretensions of the arts world alongside the specter of anti-Semitism. This revisit to the vintage work, directed by Nicole Dominguez, seems less focused than one might hope, despite capable efforts from the four-member cast. em>Read more…
Now running through April 26.