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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage and Cinema After watching the roaring, sputtering, and cursing along with regretful descriptions of drug use and parental abuse back in the “bad old days,” I had to ask myself, “Wha’ kind of crazy fucking show is this?” Read more… David C. Nichols – LA Times “I was brought up by wolverines,” says … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Jeong, a Korean concept not easily translatable to English, is an integral theme in playwright Julia Cho’s potentially absorbing family drama. As explained by Sah-Jin (Sharon Omi), a widowed immigrant from Korea, to her desperately troubled daughter Eunice (Julia Cho, not the playwright), it’s an intimacy that transcends love or … Read more
Bob Verini – Arts In LA For committed theatergoers, there’s no happier occasion than stumbling upon a mature, polished work of dramatic art where you never expected to find one. In the little hole-in-the-wall Lounge on Santa Monica Boulevard, 6140 Productions is putting up the world premiere of Marja-Lewis Ryan’s One in the Chamber, and you will … Read more
Deborah Klugman – ArtsBeatLA Sporting a message of sisterhood and tolerance, Wendy Graf’s well-intentioned but clumsy drama builds around two half-sisters: Julia (Diarra Kilpatrick), an ambitious attorney living and working in Manhattan, and Neyla (Yvonne Huff), her newly discovered sibling, whom Julia’s father had sired when he was a soldier in Iraq. Read more… Dany Margolies – Arts … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Coincidentally, two unrelated plays about group therapy opened last week in small theaters less than a mile from one another. Neil McGowan’s comedy Lone-Anon, about maladroit loners subjected to court-ordered therapy, is running late nights at Rogue Machine on Pico near La Brea, while Leslie Hardy‘s A Good Grief airs the dirty … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Directed by Amy K. Harmon, this not-ready-for-prime-time production concerns a married gay couple, Andre (David Jette) and Carter (Brad Harris), whose relationship sours following the death of their adopted infant son. Read more…