Frances Baum Nicholson –The Stage Struck Review Every once in a while one comes across a performance which may outweigh the play it takes place in. In this case, a good play becomes greater because of one person who takes a playwright’s words and their own and their director’s understandings and makes of them something … Read more
Hoyt Hilsman – Huffington Post In the finest tradition of the theatrical two-hander, British playwright Simon Stephens (adapter of the Tony-award winning Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night) has imagined a random encounter between a forty-something eccentric woman and a very ordinary seventy-five year old butcher. Read more… Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly British playwright Simon … Read more
Erin Conley – OnStage Most people know about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the event historically seen as the inciting incident of World War I. But what do we really know about the assassins? In Archduke, a new play by Rajiv Joseph currently making its world premiere at Center Theatre Group’s Mark … Read more
Erin Conley – OnStage It is not every day that a hat receives entrance applause at the theater. However, it is also not every day that Zoot Suit returns to Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum, the very theater that commissioned and hosted its world premiere in 1978. Read more… Rob Stevens – Haines His Way … Read more
Jonas Schwartz – TheaterMania Marie Mullen won the best actress Tony for the original Broadway production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane as a tortured daughter. Now she has returned almost 20 years later to play the tormentor — her cruel, selfish mother. Read more… Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw In 1998, The Druid Theatre Company’s … Read more
Paul Birchall – Stage Raw At the Opening Night performance of director Phylicia Rashad’s powerful staging of playwright August Wilson’s modern classic Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, I found myself seated next to a gentleman who claimed to be one of the agents for one of the performers in the show. He promptly loosened his tie and shrugged … Read more
Lovell Estell III – Stage Raw The sneaky, overworked phrase “friends with benefits” takes on new meaning in this watery comedy by Bathsheba Doran. Read more… Dany Margolies – L.A. Daily News Family has not changed since ancient times. Our perceptions of family have. Playwright Bathsheba Doran seems to celebrate this in her play “The Mystery … Read more
Jenny Lower – Stage Raw “I have a powerful urge to communicate with you, but I find the distance between us insurmountable.” That refrain, repeated at various points throughout Lucas Hnath’s powerful, richly textured The Christians, could be the motto for any number of American ideological divides. Read more… Jonas Schwartz – TheaterMania Religion can be a … Read more
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net In “Appropriate,” the initial conventionality in introducing the characters and basic storyline elicits raucous and sardonic laughs, as the depth of resentments among the siblings and their family members gradually come to light. Yet, there’s far more than garden-variety family baggage afoot here, Read more… Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA … Read more
Jonas Schwartz – Arts In LA Bent, playwright Martin Sherman’s revelatory 1979 play about the gay experience in Nazi concentration camps, receives an arresting production at the Mark Taper Forum. Moisés Kaufman’s direction and his stellar cast will leave audiences breathless. Read more… Jenny Lower – LA Weekly It’s difficult and rare to come across stories … Read more