Myron Meisel

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS JEFFERSON, CHARLES DICKENS AND COUNT LEO TOLSTOY at the Geffen Playhouse

by

Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter Sporting a title so long that the average online reader might not even get through it, Discord reconfigures Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit through the filter of Steve Allen’s Emmy-winning 1977-1981 PBS series Meeting of the Minds. Trapped in a locked, baldly-lit white room, three deceased geniuses articulately thrash out their contending views of Scripture as much … Read more

CHOIR BOY at the Geffen Playhouse

by

Bob Verini –   Arts In LA Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Choir Boy is a mess but all the same a bona fide crowd pleaser. Its characters are drawn with remarkable inconsistency, and they’re put through enough subplots (touched on, though never explored fully) for a play twice its two-hour length. What pulls it through is the passion of … Read more

MARJORIE PRIME at the Mark Taper Forum

by

Bob Verini –   Arts In LA On the heels of Spike Jonze’s award-winning film Her comes another whimsical, futuristic, seriocomic speculation about artificial intelligence’s commercial and emotional potential. This one is Jordan Harrison’s world premiere play at the Taper, titled Marjorie Prime, and concededly it lacks the heft of Jonze’s celebrated Oscar winner, not to mention its unforgettable … Read more

HAPPY DAYS at Boston Court

by

Steven Leigh Morris  – LA Weekly Playwrights under 40 write mainly about love and politics, or so the adage goes; playwrights over 40 write mainly about death. By the time Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days premiered in 1961, the great Irish bard was 55, which should make its subject fairly easy to guess. Originally a poet and novelist, … Read more

RACE at the Kirk Douglas Theatre

by

Steven Leigh Morris  – LA Weekly David Mamet’s play Race, about a rich, white guy seeking a law firm to defend him from accusations of raping a black woman, ought to feel ripped from the headlines — even though it premiered on Broadway nearly five years ago. Read more… Melinda Schupmann – Showmag A David Mamet play … Read more

THE TEMPEST at South Coast Repertory

by

Terry Morgan  –  Stage Raw The current production of The Tempest at South Coast Repertory is the best version of the play I’ve ever seen. It does something seemingly obvious, yet not so obvious that I’ve seen it before: It focuses on the magic. This isn’t to say that it skimps on vengeance, forgiveness or young love, but director/adaptors … Read more

PERSIANS at the Getty Villa

by

Dany Margolies  –  Arts In LA The weighty ideas expressed in this piece have retained their potency from nearly 2,500 years ago. The skills and vibrancy of the actors here are flawless. Had the two elements meshed, this would be a perfect production. Read more… Bob Verini  –   Stage Raw Reviewing the 2011 Getty Villa production … Read more

BULRUSHER at the Skylight Theatre

by

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Eisa Davis’s drama about an 18-year-old motherless clairvoyant exhibits an element of magic that manifests most richly in this production’s opening moments. Read more… Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter 1955 was the summer of tortured teen James Dean in East of Eden and the real-life tortured and murdered youth Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. Back then, … Read more

REASONS TO BE PRETTY at the Geffen Playhouse

by

Neal Weaver  – Arts In LA Playwright Neil LaBute is so prolific, and has created in so many different and varied media, that it’s virtually impossible to generalize about his work. (His program bio is downright intimidating.) But in many of the scripts for which he is best known—Fat Pig, In the Company of Men, … Read more

BROADWAY BOUND at the Odyssey Theatre

by

Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter The last of Neil Simon’s trilogy of quasi-autobiographical accounts of his coming-of-age years in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, Broadway Bound stands among his plays as perhaps the most free from easy nostalgia, and therefore the most honest. In this sturdy 1986 drama, the requisite comedy arrives more or less … Read more