Margaret Gray – LA Times You may have seen your share of makeovers, but nothing like the one Sheila Callaghan inflicts on her heroine in “Everything You Touch,” her lushly written dark comedy world-premiering at Boston Court Performing Arts Center. Read more… Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw Sheila Callaghan’s compelling play examines the dysfunctional dynamic between … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter As long as I have attended the theater, I have been an adherent of Peter Brook and for nearly 50 years have never missed any available opportunity to experience his work. Since he split his over 70-year career between London and Paris, that has meant for me only those … Read more
BobVerini – Arts In LA The premise of Benjamin Brand’s Taste, as the management of Sacred Fools Theater Company has been unabashedly eager to trumpet in preopening publicity, is a compact made between two men to meet for dinner, at which the guest is to be killed, butchered, cooked, and eaten by the host in what … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter At an expiring retirement home on the outskirts of a small town in northern Idaho, the staff prepares to relocate its few remaining residents, when a dementia-impaired nonagenarian music professor, Ken (Richard Doyle), goes missing off the premises as a fierce blizzard completely isolates them from any outside assistance. … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly What happens when an illness of tsunami-like proportions lays waste to your life? In Emilie Beck’s family drama Sovereign Body, Anna (Taylor Gilbert), a chef and restaurateur, lives happily with her husband (Kevin McCorkle), mom (Bryna Weiss) and two daughters: 20-year-old Callie (Dani Stephens), bursting to be out on her own, … Read more
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw That director Ron Sossi decided to remount White Marriage might be an attempt to recapture the hit production for the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble that Sossi almost 40 years ago. In the here and now, however, the urgency of the play’s point is muted largely by Sossi’s own re-staging. Read more… Neal Weaver – … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter Like many of the best things in life, overindulgence, even with the classics, can lead to irritability. One could well be sated for life with A Midsummer Night’s Dream (probably the most frequently mounted of all Shakespeare comedies) after landmark productions by Max Reinhardt, Peter Brook and Peter Hall, the Benjamin Britten opera, the George Balanchine ballet, not … Read more
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw During the ‘greed is good’ ‘80s and the tumultuous era of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, London-born playwright Caryl Churchill informed her scathing political satires with an examination of feminist themes — challenging and charting the evolving notions of gender and sexuality in the workplace. Her plays were bold, different, … Read more
Les Spindle – Edge on the Net Beloved pop songwriter-singer Barry Manilow (“Copacabana,” “Mandy”) and his longtime collaborator, lyricist-librettist Barry Sussman, are fulfilling a longtime dream with “Harmony,” their seriocomic musical. The show was introduced in an appealing production in 1997 at La Jolla Playhouse in Southern California. This project had always aimed for Broadway, though additional … Read more
Margaret Gray – LA Times In Greg Pierce’s “Slowgirl” at the Geffen Playhouse, 17-year-old Becky (Rae Gray) comes to visit her Uncle Sterling (William Petersen), who left the U.S. years earlier for Costa Rica. She’s freaked out by his primitive jungle lifestyle, which is charmingly evoked by Richard Woodbury’s sound design and the tropical leaves … Read more