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
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw For many years, America’s founding fathers were treated so reverentially by historians that they seemed like inhuman figures on a monument. But from the beginning, Benjamin Franklin was the saltiest of them all. Because of his fondness for the ladies, his behind- the-scenes intrigues, his advanced age, and the omnipresent … Read more
Neal Weaver – Arts In LA The central character in Ken Ludwig’s farce is famous Italian tenor Tito Merelli (Floyd Vanbuskirk), who’s scheduled to appear in the title role in Verdi’s Otello for the Cleveland Opera Company. But Tito is well-known for his heavy drinking, womanizing, and general troublemaking. On the day of the performance, Tito has … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Salani (Jennifer Hubilla), the central character in Velina Hasu Houston’s charmless chick lit musical, is a lovely orphaned teen, an upright individual who must contend with poverty, hard labor, and arrogant or lustful employers before triumphantly attaining freedom and self-realization. The story is set in British Ceylon circa 1939; Read more… Neal Weaver – … 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 For much of Samuel Brett Williams’ “Derby Day,” in its L.A. premiere at the Elephant Theatre (which gave Williams’ “Revelation” its world premiere last year), the sole sympathetic character onstage is Becky (Kimberly Alexander), a waitress at Oaklawn Park Race Track in Arkansas. Read more… Neal Weaver – Arts in LA You … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter Chaim Potok’s 1972 bestseller My Name is Asher Lev has been deftly adapted by Aaron Posner and receives a peerless realization by a splendid cast. Posner reduces the novel to its essential conflicts, yet rather than diluting the impact he effectively intensifies the immediacy of the emotional payoffs. Read more… Don Shirley … Read more
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter Although The Wooster Group has been a frequent visitor to Los Angeles (most recently a year ago with Eugene O’Neill’s early seafaring plays), this new mounting of its glum fantasia on a text by William Shakespeare represents the company’s first world premiere production to debut outside New York (not … Read more
Neal Weaver – Arts In LA Lee Blessing’s taut and subtle two-character drama proves that a play with a small cast can deal with large issues. Cora Gage (Nan McNamara) is a British ophthalmologist, living in St. Ives, who is approached for treatment by May N’Kame (Inger Tudor), the empress of an unidentified African nation … Read more
Neal Weaver – Arts in LA Adam Rapp’s haunting solo-drama startles with its very first line: “Fifteen years ago I killed my sister.” Then the narrator, who is identified only as The Son (Belgian actor George Regout), goes on to reveal the circumstances of the death. When he was 19, he was driving home on … Read more