MAESTRO: HERSHEY FELDER AS LEONARD BERNSTEIN at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

Neal Weaver  – Stage Raw In the last few years, musician Hershey Felder has used his multiple talents — as writer, actor, singer, virtuoso pianist and general raconteur — to create a memorable series of portraits of major figures in the music world, including George Gershwin, Fredric Chopin, Ludwig Beethoven, Franz Liszt and Irving Berlin. Read … Read more

THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE at the Sierra Madre Playhouse

Neal Weaver  – Stage Raw This cheery, lightweight musical — conceived by Rebecca Feldman, with a book by Rachel Scheinkin, and music and lyrics by William Finn (Falsettos, Falsettoland) — has a proven track-record as a crowd pleaser. Read more… Now running through August 21

A RAISIN IN THE SUN at Ruskin Group Theatre

Neal Weaver  – Stage Raw Lorraine Hansberry is securely enshrined as an important black playwright, but what few people remember nowadays is that she was also a lovely young woman, with gamin charm and an impish sense of humor. Read more… Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze “What happens to a dream deferred?” asked Langston Hughes … Read more

OBAMA-OLOGY at the Skylight Theatre

Deborah Klugman – Capital & Main Obama-ology, written by Aurin Squire, takes place in 2008 and revolves around a youthful volunteer for the Obama campaign and the life education he receives from his senior colleagues and the folks in the community where he’s working. Read more… Neal Weaver  – Stage Raw Despite the title, Aurin Squire’s … Read more

RECORDED IN HOLLYWOOD at the Kirk Douglas Theatre

Neal Weaver  – Stage Raw This high-spirited biopic of musical entrepreneur John Dolphin (Stu James) is part juke-box musical, part music history, and part a recreation of past performers and their hits.  For those of us old enough to remember the songs and events, it’s a trip down memory lane. Read more… Now running through August 7

DISGRACED at the Mark Taper Forum

Neal Weaver  – Stage Raw Because of the confluence of events surrounding the American presidential election — including Donald Trump’s provocative and unconstitutional attempts to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S., the mass shootings in Orlando, and the heated debate about how to deal with Muslim terrorists, Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning Disgraced seems even more relevant than … Read more

THE ENGINE OF OUR RUIN at the Victory Theatre Center

Neal Weaver  – Stage Raw There’s been no shortage of political satires on local stages, but all too many of them have been broad, obvious and stridently partisan. Jason Wells’ black farce, here receiving its world premiere production, is several cuts above the rest. It’s literate, sophisticated, hip, hilariously funny and relatively free of political … Read more

THE HAIRY APE at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble

Myron Meisel – Stage Raw Class warfare has surged and ebbed in the U.S. public consciousness during harder or more prosperous times throughout the past century, but the distorted perversion that it is something waged by the poor upon privileged victims gets exposed as a disingenuous lie by Eugene O’Neill’s 1922 The Hairy Ape – an anguished … Read more

SHINE DARKLY, ILLYRIA at the McCadden Place Theatre

Neal Weaver  – Stage Raw This curious play, written by Meghan Brown, developed with Fugitive Kind Theatre, and incorporating input from director Amanda McRaven, is a freewheeling fantasia drawn from themes, characters, and situations in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. It’s also an apocalyptic dystopia, cast in the form of a sequel depicting events that occurred after the … Read more