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Archive for On Stage & Screen

AMERICAN HERO – IAMA Theater Company at the Pasadena Playhouse

Dean Cechvala

Dean Cechvala

Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen

Three “sandwich artists” with very different lives walk into a franchise. What happens? Unfortunately the answer is…not much. American Hero, a play by Bess Wohl currently being presented by the IAMA Theatre Company in a guest production at the Pasadena Playhouse, is a comedy about working class America, but focuses on a microcosm that ultimately fails to prove a point. Read more…

Frances Baum Nicholson –The Stage Struck Review

If one had to peg a single theme for the plays I have seen open in the past month, it would be two-fold: the heartlessness of corporate America combined with the innate sense of straight white privilege, and the plight of those the privileged see as underclasses, be they minority cultures, blue collar victims of the evisceration of union power, or simply those trying to get by in the morass of the service economy.

Jonas Schwartz -  TheaterMania

Part of the American spirit entails taking a no-win situation and finding a road to success. The three employees of a mini-mall sandwich shop in American Hero find their situation direr by the day, but instead of giving up, they roll up their sleeves and keep making hero sandwiches, even after they run out of meat, cheese, and bread.
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Now running through October 21

UNEMPLOYED ELEPHANTS at the Little Victory Theatre

Tim Sullens

Tim Sullens

Ellen Dostal – BroadwayWorld

Playwright Wendy Graf is best known for her uniquely dramatic works such as PLEASE DON’T ASK ABOUT BECKET, ALL AMERICAN GIRL, and NO WORD IN GUYANESE FOR ME. But, in her latest world premiere, UNEMPLOYED ELEPHANTS – A LOVE STORY, she takes a lighter – and more formulaic – approach to her subject.
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Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen

A man and a woman meet at the airport. She is on her honeymoon, solo, after being dumped just before her wedding. He says he is on assignment for Animal Planet, researching the unemployed logging elephants of Myanmar.
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Now running through April 15

AS YOU LIKE IT at Antaeus Theatre Company

(Photo by Daniel G. Lam Photography)

(Photo by Daniel G. Lam Photography)

Terry Morgan  -  Stage Raw

One of the reasons for the continued popularity of Shakespeare’s work over the centuries is how unusually open it is to reinterpretation — directors or actors can use it as a lens with which to focus anew on some aspect of the world.
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Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen

“All the world’s a stage…” William Shakespeare’s classic comedy As You Like It features some of his most famous monologues and a great deal of whimsy.
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Now running through September 10

DOGFIGHT at the Hudson Mainstage Theatre

DOGFIGHT - 6

Rob Stevens – Haines His Way

The composing team of Benji Pasek and Justin Paul are very hot right now having just won an Academy Award for their song in the film La La Land. Read more…

Neal Weaver  – Stage Raw

This new musical, with book by Peter Duchan and music and lyrics by the team that produced La La Land, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, is based on the movie Dogfight, from a script by Bob Comfort. Superficially, it resembles the 1944 musical On the Town…. Read more…

Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen

These days, it seems like nearly every musical was adapted from a movie. Some of my favorite stage musicals began their lives as films—OnceLegally Blonde, and Thoroughly Modern Millie come to mind. Sometimes, however, you can’t help but wonder—why that movie? Read more…

Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly

Dogfight the musical (music and lyrics by La La Land creators Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, book by Peter Duchan) is one of those period pieces that make the good old days appear not so good after all — kind of like the musical itself. Read more…

Now running through June 25

RABBIT HOLE at the Lounge Theatre

Photo Credit: John Geronilla

Photo Credit: John Geronilla

Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen

In a typical suburban home, a woman folds laundry—a young child’s clothes—as she chats with her sister. It’s all typical enough until the sister hesitantly reveals she is pregnant. As we quickly learn, this is a difficult and loaded topic because her nephew, the woman’s child, was recently killed in a tragic accident.    Read more…

Now running through May 14

WEST SIDE STORY at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts

West Side Story (musical) by McCoy Rigby, April-May 2017

Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen

Are there any opening notes in musical theater more iconic and instantly recognizable than those of West Side Story? No matter the iteration, the story and music are classic enough to have endured the test of time, resulting in a rare musical where you can hear a ripple of excitement in the audience at the beginning of almost every song. Read more…

Jonas Schwartz -  TheaterMania

West Side Story — Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents’ reimagining of Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet — is known for its deft staging that showcases energetic choreography as executed by a talented and youthful cast. While this latest production of the iconic show, presented by La Mirada Theatre, features two excellent performances, sloppy dancing and chaotic staging ultimately sabotage the powerful text. Read more…

Now running through May 14

FINDING NEVERLAND at the Pantages Theatre

Photo by

Photo by Jeremy Daniel

Rob Stevens – Haines His Way

Finding Neverland was a charming, heart-warming 2004 film about British playwright J.M. Barrie and the family that inspired him to write his immortal classic Peter Pan. Read more…

Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen

Second star to the right and straight on ’til morning… Peter Pan is an iconic story, and the musical adaptation of Finding Neverland, currently playing at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles, tells but one iteration. Read more…

Margaret Gray – LA Times

The touring production of “Finding Neverland,” about how J.M. Barrie came to write “Peter Pan” in the early 1900s, may well inspire a new generation of young playwrights.Read more…

Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze

Despite being a musical about a soaring imagination, “Finding Neverland” somehow feels coldly leaden. It tells of the Scottish playwright and novelist J.M. Barrie, who created Peter Pan, and the writer’s relationship with an English mother’s four very young sons, whom he met in a park. Red flags going up? You’re not alone. Read more…

Now running through March 12

THAT LONG DAMN DARK at Atwater Village Theatre

thumbnail_Rod Hernandez-Farella & Charmee Taylor

Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen

Two teenagers drag two freshly dead corpses into a storage unit. The moment they leave, the corpses sit up and start talking to each other, and it would be like nothing ever happened if not for the gaping bullet wounds in both of their chests. Read more…

Now running through February 12

THE LAST FIVE YEARS at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts

THE LAST FIVE YEARS - LA MIRADA - 1

Photo by Michael Lamont

Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen

Cathy stands center stage, in the spotlight, singing at yet another audition. That is, until Jamie wordlessly steps in front of her and sits on a stool to begin reading from his novel. Cathy, her spotlight now literally and figuratively occupied by her more successful husband, silently retreats, defeated once again. Read more…

Now running through February 12

THE FOUND DOG RIVER DANCE at the Atwater Village Theatre

Photo by Darrett Sanders

Photo by Darrett Sanders

Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen

In the opening scene of The Found Dog Ribbon Dance, a world premiere play by Dominic Finocchiaro currently being presented by the Echo Theater Company, a man wearing a Lucha mask uses a webcam to record himself dancing, with ribbons, of course, to “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” by Whitney Houston. Read more…

Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly

This production of Dominic Finocchiaro’s The Found Dog River Dance wants to be wry and whimsical and deeply revelatory, but succeeds only fractionally, especially with the revelatory part.

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Now running through February 26