Terry Morgan – Stage Raw The adage, “Youth is wasted on the young,” is generally attributed to George Bernard Shaw, a man who didn’t lack for adages. The idea that youth can also be wasted on the old is one of the undercurrents that powers ’s play, Disposable Necessities, a science fiction comedy/drama that posits a … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw Rogue Machine, one of the theatre companies in town I most admire, has been promoting its new show, Ruth Fowler’s bled for the household truth, as something important and shocking, and warning that easily offended people may walk out at intermission. In my experience, having specific expectations for a play or … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw It’s kind of amazing that a major play by Lorraine Hansberry is just having its Los Angeles premiere now. Perhaps the tide of criticism that caused the play to close after one month on Broadway in 1970 tainted its reputation in some way, or its need for a 24-member cast … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly Though it aspires to be profound, Alexander Dinelaris’s’ aptly titled Still Life can’t transcend its commonplace dialogue or the limitations of an inadequately conceived central character. Read more… Now running through April 23
Lovell Estell III – Stage Raw Ernest and Margaret Eagleton (Mark L. Taylor, Bonnie Bailey-Reed), are small town Texas folks whose nondescript lives are transformed by a visitor, in this lively comedy by Deb Hiett. Read more… Now running through December 19
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw Mike Bartlett’s Bull, a loose companion piece to his play, Cock, is witty and devastating in its depiction of workplace cruelty. Although it can be hard to watch, Rogue Machine’s West Coast premiere is a terrific production, tightly directed by Jennifer Pollono and brilliantly acted by a superb ensemble. Read more… Now … Read more
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw For a considerable time now, it has become exceptionally difficult to shock an audience, a gambit that used to be an important arrow in the artist’s quiver. Nevertheless, in a society where in recent years the most dreaded circumstance has become to feel in any colorable way “awkward”, discomfiting the … Read more
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw While Alejandro G. Iñárritu customarily and pretentiously inflated the purported weight of the soul in his 2003 movie 27 Grams, Bryony Lavery more tangibly measures the palpable bulk of a dead human body in her insightfully written Dirt, a West Coast premiere presented by Rogue Machine Theatre with SRS Production Wing. Read more… Now running … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw If you google the town of Pocatello in Southwest Idaho, you’ll get images of dusty hills and a downtown whose architecture might have served as nostalgic backdrop for The Last Picture Show. The place is changing though; look long enough and you’ll see a shot of a Ross store as well, … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw As Pete Townshend was once known to opine, “The world begins behind your neighbor’s walls.” It’s one of the core mysteries of modern life – what do people do or say when they think they’re unobserved or unheard? Read more… Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly The characters In Jonathan Caren’s contemporary … Read more