Frances Baum Nicholson – The Daily Breeze Perhaps the two greatest dangers in producing an original work of theater is either directing your own performance or directing your own play. In either case, the absolutely necessary second opinion — the critique needed to make sure the thing is the best it can be — is … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Improvisation in the theatre is hardly a new thing, and more and more it seems to become a useful part of the movie-making process. Improvised comedy has become downright ubiquitous, and was practiced with glorious expertise by Mike Nichols and Elaine May way back in the 1950s. But improvised opera? Read … Read more
Jenny Lower – LA Weekly The Game Against Bobby Fischer, a new play written by Dennis Richard and directed by Gregory Fuller at the Secret Rose Theatre, purports to enter the troubled mind of renowned American World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer (Robert Weiner) as he approaches his final days in his adopted home of Reykjavik, … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Photo-journalist Sarah (Prescilliana Esparolini) and foreign correspondent James (Aidan Bristow) are a cracker-jack team, who have travelled the world, covering its wars and hot-spots, and they are also lovers, who have been together for eight years. But a tour of duty in Afghanistan has shattered their world. Read more… Now running … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw Sometimes a great concept is enough to power a play, such as the backwards structure of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal or the three plays intersecting simultaneously in Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests. It doesn’t hurt that those works mentioned also benefited from strong writing, acting and direction. Classic Couples Counseling, a world premiere at the … Read more
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly In Sarah Ruhl’s smart and pointed satire, it’s not just middle-class Victorian women who are sexually clueless: it’s their men as well. The time is the 1880s, and man of science Dr. Givings (Michael Oosterom) is using a primitive electronic vibrator to treat “hysterical” female patients, who depart reinvigorated and … Read more