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THE LONELY FEW at Geffen Playhouse

Lauren Patten. Photo by Jeff Lorch.
March 18, 2023Patrick Chavis – LA Theatre Bites World Premiere: The Lonely Few @ Geffen Playhouse – 8 out of 10 – Good Show! LA Theatre Bites Recommended! More… Jonas Schwartz-Owen – Theatermania The Lonely Few, a world premiere rock musical at the Geffen Playhouse, does away with conventional narrative. It immerses its audience in rock clubs
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LA EGOISTA at Skylight Theatre

Lys Perez and Chanel Castañeda. Photo by Jenny Graham.
March 17, 2023Patrick Chavis – LA Theatre Bites West Coast Premiere: La Egoista @ Skylight Theatre – 8.2 out of 10 – Good Show! LA Theatre Bites Recommended! More…  

HAROLD AND MAUDE at Group Repertory Theatre

Clara Rodriguez and Landon Beatty. Photo by Doug Engalla.
March 17, 2023Rob Stevens – Haines His Way. GRT’s production uses projections on the back wall and on smaller screens that come and go from the wings in an attempt to open up the action. Unfortunately, they don’t add much to the show and Larry Eisenberg’s lackadaisical direction lets the production drag on. Most scenes just meander
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SNOWHITE at Santa Monica Playhouse

Photo courtesy of Santa Monica Playhouse
March 15, 2023Lara J. Altunian – Stage Raw When it comes to classic fairy tales, there’s always room for updated adaptations — particularly when it comes to introducing one with antiquated values to a new generation of audiences. Santa Monica Playhouse’s rendition of the Brothers Grimm’s Snow White spins the narrative of a helpless young girl into
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MEAN GIRLS at Segerstrom Center for the Arts

Photo by Jenny Anderson
March 13, 2023Dana Martin – Stage Raw …Mean Girls is updated from the movie in order to reflect an era of smartphones and selfies but still manages to feel dated. Even the most feared book in school, the almighty Burn Book, loses a bit of its sting. Yet — Mean Girls doesn’t talk down to its audience
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LOVE AND INFORMATION at Antaeus Theatre Company

Photo by Jenny Graham
March 9, 2023Katie Buenneke – Theatre Digest Through some unlucky combination of script, direction, cast, set design, and video design, this felt more like sitting through a scene study class than a professional play. Somehow, I hadn’t seen a play by Caryl Churchill before, but I’m in no rush to see another. Read more… Patrick Chavis –
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY MCKENNA at the Hudson Backstage Theatre

Photo by Steven Silverman
March 7, 2023Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw Playwright-director Steven Silverman’s dark yet amiable comedy offers up a multi-ethnic family whose members, despite living or being raised in racially turbulent Chicago, have no apparent animus over each other’s skin colors. No, these folks are dealing with more explosive issues common to many a kith and kin, regardless of
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Archive for Sharon Perlmutter – Page 2

BRIEF ENCOUNTER at the Bram Goldsmith Theater at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Saturday, March 1st, 2014

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 Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter

Possibly his most recognized work, Noel Coward’s screenplay for David Lean’s 1945 British film Brief Encounter, with its proper and decent married lovers resolutely resisting adultery, was indubitably the adult romance of its time, with the swells of Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto counterpointing the personal sacrifice of ardor for order and honor. What could be more archaic or ripe for ridicule in an era characterized by hookups on the one hand, and the puritanical concept of an “emotional affair” on the other, making a hash of moral distinctions based on actual behavior? Read more…

Pauline Adamek  – ArtsBeatLA

Noël Coward’s 1936 one-act play Still Life was expanded into a feature-length film, directed in 1945 by David Lean and scripted by Coward.

Now UK’s Kneehigh Theatre has brought their version to the Wallis, adapted and beautifully directed by Emma Rice. In this lively staging (which essentially is a mixture of the film and the short stage play) the basic plot line remains yet it is spun into a frothy confection of bittersweet romance enhanced by lush cinematic projected visuals, puppetry, live music, song and dance interludes and mild comedic flourishes. Read more…

Sharon Perlmutter  -  Talkin’ Broadway

I often think it’s a shame that most of our medium-to-large stages in town are generally only used to bring in out-of-town shows, instead of highlighting some of our best local companies. I’d love to see what Evidence Room or Antaeus could do with a bigger stage and a decent budget, for example. Read more...

Now running through March 23.

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FOXFINDER at the Pasadena Playhouse

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, January 15th, 2014

Dany Margolies – Arts In LA

Photo by Owen Carey

Photo by Owen Carey

Dawn King’s play is set in Britain, in the near future. As with all good literature, it’s meant to represent the here and now. So when an inspector arrives at a struggling farm, interrogating the farmers too inappropriately and searching the home too thoroughly, a certain Notorious Safety Administration may come to American minds. Never fear, though: The word government appears only once in King’s script.
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Myron Meisel – Hollywood Reporter

Set on a distant, hardscrabble farm in a future designated by playwright Dawn King as “Soon,” Foxfinder posits a paranoid government supervising the food supply by intrusively scrutinizing family plots for contamination by feared foxes, wily conspirators responsible for all social ills and who provide a pretext for authoritarian witch-hunts.  Read more…

Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly

The story in Dawn King’s Foxfinder — being presented by Furious Theater Company at the Pasadena Playhouse’s Carrie Hamilton Theatre — attempts to offer a window onto the soul of our body politic. It’s a futuristic fable set in the countryside, somewhere in the north of England, that’s a bit like a blend of Tartuffe and The Crucible.
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Pauline Adamek  – ArtsBeatLA

Somewhere on a farm, in rainy rural England, a farming couple nervously awaits a government inspector. When the tall young man shows up at their door, drenched and firing questions at them before he even enters the premises, the tension of Dawn King’s disturbing play begins to build. Directed by Damaso Rodriguez, British playwright Dawn King’s play imagines a world in the not-too-distant future where a totalitarian regime grills and monitors its citizens in a bizarre fashion, subjecting them to intrusive interrogation and unrealistic accountability. Read more

Sharon Perlmutter  -  Talkin’ Broadway

Foxfinder is one of those plays in which the rules of the universe in which it takes place slowly unfold. The action takes place at an English farmhouse; the program helpfully tells us the time is “Soon.” It is, actually, a useful piece of information, as you would think from our farmers’ appearance (and use of a pocket watch) that we might be in the past, rather than the future. Read more…
Now running through February 2.

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PLAY DEAD at the Geffen Playhouse

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, November 22nd, 2013
PlayDead05-L (1)

Photo by Michael Lamont

Pauline Adamek  – ArtsBeatLA

Striking a perfect balance between scares and laughs, Play Dead delivers plenty of delicious thrills, macabre chills and giggles. The one-act show features Todd Robbins as our ghoulish host and runs through December 22 at the Geffen Playhouse.
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Bob Verini -   ArtsInLA

Back in the heyday of the great movie palaces—roughly the Depression until TV conquered all sometime in the 1960s—many a management would supplement the regular bill of double-feature and selected shorts with late-night live magic shows. These last gasps of vaudeville, known as “spook shows,” proved to be a great training ground—for illusionists who yearned to practice their skills before an audience….

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Sharon Perlmutter  -  Talkin’ Broadway

Sure, I could nitpick Play Dead—the cross between a play and a magic show, sprinkled with a bit of haunted house, currently playing in the small Audrey Skirball Kenis theatre at the Geffen. But every time I start to do so, I keep coming back to the inescapable fact that I spent the great bulk of the show’s 80-minute running time with a great big smile on my face and my pulse racing—and I’m pretty darned sure that’s exactly what the show’s creators, Todd Robbins and Teller, were aiming for.Read more…

 

Now running through December 22.

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BARRYMORE at Greenway Arts Alliance

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, November 20th, 2013

Steven Leigh Morris  – LA Weekly

Actor John Barrymore, star of theater and screen for a quarter of a century until his death in 1942, was thrown out of prep school after having been seen entering a brothel. This detail isn’t in William Luce‘s 1996 two-person show based on the actor’s reminiscences, Barrymore, though the play does have the title character mention a scene in which young John fetched his own father home from a brothel. Read more…

Photo by Kimberly Fox

Photo by Kimberly Fox

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA

Known as The Great Profile, John Barrymore was considered one of the finest actors of his time. With a handsome visage and notable theatrics, he was praised by all and emulated later by a succession of actors including Laurence Olivier and Alec Guinness.
In playwright William Luce’s tribute to Barrymore’s legend, actor Gordon Goodman takes on the daunting task of capturing the essence of this man whose brilliance was legendary and whose alcoholism and profligate ways destroyed his career.
Read more…

Sharon Perlmutter  -  Talkin’ Broadway

Barrymore initially seems like an odd choice for Good People Theater Company. At first glance, it looks like a complete departure from the company’s initial venture, a fully staged version of A Man of No Importance. Why follow up a big musical production with a (nearly) one-man show? And yet, as the evening progresses, certain similarities emerge. Read more…

Now playing through December 1.

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GIDION’S KNOT at the Pasadena Playhouse/Carrie Hamilton Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Thursday, November 7th, 2013

GidionsKnot

 

Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly

Aaron Francis’ bold scenic design has the audience seated in school desks for Gidion’s Knot, getting you into the right frame of mind for Johnna Adams’ intense one-act showdown between a fifth-grade teacher and a parent. Corryn (Vonessa Martin) shows up for a teacher-parent conference, having been summoned a few days earlier by Miss Clark (Paula Cale Lisbe) after she inexplicably suspended Corryn’s son, Gidion.

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 Sharon Perlmutter  -  Talkin’ Broadway

Furious is back and as furious as ever. Let the people rejoice! Well, the people who love dark, confrontational theatre that takes them for a hell of a ride and leaves them drained afterward—let them rejoice. Furious is back in residence at Pasadena Playhouse’s Carrie Hamilton Theatre, and I’m happy to report that the company’s temporary absence hasn’t dulled its edge.

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Now running through November 24.

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FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON at the Whitefire Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Thursday, October 10th, 2013

Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly

Daniel Keyes’ now classic sci-fi story about a mentally challenged man whose IQ skyrockets after a surgical procedure tackles not only how we treat disabled individuals but how ephemeral are those intangible values — love, life, respect — that we cherish.

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Sharon Perlmutter  -  Talkin’ Broadway

There are two plays going on in Deaf West’s production of Flowers for Algernon. First, there’s the play you expect, the story of intellectually disabled Charlie, who undergoes a surgical procedure which increases his intelligence and, ultimately, following some intensive therapy and education, renders him a genius. The play follows Charlie’s successes and struggles. We see how Charlie realizes that his workmates, who he thought were his friends, had mocked him when he was less intelligent than they were, and feared him when he became more intelligent. Read more…

Now playing through November 3.

Algernon

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LOST GIRLS at Rogue Machine

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, September 25th, 2013

DiGiovanniLipnickiPauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA

Almost immediately after the central protagonist Maggie (Jennifer Pollono) bustles onto the stage, pretty soon she’s letting fly a string of profanity. We are abruptly dropped into playwright John Pollono’s milieu, inhabited by working class New Hampshire types who are struggling to make ends meet.
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Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly

Idiosyncratic characters, colorful language and clever one-liners don’t always make a “dramedy” click. John Pollono’s latest play is set in working class New England and revolves around a divorced single mom, Maggie (Jennifer Pollono), who wakes one snowy morning to discover her car and teenage daughter Erica (Anna Theoni DiGiovanni) missing. Read more…

Sharon Perlmutter  -  Talkin’ Broadway

It is a nightmare scenario for any parent: your car is gone, your 17-year-old daughter is nowhere to be found, and there’s a snowstorm making driving especially hazardous. That is precisely what befalls divorced couple Maggie and Lou in John Pollono’s world-premiere play Lost Girls, and the show follows their attempts to find their daughter while they also, awkwardly, try to provide some necessary support for each other despite the rift between them. Read more…

Now running through November 4.

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THE LARAMIE PROJECT: TEN YEARS LATER at the Davidson/Valenti Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Tuesday, September 17th, 2013

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Photo by Win Win Imaging

Bob Verini -   ArtsInLA

Time heals everything, so the song goes, and a quick overview of history reveals there’s no calamity so atrocious that the passage of time won’t soften its impact. Shed any tears over the massacre of the Huguenots lately? How about the victims of the Children’s Crusade? Fortunately, art often comes forward to try to ensure that an event’s power will not be blunted for future generations.

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Les Spindle –  Edge on the Net

Though “The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later” has previously been presented in Los Angeles as a staged reading, and a full production was presented this past spring at Orange County’s Chance Theater, this sequel is currently making its L.A. bow in a fully staged rendition.

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Neal Weaver  – LA Weekly

The original production of The Laramie Project rode on the wave of passion and grief spawned by the murder of Matthew Shepard. The current work, which looks at Laramie and the related issues as they appear 10 years after the fact, is necessarily more contemplative and thoughtful, but it builds up its own brand of steam. Read more…

Sharon Perlmutter  -  Talkin’ Broadway

I admit to a certain reluctance to see The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later. The original play was so extraordinary, I feared this would be one of those sequels which is not only weaker than the original, but which somehow spoils the memory of its predecessor. Beyond that, the subject matter alone was somewhat lesser. The original Laramie Project asked what kind of town could give birth to a crime as vile as the murder of Matthew Shepard; the follow-up asks what, if anything, has changed…..Read more…

David C. Nichols – LA Times

History forgotten is history repeated, which underscores “The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later” in its Los Angeles premiere at the Gay & Lesbian Center’s Davidson/Valentini Theatre.

This potent follow-up to the landmark Tectonic Theater Project docudrama about community reactions to Matthew Shepard’s 1998 murder reminds anew of how theater provides context in ways no other form can match.   Read more…

Now running through November 16.

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HAMLET at the Odyssey Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Friday, September 13th, 2013

hamlet

Photo by Enci Box

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pauline Adamek  – LA Weekly

An all-female production of Hamlet — why?! The gender-bending (and multicultural) casting permits this motley cast of women to tackle the tragedy’s meaty classic roles but adds nothing to the production. Rather, it distracts and detracts. Lisa Wolpe and Natsuko Ohama co-direct and star (as Hamlet and Polonius, respectively) in a lively rendition that gallops toward its (implied) bloody finale. Read more…

Sharon Perlmutter – Talkin’ Broadway

I sometimes judge High School Shakespeare festivals. My biggest complaint about the performances is often what I’ve come to call “chair-throwing”: when young actors express high emotions by screaming and throwing the props around without any apparent justification. There’s nothing in their performances that leads you to believe these characters are so angry, and feel so trapped and powerless by their anger, that they’re going to take it out on inanimate objects. And to all of those chair-throwing kids I say, “Go see Lisa Wolpe playing Hamlet.”
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Dany Margolies  -  Arts In LA

Here’s an aphorism that could have been included with Polonius’s fatherly advice to his children: Turnabout is fair play. Today we find it incomprehensible that women were not allowed to appear onstage when this play premiered. In this production, the cast is entirely female. And at many times throughout, you could prove it only by the program.  Read more…

Now running thru October 27.

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A PARALLELOGRAM at the Mark Taper Forum

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Thursday, July 25th, 2013

burkeBob Verini – ArtsInLA

If there’s a more sheerly interesting playwright in the United States these days than Bruce Norris, I don’t know who it is. In a continuing series of audacious, ambitious comedies, he has remained resolutely non-P.C. in questioning some of our culture’s most cherished assumptions on race (his Pulitzer winner Clybourne Park), compassionate liberalism (The Pain and the Itch), wounded warriors (Purple Heart), and sexual obsession (The Infidel).   Read more…

Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly

In Bruce Norris’ stark comedy A Parallelogram, 30-ish Bee (Marin Ireland) — a regional manager for Rite Aid, a job that’s “very fulfilling,” she quips — is in this inexorably doomed relationship with a slightly older man (Tom Irwin) whom, later in the play, the older Bee (Marylouise Burke) will refer to as “a gigantic asshole.”
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Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA

An existential “comedy” in the bleakest sense, Bruce Norris’ new play A Parallelogram posits the question “What would you do if you knew your future but couldn’t do anything to change it?” and then explores the various facets of this conceit.  Read more…

Sharon Perlmutter – Talkin’ Broadway

Bad news, nerds: Bruce Norris’s A Parallelogram is not about math. Good news, though: It’s about time travel. Specifically, the play considers what happens when a woman, Bee, is visited by her future self (the unimaginatively named Bee 2), who brings some bad news about the future—both Bee’s personal future and the overall future of people on the planet.
Read more…

 Les Spindle –  Frontiers L.A.

The Steppenwolf-bred works of fast-rising playwright Bruce Norris—notably The Pain and the Itch and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Clybourne Park (seen at the Mark Taper Forum last season)—have explored thought-provoking themes in inventive and provocative ways. Those familiar with these earlier works shouldn’t be surprised that Norris’ new play, A Parallelogram, thrives on unexpected twists and turns and flights of fancy. It will keep viewers on their toes to fathom its unconventional dramatic conceits and sharp segues between sly humor and cerebral reflections.
Read more…

Photo by Craig Schwartz

Photo by Craig Schwartz

Now running through August 18.

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A Man of No Importance at Elephant Stages

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Monday, June 17th, 2013

man no importanceBob Verini – ArtsInLA

The first extended run of the tuner A Man of No Importance is a matter of some importance, as it inaugurates—in this era of folding companies and theaters in transit—a new enterprise: the Good People Theater Company, under the direction of the gifted veteran stager-choreographer Janet Miller. Taking on the countervailing winds (money drying up, expenses mounting, uninterest in live performance growing) is a brave and noble thing, and one wishes Miller and company well.
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Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A.

The intimate 2002 musical, A Man of No Importance—an Outer Critics Circle Award winner and Lucille Lortel nominee—proves to be an astute choice for the debut offering of the Good People Theatre Company. The new organization’s Producing Artistic Director Janet Miller produces, directs, and provides musical staging for a memorable production of this subtly profound musical.
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Sharon Perlmutter  -  Talkin’ Broadway

To tell you the honest truth, I’ve always loved A Man of No Importance, and wished this chamber musical had more success than it did. The tale of Alfie Byrne, a bus conductor in 1964 Dublin, desperately hiding his homosexual feelings from everyone and filling the void in his lfie with an amateur theatrical company at his local church, is a sweet and deeply moving one.  Read more

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Slipping at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre

By LADCC critics · Comments (0)
Wednesday, April 24th, 2013
Ryan Miller

Ryan Miller

 

 

Slipping by David Talbott.

 

Sharon Perlmutter – Talkinbroadway.com

There is much to admire about the writing, and directing, of the Rattlestick production of Daniel Talbott’s Slipping. On a scene-by-scene basis, Talbott has a true gift for realistic dialogue; and, when directing his own work, he knows exactly where the pauses ought to go, to make for true-to-life conversations. But on a rather larger scale, what I really appreciate about Slipping is that, while it is definitely about its protagonist Eli, one could very well say it is about each of the other three characters as well.

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