Margaret Gray – LA Times Let’s Make a Deal’s” Wayne Brady as the lead in a revival of “Kiss Me, Kate”: It almost sounds like an especially wacky draft in some fantasy stunt-casting league for theater directors. Sheldon Epps of the Pasadena Playhouse has not only made it happen, he has used it as the … Read more
Jonas Schwartz – Arts In LA The Actors Co-op modest production of the Tony-winning The Mystery of Edwin Drood strips away the large orchestrations, the amplified mikes, and the harmonizing chorus and focuses on Rupert Holmes’s ribald script. Led by the superbly dry Peter Allen Vogt, Drood makes for an uproarious evening. Read more… Terry Morgan – Stage Raw You cannot … Read more
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw LA Opera has launched its new season by bringing back their 2006 staging of La Traviata. Director and designer Marta Domingo’s chic concept reimagines and transposes Giuseppe Verdi’s timeless romance to the decadent Roaring 20s. The spare, almost minimal, sets are buoyed by dazzling flapper-style gowns, wreaths of diamonds and stylish … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Playwrights under 40 write mainly about love and politics, or so the adage goes; playwrights over 40 write mainly about death. By the time Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days premiered in 1961, the great Irish bard was 55, which should make its subject fairly easy to guess. Originally a poet and novelist, … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Jeong, a Korean concept not easily translatable to English, is an integral theme in playwright Julia Cho’s potentially absorbing family drama. As explained by Sah-Jin (Sharon Omi), a widowed immigrant from Korea, to her desperately troubled daughter Eunice (Julia Cho, not the playwright), it’s an intimacy that transcends love or … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw The current production of The Tempest at South Coast Repertory is the best version of the play I’ve ever seen. It does something seemingly obvious, yet not so obvious that I’ve seen it before: It focuses on the magic. This isn’t to say that it skimps on vengeance, forgiveness or young love, but director/adaptors … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Improvising a new play every night is Impro Theatre’s hallmark promise, whether they’re parodying Chekhov, Shakespeare, Jane Austen or, in the case of their latest production at the Falcon Theatre, the American Western genre. Read more… Now running through October 5.
Pauline Adamek – Stage Raw One of the hits of this summer’s Hollywood Fringe Festival is back at Theater Asylum. For her hilarious play Women, playwright Chiara Atik has re-imagined the stripped down plot of thebeloved roman à clef Little Women as viewed through the lens of the popular HBO TV series Girls. Read more… Now running through Oct. 25.
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA The weighty ideas expressed in this piece have retained their potency from nearly 2,500 years ago. The skills and vibrancy of the actors here are flawless. Had the two elements meshed, this would be a perfect production. Read more… Bob Verini – Stage Raw Reviewing the 2011 Getty Villa production … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw “Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them.” –Usually attributed, possibly inaccurately, to Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1894) in “The Voiceless” Irish playwright Ross Dungan might have had this quote in mind -– for sure he had the sentiment –- when he wrote this … Read more