Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw A party in a bar on the eve of an apocalyptic event becomes the foundation for one woman’s investigation of events 500 years in her past in The Catastrophe Club, Devin Burnam’s intellectually ambitious but underdeveloped drama. Read more…
Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw Arthur Miller’s 1949 classic challenged the USA’s post-World War II optimism, serving as a pungent indictment of the country’s drive for economic success and the toll it took on working class people in their scramble for The American Dream. Almost seventy-five years since its Broadway debut, Miller’s seminal work is … Read more
Dana Martin – Stage Raw Rebecca O’Brien is determined to survive. Getting There, written and performed by O’Brien and directed by Cameron Watson, is a story that circles the biggest battle of her life: breast cancer. The one-hour solo show is part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival and is now playing at the Hudson Guild … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw “Religion isn’t really that bad on its own,” observes Dan Prevette in Missionary Positions, his poignant yet entertaining account of growing up first within — and then away from — the strictures of a worldwide evangelical church. Read more…
Jonas Schwartz – Theatermania A Transparent Musical is special — more for what it is about than what it actually is. The ambition and sentiment are admirably high, but the execution needs serious work. Director Tina Landau gathers an excellent cast who perform strongly, but the text gives them too little with which to produce … Read more
Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw With its hashtag retitle alluding to the #MeToo Movement, author/adaptor Charles A. Duncombe’s version of William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure offers a timely skewering of sexual harassment, religious hypocrisy, and state repression. Rather than a wholesale adaptation, however, Duncombe maintains the original setting and intersperses contemporary banter and narration with … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw An old-timey small town in Kansas. A young person chafing at its limitations and longing to see the world. A handsome stranger of uncertain moral character who appears as a catalyst for change. These plot elements appear front and center in William Inge’s Pulitzer-prize-winning play, Picnic, and they’re appropriated with … Read more
Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw That adolescent boys and young men played the female roles in William Shakespeare’s day surely wreaked humorous havoc on the Bard’s gender-bending comedy. Director Ken Knight has gone a step further, casting women in some of the male roles, and thus amping up the gender fluid frivolity of this classic … Read more
Rob Stevens – Haines His Way Starmites reviewed by Rob Stevens – In what I think may be the LA-area premiere, Open Fist Theatre Company in Atwater is currently presenting a lively production that really rocks the intimate space. Read more… Socks Whitmore – Stage Raw In 2023, the demand for nostalgia is higher than … Read more
Martίn Hernández – Stage Raw Ah, they don’t write them like that anymore, and if jazz composer and pianist Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller had not passed away in 1943 at the all too early age of thirty-nine, there would be more than the four hundred copyrighted songs in his repertoire for us to savor. Read … Read more