Terry Morgan – Stage Raw If one reads in the press that a new play is a “minstrel show,” it might give one pause about seeing said show. Historically, minstrel shows were racist entertainment in which White people wearing “blackface” makeup depicted African-Americans in a derogatory way. These shows were mostly popular in the 19th … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – Stage Raw The times have caught up to playwright Murray Mednick, now an octogenarian, who has sustained a singular, uncompromising vision in his plays over the course of half a century. The vision is grim, but not without humor. I found myself smiling throughout his latest play, Three Tables, but unable to laugh. … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Tea, the final installment in Velina Hasu Houston’s trilogy of plays about Japanese war brides, takes place, geographically speaking, in Junction City, a small town in the northeast stretch of Kansas. That’s close to where Houston, the daughter of a Japanese woman and an American GI of African American and … Read more
Jonas Schwartz-Owen – Theatermania Dynamic performances by Nija Okoro and Greg Alverez Reid fuel Center Theatre Group’s new revival of Pearl Cleage’s Blues for an Alabama Sky. Phylicia Rashad, who originated Okoro’s role in the play’s 1995 world premiere, returns to direct this humorous production that always simmers with devastation under the surface. Read more… Deborah Klugman … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw In 2013, the 24th Street Theater produced a play by British playwright Mike Kenny, Walking the Tightrope. It was directed by Debbie Devine and starred adult performer Paige Lindsey White as a little girl who visits her grandparents at the seaside every year…Now comes Rapunzel Alone, another play by Kenny that was commissioned by … Read more
Dana Martin – Stage Raw Social season is upon us, people, and every respectable lord and lady is eager to be the talk of the “ton”. Shondaland, Netflix and Fever join forces to present Bridgerton: An Immersive Experience, an epically delightful evening of 19thcentury cosplay appropriately housed at the majestic Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Read … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Imagine, if you can, members of the UAW or the United Mine Workers of America hiring a reader to read to them while they labor at their job. And not just any printed material — not a gossip rag or a bodice ripper or a third-rate paperback. No, we’re talking … Read more
Terry Morgan – Artsbeat LA I have a rule about avant-garde theater: if an artist chooses to deliberately obscure his/her/their meaning via unusual methods or flirts dangerously with pretentiousness, the play had better validate those choices by demonstrating how they were necessary. Most experimental pieces, in my experience, fail that test, but when they succeed … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw There are times when one’s not quite sure what a theater piece is about, but its presentation is so engaging that it doesn’t matter. Case in point: writer-performer Ann Noble’s solo work, in which the title character (Little Parts) is a pregnant clown conducting an internet search for a Baby-Daddy … Read more
Dana Martin– Stage Raw The Actor’s Gang has balls. Originally co- authored by Italian playwrights Dario Fo and Franca Rame in 1974 with current translation by Cam Deaver, Can’t Pay? Don’t Pay!addresses the effect inflation has on a fed-up, abused and browbeaten working class at the mercy of greedy, powerful, anonymous corporations while being slowly crushed under the … Read more