Stage Raw

THE JUDAS KISS at Boston Court Pasadena

by

Terry Morgan  –  Stage Raw  The human desire for love is one of the main glues that holds the world together — along, of course, with greed, the lust for power and chocolate. Without love, there would be no rom-coms, no Valentine’s Day industry, and significantly less adorable tots bopping about.Read more… Frances Baum Nicholson … Read more

THE JOY WHEEL at Ruskin Group Theatre

by

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw The Joy Wheel is an amiable situation comedy that deals with a crisis in the lives of an older married couple. Written by Ian McRae and directed by Jason Alexander, it’s one of those entertainment-minded vehicles that can come off as either a shallow on-stage sitcom, where garnering laughs is the … Read more

RAGTIME at the Pasadena Playhouse

by

Katie Buenneke – Stage Raw Ragtime has got to be up there with Oklahoma! as one of the most undeniably American musicals of all time, and it has finally come home to Southern California. Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s musical made its U.S. premiere at the now-demolished Shubert Theatre in Century City in 1997, before opening on Broadway … Read more

ANNA KARENINA at the Actors Co-op

by

Terry Morgan  –  Stage Raw Artistic ambition should always be encouraged. If artists never attempt greatness, if they never try working on a bigger canvas, we wouldn’t have works like Angels in America or The Iceman Cometh — plays that demonstrate how amazing theatre can be.Read more… Now running through March 17

ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST at the Actors Gang

by

Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist premiered in Milan on December 5, 1970. Fo wrote this incendiary farce in response to the suspicious death a year earlier of an Italian railway worker in police custody — an anarchist named Pinelli under interrogation for his role in a bombing that he did not … Read more

THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK at the Dorie Theatre/The Complex

by

Lovell Estell III — Stage Raw Some seventy plus years after it was first published, Anne Frank’s heartrending story still tugs irresistibly at the heart. Wendy Kesselman’s adaptation of the original play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett has special significance for our highly contentious political climate.Read more… Rob Stevens – Haines His Way For … Read more

AN INSPECTOR CALLS at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

by

Terry Morgan  –  Stage Raw  When J. B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls premiered in 1945, its vivid dissection of the British social class system in the guise of an Agatha Christie–style mystery was appreciated as a modern classic. Nonetheless, in the following decades its drawing-room play format fell out of favor amidst a tide of naturalism. Director … Read more

DEATH HOUSE at The Road on Lankershim

by

Lovell Estell III — Stage Raw Few elements of the criminal justice system generate more discourse and lack of consensus than capital punishment. There are now some 3,000 men and women on death row in the United States, many of whom have been languishing there for decades. Closer to home, California, which has 744 condemned … Read more

HIR at the Odyssey Theatre

by

Terry Morgan  –  Stage Raw  The word “hir” is a gender-neutral, third-person pronoun that replaces “him” or “her.” It’s an appropriate title for Taylor Mac’s play, which examines gender definitions in the context of an American family drama. Read more… Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen What happens when you return home after time away … Read more

LINDA VISTA at the Mark Taper Forum

by

Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen What does ‘starting over’ really mean if you’re stuck in the same self-destructive behavior patterns? In Steppenwolf Theatre’s production of Linda Vista, a new play by Tracy Letts that opened this week at Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, a middle-aged man attempts to figure out … Read more