Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen Love has a tendency to make fools out of people, and that is certainly the case in Three Days in the Country, Patrick Marber’s condensed adaptation of Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country, now in its west coast premiere at Antaeus Theatre Company in Los Angeles.Read more… … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Prolific playwright Neil Simon made his name with a long and successful series of character- driven comedies, including The Odd Couple, The Prisoner of Second Avenue, and Plaza Suite — but with this play he felt the need for a change of pace, and set out to produce a zany, … Read more
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw The plight of the blue-collar worker and the struggle of union versus management is undeniably a worthy subject for drama. This is especially so now, when unions seem to be disappearing and blue-collar workers have watched their jobs become mechanized or shipped overseas. So a play about these topics should … Read more
Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen At one point in the musical Sweet Charity, the main female characters sing “there’s gotta be something better than this.” While they are singing about their disappointing lives, this line also speaks directly to the extremely problematic messages this dated show perpetuates regarding sexual and gender politics. Read more… Ellen … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Leslie Ayvazian’s play about a dying man haunted by dreams of the Armenian genocide coalesces around an exemplary performance by John Perrin Flynn as the ebbing invalid. Read more… Now running through July 16
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw It’s Los Angeles in 1939. Count Basie and his band are scheduled to play at the Palomar Ballroom — one of the first African-American groups to perform there. Next door, at Bimini Baths, two employees, African-American Amen (Noel Arthur) and Mexican-American Zenobio (Adrian Gonzalez) have been given the onerous job … Read more
Ellen Dostal – BroadwayWorld Halfway through Act I of Eugene O’Neill’s LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT at the Wallis, I was looking at Rob Howell’s see-through set design when it dawned on me. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. If only the Tyrones had gotten the memo.Read more… Neal Weaver – Stage … Read more
Ellen Dostal – BroadwayWorld John Farmanesh-Bocca directs the world premiere of a bracing new version of Eduardo Machado‘s LYSISTRATA UNBOUND, starring Brenda Strong (Supergirl, 13 Reasons Why)as Lysistrata, in a collaboration between Odyssey Theatre Ensemble and Not Man Apart – Physical Theatre Ensemble. Set in Ancient Greece to the cadence of a modern text, the 90-minute one-act play uses Farmanesh-Bocca’s … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw This play by Nigerian-American playwright Mfoniso Udofia is part of a projected cycle of nine plays about the lives of the Ufot family in Nigeria and America.Read more… Now running through June 30
Terry Morgan – Stage Raw One of the pleasures of the Hollywood Fringe Festival is discovering something genuinely original amid the minefield of one-person shows. ’s revival of its 1999 production of Resa Fantastiskt Mystisk, written by obscure Swedish playwright Lars Mattsun, is one of these finds.Read more… Now running through June 22