Stage Raw

OTHELLO at the Independent Shakespeare Company/Atwater Crossing Arts and Innovation Complex

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Paul Birchall  – Stage Raw I think there will always be people who ask “Why on earth do another production of Othello? What more can you say than hasn’t already been said?“ Fortunately, director Melissa Chalsma’s crackling production of Shakespeare’s spite-fest boasts plenty of reasons to captivate and intrigue — though perhaps not the ones that … Read more

DREAMGIRLS at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts

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Bob Verini  –   Stage Raw Let’s start by talking about the song, and if you’re reading about Dreamgirls you already know what song I mean. It’s the one that everyone’s always waiting for, the one that practically single-handedly justifies a revival of the Tom Eyen-Henry Krieger-Michael Bennett 60s pop musical in and of itself. It stands as … Read more

CASA VALENTINA at the Pasadena Playhouse

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Myron Meisel – Stage Raw I remember, back when young and impecunious, sneaking into the house during first intermission to catch the last two acts of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy, only to be so smitten that I returned the following day to buy a ticket to see the first act and stay again for the … Read more

DIRT at the Raven Playhouse

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Myron Meisel – Stage Raw While Alejandro G. Iñárritu customarily and pretentiously inflated the purported weight of the soul in his 2003 movie 27 Grams, Bryony Lavery more tangibly measures the palpable bulk of a dead human body in her insightfully written Dirt, a West Coast premiere presented by Rogue Machine Theatre with SRS Production Wing. Read more… Now running … Read more

A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO LOVE & MURDER at the Ahmanson Theatre

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Pauline Adamek  – ArtsBeatLA There are numerous delights to be found in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder — the raucously hilarious musical play that opened last night at the Ahmanson Theatre. The ingenious and lavish puppet theater-like set, designed by Alexander Dodge; the gorgeously detailed period costumes, designed by Linda Cho; the clever book and … Read more

THE ANDERSONVILLE TRIAL at the Grove Theatre Center

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Paul Birchall  – Stage Raw When the assignment comes down the pike that you are going to be sent to review a production of Saul Levitt’s courtroom drama, The Andersonville Trial, it is hard not to give into the temptation to heave a large sigh. After all, this is the quintessential, super old-fashioned, pre-Aaron Sorkin trial … Read more

A SHRED OF EVIDENCE at Theatre 40

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Not so much a ‘whodunit’ as a guilty cover-up, Sheriff’s stuffy old mystery A Shred of Evidence plays like a trip back in time to quaint 1950s England. Sheriff begins with a small action — the switching on of a radio — that completely alters the course of his central character’s life. A morning news report of a nearby … Read more

SUMMER AND SMOKE at the Actors Co-op

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David C. Nichols – LA Times Summer and Smoke” may stand a little higher in the Tennessee Williams canon after you see an exceptional Actors Co-op revival of the 1947 drama, one of the best offerings in the company’s storied history. Read more… Les Spindle –  Frontiers L.A. Tennessee Williams’ sultry and thought-provoking 1947 drama, strongly … Read more

WOMEN LAUGHING ALONE WITH SALAD at the Kirk Douglas Theatre

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Margaret Gray – LA Times Is “Women Laughing Alone With Salad” the first play inspired by an Internet meme? In 2011 the feminist website the Hairpin published stock photographs of slender models appearing to exult over forkfuls of mixed greens. We’d all seen these images in advertisements, but we’d never really looked at them, or … Read more