Paul Birchall – Stage Raw I am not sure why it comes as a surprise that Zombie Joe’s Underground, the ferociously imaginative theater company on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood, should so ably create this sweet, artful candy box of an adaptation of Shakespeare’s frivolous rustic comedy. Read more… Now running through June 19
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw Class warfare has surged and ebbed in the U.S. public consciousness during harder or more prosperous times throughout the past century, but the distorted perversion that it is something waged by the poor upon privileged victims gets exposed as a disingenuous lie by Eugene O’Neill’s 1922 The Hairy Ape – an anguished … Read more
Lovell Estell III – Stage Raw Ask anyone whether they’ve heard of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) and you’ll probably get a quick “yes,” along with an annoyed “what a stupid question” stare. But it’s a safe bet that the names Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith wouldn’t be recognized. They were the men who started the organization in the unenlightened … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw In one way, The City of Conversation can be seen as playwright’s paean to the bygone politics of 20th century America —in retrospect a fairer and far less brutal game than the one played today. Read more… Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze Plays usually center on a boiling-over point. “The City of Conversation” … Read more
Neal Weaver – Stage Raw John (Sam Anderson), the title character in Julie Marie Myatt’s long one-act, is a bitter and guilt-ridden man. A hard-drinking womanizer and jail-bird, he became a father, but a very reluctant one.Read more… Now running through July 3
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw For a considerable time now, it has become exceptionally difficult to shock an audience, a gambit that used to be an important arrow in the artist’s quiver. Nevertheless, in a society where in recent years the most dreaded circumstance has become to feel in any colorable way “awkward”, discomfiting the … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw What happens to a working-class alpha male when he loses his work? The consequences of such are on brilliant display in playwright/performer Raymond J. Barry’s Foreclosure or Yelling at Women Walking Their Dogs, a taut penetrating one-act that rivets around a fractured American family and the never-ending battle between philistinism and … Read more
Myron Meisel – Stage Raw Moments before heading out to witness Alan Mandell’s staging of Endgame at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, just before sundown, I lit my first yahrtzeit candle to commemorate the first anniversary on the ancient lunar calendar of the death of my father. Leaving it to burn in my absence permitted me to approach Samuel Beckett’s … Read more
Jenny Lower – Stage Raw Lunatics & Actors, the latest world premiere by Jeremy Aluma’s clowning troupe Four Clowns, is less a fixed narrative than a series of funny, unpredictable, and menacing vignettes that excavate the distinction between creative performance and insanity. Playwright David Bridel, dean of the USC School of Dramatic Arts, has crafted … Read more
Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Sometimes a play registers as up front and personal; one’s immediately drawn into the experience of its characters, heartrending or comic or both as the case may be. Read more… Now running through June 5