Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly A quartet of Big Idea plays has opened over the past two weeks, exploring the intersections of art, psychology and history. Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play, co-presented by the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble and Evidence Room, has been around since at least 2005, with productions at Arena Stage in Washington, Chicago’s … Read more
Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA An exuberant celebration of language is the most apt description for actor Christopher Plummer’s self-created one-man show. A Word or Two is playing through February 9, 2014 at the Ahmanson Theatre, downtown LA. Early on in the show, Plummer selects a book from a heap and begins to read from a lectern. But this … Read more
Deborah Klugman – ArtsBeatLA What do Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy have in common? In Scott Carter’s intellectually upscale comedy, all three are smug anthropomorphic spirits, trapped in a single chamber purgatory and forced to communicate despite their disdain for any view contradicting their own. Read more… Dany Margolies – Arts In LA History’s … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly “That’s the story!” repeated with droll unctuousness becomes a motif in actor Barry McGovern’s solo performance of stories by Samuel Beckett, presented by the Gate Theatre of Dublin at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. The texts — “Molloy,” “Malone Dies” and “The Unnamable” — were selected by McGovern and Gerry … Read more
Dany Margolies – Arts In LA Dawn King’s play is set in Britain, in the near future. As with all good literature, it’s meant to represent the here and now. So when an inspector arrives at a struggling farm, interrogating the farmers too inappropriately and searching the home too thoroughly, a certain Notorious Safety Administration … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly The opening stanza of Lewis Carroll‘s poem “Jabberwocky” goes like this: ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves; And the mome raths outgrabe. Perhaps such nonsense verse and satirically inverted logic, also found in Carroll’s books such as Alice’s Adventures … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times A noteworthy degree of high-performance gusto attends “¡Ser!” at Los Angeles Theatre Center. This deeply personal coming-of-age account from writer-performer Karen Anzoategui reveals a ripely burgeoning talent. Read more… Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Latino Theater Company pulls out the stops for Karen Anzoategui’s solo performance ¡Ser!, about a … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Actor John Barrymore, star of theater and screen for a quarter of a century until his death in 1942, was thrown out of prep school after having been seen entering a brothel. This detail isn’t in William Luce‘s 1996 two-person show based on the actor’s reminiscences, Barrymore, though the play does … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Lone-Anon is, at core, an Orwellian social satire, set five years in the future, when the NSA and/or FBI has set up a watch list for people with antisocial tendencies. For instance, if you’re invited to a party on Facebook and you don’t respond, you may well land on the list and find yourself … Read more
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Coincidentally, two unrelated plays about group therapy opened last week in small theaters less than a mile from one another. Neil McGowan’s comedy Lone-Anon, about maladroit loners subjected to court-ordered therapy, is running late nights at Rogue Machine on Pico near La Brea, while Leslie Hardy‘s A Good Grief airs the dirty … Read more