Martín Hernández – Stage Raw Teenagers Hagler and Scheppner make a sparkling couple, their commitment to the dialogue, coupled with a youthful exuberance, belying the fate of their characters. Read more…
Ed Rampell – Hollywood Progressive Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum’s adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic pirate novel Treasure Island is absolutely good fun. Audiences today are used to watching action stories on screens, but beholding the WGTB troupers leap off of the page onto the stage to enact duels, chases, pistol, musket and cannon … Read more
Dany Margolies – The Daily Breeze Conventional wisdom says laughter is the best medicine. Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum fills prescriptions in generous supply with its production of Molière’s “The Imaginary Invalid,” adapted by Constance Congdon. But beware: In doing so, it raises quite a stink. Read more… Now running through October 2
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly As Bottom, performer Katherine Griffith may be the best reason to see this amusing but somewhat quotidian presentation of Shakespeare’s seasonal classic. Cast across gender by directors Melora Marshall and Willow Geer, Griffith’s likable blowhard garners a plurality of the laughs, along with his proletarian colleagues, whose presentation of Pyramus … Read more
David C. Nichols – LA Times With summer here, the whirligig of time brings in “The Taming of the Shrew” at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, and it proves a blissfully madcap occasion. This rip-roaring take on William Shakespeare’s ever-popular romantic comedy opens the 40th anniversary season at this incomparable outdoor venue with marvelous forward momentum.Read … Read more
Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw. David C. Nichols — Back Stage After opening with a revisionist ’60s Measure for Measure that entertainingly served the Bard, the forces at Theatricum Botanicum take on Heartbreak House and serve George Bernard Shaw even better. Shaw’s deathless 1917 allegory about British socioeconomic factions heedless of the impending world war enjoys a wonderful revival, Chekhovian in tone, Shavian in attack. Read more…