Monday, December 19, 2016
For better or worse, 2016 has been a truly Shakespearean year. It has also been the year of Donald Trump, a figure who could no doubt hold his own in one of Shakespeare’s ruthless history …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:00PMSaturday, December 17, 2016
"Amélie, A New Musical,” which began at Berkeley Repertory Theatre last year, has brought its whimsical magic to the Ahmanson Theatre, where a retooled production starring Phillipa Soo (l…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:00PMSunday, December 11, 2016
I’m not sure how you spent your Saturday night but I spent part of mine in a hotel room with a bunch of strangers looking at a naked man sprawled out on his bed like T.S. Eliot’s “pati…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00PMSaturday, December 10, 2016
“Is this the promised end?” Kent mournfully asks as King Lear carries Cordelia’s corpse on stage at the close of Shakespeare’s most harrowing tragedy. “Or image of that horror?” …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMWednesday, November 30, 2016
Two major productions of “King Lear” are taking place on opposite sides of the River Thames, but for London audiences this embarrassment of Shakespearean riches is as normal as autumn’…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 02:50PMTuesday, November 29, 2016
“Merrily We Roll Along,” the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical with a checkered record in the theater, is like a safe stuffed with jewels waiting for a director who can finally crack…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 11:45AMMonday, November 28, 2016
The sorcery behind "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" - the eighth story in the J.K. Rowling series, this one written as a stage play - is of vintage pedigree. The epic tale of two boys mak…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 05:55PMSunday, November 20, 2016
Forgive me if I don't take this moment to congratulate the theater community on its self-congratulatory outcry against our new tweeter-in-chief Donald Trump, who used his megaphone this week…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:40PMFriday, November 18, 2016
Martin McDonagh, the British-born playwright of Irish heritage and humor, made a sensational debut in 1996 with “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” his bruising comic melodrama that announced…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 11:15AMThursday, November 17, 2016
In a Broadway season heavy on revivals, shows from another era have been given starry makeovers. But everything old isn’t new again. Classics aren’t created by crowded marquees. Plays…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMMonday, November 14, 2016
California may still be counting votes, but already there’s a musical responding to the new Trump era. “Miss You Like Hell,” which is having its world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse, …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:35PMTuesday, November 1, 2016
A few eccentric hors d'oeuvres are served before the main surrealist dish in John Sinner’s “An Invasion of Decency!” — a wild theatrical spree that makes a direct appeal to the unc…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 05:30PMMonday, October 31, 2016
A play about Donald Trump set to open a little more than a week before the presidential election seemed like perfect timing — this summer. Oh, but how these last weeks of the campaign have…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:15PMTuesday, October 25, 2016
Independent Shakespeare Co., the group behind the popular Griffith Park Free Shakespeare Festival, has taken “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” indoors, which might seem strange given that…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 05:45PMMonday, October 24, 2016
Playwright Karen Zacarías was tired of the way so many dramas written by Latino authors were dismissively compared to telenovelas. Her response was to write a play that celebrates, sends up…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:25PMFriday, October 21, 2016
Tom Stoppard reflect on a his long playwriting career
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 01:44PMThe word trauma originally referred to a physical wound or defeat. Later usage, influenced by Freud, stressed an injury of the mind — invisible but no less real for being unseen. Unseen bu…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:20AM"I don't think I've ever spent half an hour in my life doing research," said playwright Tom Stoppard when asked about the impressive erudition behind his intellectually dazzling comedies. "I…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00AMMonday, October 17, 2016
The chief reason to see A Noise Within’s production of Molière’s “The Imaginary Invalid” is Apollo Dukakis’ delightfully cranky portrayal of the play’s tyrannical hypochondriac,…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 05:10PMMonday, October 10, 2016
Three years ago, theater artist Aaron Posner had a postmodern field day updating Chekhov in his frisky comedy with the unprintable title that we’ve taken to politely calling “Stupid … …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:45PMFriday, September 30, 2016
Monologist Mike Daisey has made his name channeling outrage on a range of contemporary issues while seated calmly behind a desk before an audience. His manner may be that of a homeroom teach…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:45PMSaturday, September 17, 2016
David Mamet once described two of New York’s leading drama critics as the syphilis and gonorrhea of the American theater. Edward Albee, whose death at age 88 on Friday marked the end of hi…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:40PMFriday, September 16, 2016
When playwright Robert O’Hara writes comedy, outrageousness is a given. His play “Bootycandy,” a series of connected skits about growing up black and gay that was produced last year by…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:55PMFrom London to NY and now in LA this Ivo Von Hove-drected Olivier/TONY-Winner arrives starring a dazzling cast lead by FREDERICK WELLER, CATHERINE COMBS and ANDRUS NICHOLS running through Oc…
SOURCE: touch.latimes.com at 08:54AMThursday, September 15, 2016
In Ivo van Hove’s celebrated production of Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge,” the direction is the star. The Belgian auteur, who leads Holland’s preeminent theater company, …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:55PMMonday, September 12, 2016
Calls for a national conversation on race are routinely made in the wake of crises, but a better idea would be a requirement for all citizens to familiarize themselves with the work of playw…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:35PMFriday, September 9, 2016
Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 254-184 BC) has been described by classicist and novelist Erich Segal as “the least admired and most imitated” of the ancient Greek and Roman dramatists. His pl…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:45PMThe new theater season is a loaded lineup, with offerings from Deaf West, Ivo van Hove and Anna Deavere Smith. Here are 13 picks: Sept. 10-May 21 A Noise Within’s 25th anniversary A quart…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:00PMThursday, August 25, 2016
The theater world lost two giants this summer, Zelda Fichandler, co-founder of Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage and a heroic pioneer of the regional theater movement, and James Houghton, found…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 02:50PMMonday, August 22, 2016
SAN DIEGO — The Old Globe’s staging of “Love’s Labor’s Lost” proves that it is possible to fall in love with a production at first sight. John Lee Beatty’s scenic design transf…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:11PMWednesday, August 17, 2016
Summer Shakespeare. These words can strike fear in the heart of a reluctant theatergoer. Yes, the plays are supposed to be good for you. But semiprofessional productions in which the artisti…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:33AM 
