Friday, February 16, 2018
A Noise Within has taken some liberties with the text, and if you can get past that, you'll find a breathless theatrical experience full of thrills and chills.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMFriday, February 2, 2018
Our weekly theater recommendations include Jeanine Tesori's "Violet" at the Chance Theater in Anaheim, the premiere of "Two Fisted Love" at the Odyssey, the Culture Clash-Buyepongo show "Sap…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMHarold Pinter wrote “The Hothouse” in the 1950s, then buried it in a drawer before resurrecting it in 1980 for a production that he himself directed. During the interim, what Pinter init…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMFriday, December 15, 2017
Our weekly report on the small-theater scene starts at the Rubicon in Ventura, which escaped the Thomas fire but was forced to cancel previews and opening weekend performances of "A Christma…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMFriday, November 17, 2017
This week in L.A.'s small-theater scene: "Magic Fruit" from Cornerstone Theater Company, "Yerma in the Desert" from Greenway Arts Alliance and Urban Theatre Movement, "Sherlock Holmes and th…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMFriday, October 20, 2017
Our weekly look at L.A.'s small-theater scene opens with a modern "eco-feminist" adaptation of "An Enemy of the People," Ibsen's classic about government corruption retold as the story of a …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMFriday, September 22, 2017
The most promising shows in L.A.'s small-theater scene include new work from some big names.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00AMFriday, September 15, 2017
As anyone from a large family can attest, it’s a wonder how so many wildly different individuals can spring from the same genetic pool. In Daniel MacIvor’s “Marion Bridge,” a guest p…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:05PMFriday, August 18, 2017
Playwright Roger Bean has based his career on jukebox musicals like “Life Could Be a Dream” and “The Marvelous Wonderettes,” durable crowd-pleasers that have been widely produced thr…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:55PMMonday, July 31, 2017
Lauren Yee’s play starts out straightforwardly enough: An actress playing Yee (Stephenie Soohyun Park) is rehearsing the play with an actor portraying the playwright’s father, Larry Yee …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:40PMThursday, June 8, 2017
The music and lyrics from "Dogfight," now at the Hudson Mainstage, are by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the "Dear Evan Hansen" songwriting team. It's a consummate production of a not-perfect s…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:25PMFriday, May 26, 2017
Terence Rattigan’s “Separate Tables,” two one-acts cobbled into one evening at Theatre 40, is a prime example of 1950s theater at its most retro: chatty, discursive and often busy to a…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:00PMMonday, December 19, 2016
Twentieth-century French literary maven François Mauriac once observed, “If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.” That epigram could be …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 05:05PMSaturday, December 17, 2016
Twenty years old and counting, the Troubadour Theater Company has been celebrated for its blend of rock music, commedia-based clowning and improvisational flair, building an audience compos…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:10PMThursday, October 13, 2016
When playwrights have experienced firsthand the dog-eat-dog Hollywood system, it must be satisfying to return to the theater, where they have the kind of power and respect that can be hard t…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 02:35PMWednesday, September 21, 2016
Edward Albee defied the downward trajectory of an aging genius. Lauded in his youth and then critically reviled in middle age, Albee disarmed detractors in his later years with “Three Tall…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:45PMWednesday, July 27, 2016
Veteran theater provocateur Erik Patterson stings once again in “One of the Nice Ones,” his new play presented by Echo Theater Company at the Atwater Village Theatre. The title is a poin…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:42AMSunday, July 10, 2016
Proudly propagandistic, “Church & State,” a new play at the Skylight that runs in tandem with “Obama-ology,” another premiere, offers a didactic political message in the theatrical t…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:18PMWednesday, June 29, 2016
If you think improvisational theater is a freewheeling genre that’s strictly for laughs, you haven’t experienced an Impro Theatre show. The seasoned team at Impro raises the stakes of im…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:33PMWednesday, June 8, 2016
Playwright Rajiv Joseph defies categorization. His most famous work, “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” is an absurd anthropomorphic romp that blurs the line between animals and humans, …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:59PMWednesday, May 25, 2016
Playwright Raymond J. Barry straddles the naturalistic and the mannered in “Foreclosure or Yelling at Women Walking Their Dogs,” a new play closing this week at the Greenway Court Theatr…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:02PMThursday, May 19, 2016
Suspend individual judgment in the blind service of an ideology, and the result is evil. That’s the underlying theme of Jesse Mu-En Shao’s “The End Times,” now premiering at the Skyl…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 02:28PMTuesday, April 12, 2016
Watching “The Cause, My Soul,” a world-premiere visiting production at the Odyssey, can be an exasperating experience — not because the play is bad or even middling, but because it so …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 11:33PMThursday, April 7, 2016
Don’t look for ambiguously tortured protagonists or tedious plot developments in “Othello.” Arguably one of Shakespeare’s most simply structured tragedies, it offers as straightforwa…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:54PMSunday, March 13, 2016
To call Will Arbery’s “The Mongoose” an oddity would be an understatement. Now in its world premiere at the Road on Magnolia, the play is an engagingly nonsensical, frustratingly ellip…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:34PMFifteen years ago, Roy Battocchio’s “Thicker Than Water” had its world premiere at Theatre West and quickly became one of the most popular offerings in the now-53-year-old theater’s …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:10PMSunday, January 31, 2016
Tony Abatemarco’s “Forever House,” now in its world premiere at the Skylight Theatre in L.A., offers plenty of charm, vividly comic characters and gut-busting one-liners. That said, a …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:11PMTuesday, January 5, 2016
When they first burst onto the scene in the 1960s, Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield, a.k.a. the Righteous Brothers, faced an unusual problem: White radio stations boycotted their brand of blue…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:35PMTuesday, December 15, 2015
It’s hard to believe, but the Troubadour Theater Company has been around for more than 20 years, doing turn-away business at venues around Southern California. The group’s productions i…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:14PMSaturday, December 12, 2015
Reviewing an established hit that has been running for decades seems a tad presumptuous -- sort of like criticizing the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for an off-key marching band. After all…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:35PMFriday, November 13, 2015
Shakespeare’s histories can prove baffling, particularly in the aggregate. England’s monarchical succession is tough to grasp for all but the most dedicated scholars. However, those who …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:01PM 
