Friday, 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 08:01PMThursday, October 15, 2015
About 20 years ago director Elina de Santos helmed a landmark production of “Awake & Sing!” that ran for nine months to sellout houses at the Odyssey Theatre in West L.A. Now De Santos…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 11:13AMThursday, August 27, 2015
First produced off-Broadway in 1990, Stephen Sondheim's "Assassins," book by John Weidman, didn't receive a Broadway production for well over a decade. And although that Broadway run resulte…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:16PMWednesday, July 15, 2015
Playwright Wendy Graf grapples with the reasons a young American woman would convert to Islamic radicalism in her world premiere solo show, "All American Girl," an InterACT Theatre Company p…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 01:18PMFriday, June 5, 2015
The pith of Harold Pinter is in the subtext. Innocuous interchanges – about a pilfered cheese roll, a ticking clock, a piece of fried bread – take on layers of meaning and menace that tr…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:38PMThursday, May 21, 2015
One of two world premieres in Theatre West’s annual Writers-in-Rep series, Jule Selbo’s “Boxes” is a taut exercise in psychological manipulation that is one of those rarities in the …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:30PMThursday, April 30, 2015
Playwright Dominique Morisseau displays plenty of fire in “Sunset Baby,” her heartfelt but undisciplined drama now in its West Coast premiere at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00PMWednesday, April 1, 2015
Playwright Charles Evered takes the low road to easy sentimentality and derivative storytelling in “Class,” a West Coast premiere at the Falcon.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:00AMThursday, March 19, 2015
In 1940, during the height of the Battle of Britain, the City of Benares set sail from Liverpool to Canada with some 90 refugee children aboard.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:51PMThursday, February 26, 2015
Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's musical play, “The Threepenny Opera” was famously mounted in 1945 Berlin just after the war.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:00PMThursday, December 18, 2014
The Troubadour Theater Company, that inimitable local treasure founded and led by clown extraordinaire Matt Walker, has never done a bad show. Even the group’s lesser efforts have been r…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:00PMWednesday, November 19, 2014
In “Dirty,” a West Coast premiere at the Zephyr, playwright Andrew Hinderaker balances precariously between soapbox and gutter. For the most part the play maintains its dramatic equilibr…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMFriday, October 31, 2014
Since time immemorial, the plot device of a dead child has propelled drama from Iphigenia to Ibsen to “Rabbit Hole.” At a comfortably cathartic distance, audiences have thrilled to the u…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:15AMTuesday, September 30, 2014
Tom Stoppard has always balanced his lambent intellectualism with a certain cheeky playfulness, all the while toying with conventional notions of dramaturgy and breaking new ground in the th…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:30PMTuesday, September 23, 2014
What is perhaps Edward Albee's most unlikely play, “The Goat Or, Who Is Sylvia?” is certainly one of his very best.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:30PMWednesday, September 17, 2014
For anyone who didn’t quite connect with the 2008 Ahmanson Theatre production of "Spring Awakening" on an emotional level, the current production by Deaf West Theatre will redress that def…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:00PMThursday, September 11, 2014
It's appropriate that Pearl Cleage's “What I Learned in Paris” should have had its 2012 world premiere at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00PMThursday, August 28, 2014
The Los Angeles premiere of 2007 Pulitzer finalist “Bulrusher,” presented by Skylight Theatre Company and Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble, is a sometimes undisciplined outpouring that can f…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 01:59PMTuesday, August 12, 2014
“The Cherry Orchard” could more appropriately be titled “Aristos in Amber.”
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00PMWednesday, August 6, 2014
The years have not been kind to “Broadway Bound.” First produced on Broadway in the mid-1980s, Neil Simon's Tony-nominated, Pulitzer-finalist play shows serious flaws in its current re…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 05:05PMTuesday, July 22, 2014
An evening under the stars at the Theatricum Botanicum rarely disappoints. No exception to that general rule, “Much Ado About Nothing,” playing in repertory in the theater’s sylvan Top…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00PMTuesday, June 10, 2014
For those who have not yet seen Jon Robin Baitz’s Pulitzer-nominated “Other Desert Cities,” the first of that prolific playwright’s works to reach Broadway, the play’s current prod…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:09PMThursday, June 5, 2014
A juggernaut entertainment since its 1985 premiere, “Les Misérables” has undergone many incarnations, including the controversial 25th anniversary production that pitted original direct…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:35PMThursday, May 29, 2014
There’s a breath of fresh air blowing across the proscenium of venerable Theatre West, an occasionally creaky production entity that has been in existence 50 years and counting, and has be…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:00PMWednesday, May 7, 2014
Edward Albee's “A Delicate Balance,” which won the 1967 Pulitzer, was written at a time of unparalleled American preeminence and prosperity. That's reflected in its characters, well-to-d…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00PMTuesday, April 8, 2014
Playwright William Inge was part and parcel of the 1950s, a time of scenery-chomping melodrama in the American theater zeitgeist. If not delicately interpreted, his plays can seem positively…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 02:24PMThursday, March 27, 2014
First produced in 2000, Hugh Whitemore’s “God Only Knows,” is receiving its belated American premiere at Theatre 40.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:45PMWednesday, February 26, 2014
First produced in 2007, Keith Huff’s “A Steady Rain,” made it all the way to Broadway by 2009. That record-breaking sellout starred Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:05PMTuesday, December 10, 2013
Poor Colin. An editor at an “existential publishing house,” he's flown under the emotional radar most of his adult life, refusing to actually connect with anyone and denying the …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:43PMWednesday, November 27, 2013
In “The Eight: Reindeer Monologues,” playwright Jeff Goode reimagined Santa's reindeer as a group of sodden malcontents who rant on about the perversity and abuses of their slave…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 02:00PMWednesday, November 20, 2013
With the poor, suffering Philippines so prominently in the headlines, Boni B. Alvarez's world premiere play, “Dallas Non-Stop,” offers a glimpse into the vibrant Filipino culture…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:33PM 
