102 stories by "David C. Nichols"
"You are all amazing. You all have vast untapped potential. You all have a future." With that mantra, so begins "Space" at Hollywood's Stella Adler Theatre. Stefan Marks' promising look a…
Ensemble Studio Theatre/Los Angeles has launched its first one-act play festival, and the 14 works divided into three programs run the gamut from traditional to experimental. I saw Program A…
With "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale," Tennessee Williams' 1951 revision of his earlier play "Summer and Smoke," Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice ends its 30th anniversary season on a…
The idiomatic voice of Sam Shepard provides the electrical currents that ignite "Fool for Love," staged at the Los Angeles LGBT Center as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Shepard's cla…
Radioactive laughter courses through Good People Theater Company's "The Toxic Avenger," wreaking sublimely silly havoc at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. In its Los Angeles premiere, Joe DiPi…
Celebration Theatre has landed a coup with the West Coast premiere of  "The Boy From Oz," and what a festive party it's throwing. A 2004 hit on Broadway, where it won Hugh Jackman a Tony …
It was a once-a-year day at the Alex Theatre on Sunday, when Musical Theatre Guild closed its 20th anniversary season with a triumphant staged concert edition of "The Pajama Game." Richard A…
Those resolute renegades at City Garage have been tweaking the Bard all season in a triptych project they're calling "The Winter of Our Discontent: Shakespeare in the Digital Age," which con…
In its West Coast premiere at Atwater Playhouse, "Red Velvet," Lolita Chakrabarti's 2012 study of legendary actor Ira Aldridge, conveys the power of the stage and its lingering impact. In 18…
"Blood" writer-director Robert Allan Ackerman applies a dazzling array of theatrical techniques to his ambitious account of the Japanese tainted-blood scandal of the 1980s. Designated "a pol…
"Just because something is imaginary doesn't mean it's not real." So goes "Past Time," Sacred Fools Theater Company's inaugural production in its new home at the Lillian Theatre, a felicitou…
The singular theatrical voice of Tennessee Williams pulsates through "Vieux Carré" at the Lankershim Arts Center in North Hollywood. Although this resourceful Coeurage Theatre Company produ…
"I am a professional salesman. I am a professional salesman." So runs, with drolly insecure variations, the mantra of the woebegone hero of "Timeshare," which has been extended at the Eclect…
Vintage nightclub artistry ignites palpable frissons around the Geffen Playhouse, where "Louis & Keely: 'Live' at the Sahara" has sailed back in triumph. From its hugely acclaimed premiere i…
"Rio Hondo," which returns to Theatre of Note this week for a limited engagement, suggests what might happen if your VHS collection of Sergio Leone films were spliced with several seasons of…
"A Christmas Carol" is upon us, and its winning A Noise Within production is a keeper. Amid worthy area stagings of Charles Dickens' immortal classic about miserly Ebenezer Scrooge's Christm…
Anyone who has ever wondered about being stuck in an elevator might be intrigued by "Caged" at Theatre Banshee, a guest offering by Mean Machine Productions and Georganne Aldrich Heller. Der…
Two weeks remain to catch "The Best of Enemies" in its West Coast premiere at the Colony Theatre in Burbank. The production is mandatory viewing for anyone who values the stage's ability to …
In "ICU," playwright Fielding Edlow diagnoses dark humor in the most dysfunctional family this side of Eugene O'Neill's Tyrone clan. Here, they're upper-middle-class New York Jews, snarling …
What a difference a second look makes. When "Carrie: The Musical" hit La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts in the spring, I found its immersive execution spectacular, its performances i…
A skirmish of wit attends "Much Ado About Nothing" in Griffith Park, and it proves a notable argument. Independent Shakespeare Company concludes its summer season with an agreeably quirky, r…
The intimacy of small-town life and its stifling limitations permeate "Picnic," which the thoughtfully representative staging at Antaeus Theater Company underscores without telegraphing.
It's fairly unusual for a 30-plus-year-old experimental theater piece to remain trenchant, affecting and exhilarating at the same time, but that's the incisive case with "The Gospel at Colon…
Family dysfunction, that age-old staple of the dramatic canon, permeates the walking wounded that populate "The House of Yes" in a respectable, albeit still-gelling 25th anniversary revival …
That deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball in "The Who's Tommy" at the David Henry Hwang Theater. Although Des McAnuff and Pete Townshend's Tony Award-winning 1993 stage adaptat…
