163 stories by "Don Shirley"
Men sit alone, earning a living at their computers. Not dramatic enough for a play? Then you haven't seen Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale at South Coast Rep or Doris Baizley's Sexsting at the S…
A year after director David Cromer brought Our Town to LA, he returns with Nina Raine's Tribes, an eye-opening play about a family who tends to drown out its one deaf member, at the Taper. M…
Women dominate Valley stages these days. Check out these modern motherhood plays -- Chalk Rep's site-specific Mommune and Road Theatre's first musical, The Baby Project, at its new Magnol…
Did Laurey and Curly from Oklahoma! grow up to be Ma and Pa Joad from The Grapes of Wrath? The question arises from current productions of the former at Musical Theatre West and the latter a…
Von Bach at the Fremont Centre Theatre and Absolutely Filthy at Sacred Fools are full-length parodies that take us to unexpected places. Plus a few additional comments on somewhat related sh…
Some reviewers are ignoring the central theme of the Geffen's The Gift, so as not to give away a plot twist. In a play of ideas, isn't the theme more important than a plot twist? Two Canadia…
David Henry Hwang's Chinglish takes the massive subject of US-China relations and makes it specific, personal, human -- and very funny. It's at South Coast Rep. Car Plays ended a brief run n…
Is Black History Month dead in the bigger LA theaters? Why wasn't Tracey Scott Wilson's superb The Good Negro, now at the Hudson Mainstage, snapped up by a larger LA theater? Both 24th Stree…
Meredith Monk's On Behalf of Nature is enchanting, but hardly a call to environmental action. Its premiere was part of CAP UCLA, the new UCLA Live, which offers very short runs and faces com…
The liveliest theatrical hot spot within Greater LA right now might well be the Segerstrom complex in Costa Mesa, where you can sympathize with the addicts in Stephen Adly Guirgis' The Mothe…
Would you believe two tourists from Florida traveled to more than140 LA theatrical productions this year? More tourists might discover LA theater if the discoverlosangeles website, LA touris…
LA theater had plenty of high points in 2012. Here they're organized by size of theater -- the big, the middle, the small. Also an account of yesterday afternoon at Broad Stage, where a …
The bigger LA theaters decided to do holiday productions this year. But none of 'em tops the Troubies' Rudolph/Doors stew. CTG's Second City Carol is a fiasco, but could its Other Desert Cit…
Cirque du Soleil's Iris, planned to last at least a decade in Hollywood, will leave town in January after only about 18 months -- apparently because it has been selling only about half its t…
Willy Holtzman's The Morini Strad, at the Colony, might remind you of that company's terrific Old Wicked Songs, but it has its own distinctive charms as well. A change in the Ovation Awards …
The Ovation Awards might have advanced Center Theatre Group's awareness of local talent. The best musical in a larger theater is yet another variation on Forbidden Broadway? Herbert Siguenza…
In LA theater, non-liberals are few and far between. Could it be because theater is the most extreme "public option" in the performing arts? But sometimes the result is "preaching to the cho…
The Colony has declared a fund-raising emergency. A collapse of this midsize company would be a disaster for LA theater in general -- a signal for others to do safe plays with small casts. B…
Evelina Fernandez's Faith at LATCÂ completes her Mexican Trilogy in fine form. It includes the trilogy's first scenes that are actually set in Mexico, before the action switches to the '3…
Atwater Village looks so peaceful, but its theater is filled with war -- Circle X's premiere of Jim Leonard's Abu Ghraib musical Bad Apples and EST/LA's premieres of Nate Rufus Edelman's The…
The Mark Taper Forum's November and Ebony Rep's Fraternity examine the final days of disparate election campaigns, just in time for the final weeks of the 2012 campaign. David Mamet's Novemb…
Fathers and daughters are the focus of Bart DeLorenzo's staging of Cymbeline at A Noise Within and Marc Masterson's rendition of Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice at South Coast Rep. Meanwhile, Lynn Not…
It's comedy tonight with two new plays:Â the Pasadena Playhouse's Under My Skin, which applies a human perspective to the health care debate, and Katselas Theatre's Focus Group Play, whic…
Musical satires are breaking out all over -- none bigger than Book of Mormon, which is even more of-the-moment now than it was when it opened in New York. Xanadu is better here than it was i…
Plays about middle-aged spouses and younger lovers are so common that a playwright has to do a lot to stand out from the crowd. Look at Euripides' Helen, as adapted by Nick Salamone for Gett…
