The turntable in Mariano Pensotti's The Past Is a Grotesque Animal never stops revolving during the two hours' running time of these four only loosely connected stories about Argentinians be…
Reprise is in trouble. Is its mission not clear enough? Should it be just like other musical theater companies or should it continue to produce shows that can't be seen elsewhere?...Valerie …
Burbank's midsizes focus masterfully on musicians -- Dissonance at the Falcon and Old Wicked Songs at the Colony. The latter play's writer strikes out with his latest at the Blank. Road Thea…
Molly Smith Metzler's Elemeno Pea is relevant to its 99%/1% era and its Costa Mesa place, and it need not apologize for getting big laughs. Cirque's Iris goes on vacation; will it return to …
Just as CTG deserves kudos for presenting simultaneous and terrific productions of A Raisin in the Sun and Clybourne Park, it's likely to arouse some concern and criticism for instituting a …
David Cromer's original vision of Our Town at Broad Stage offers a lot of surprises, even from the balcony. It expands the role of Simon Stimson in a way that LA STAGE Times' own…
Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare's take on the Trojan War, should be seen a lot more often in LA. The Porters of Hellsgate are doing their part in Charles Pasternak's inventive staging in…
City Garage is finally connecting the theatrical and the visual arts at Bergamot Station, re-setting Neil LaBute's early performance art piece, Filthy Talk for Troubled Times, within an art …
In 2011, LA Times theater critic Charles McNulty devoted much of his space to only four of LA's theater companies and too much of his time to theater in New York and London. Many of the "99%…
A look at some of the highlights of LA theater in 2o11 embraces LA plays, LA writers, CTG's smallest shows, the return of Pasadena Playhouse, A Noise Within's last Glendale season, two shows…
Among the more unusual holiday shows, the Troubies' A Christmas Westside Story is riotously entertaining. Atomic Holiday Free Fall! at the Actors' Gang and A Chanukah Carol at Theatre 68 are…
Tired of wondering what to do with all your old theater programs? The Los Angeles Public Library already has collected more than 30,000 of them, dating back to the 19th century. Your contrib…
A revival of Miguel Pinero's Short Eyes ricochets through LATC's Theatre 4. And two plays offer comic takes on Jewish identity in America -- Laurel Ollstein's Esther's Moustache and James Sh…
Charlayne Woodard's CTG solo The Night Watcher, at the Kirk Douglas, raises CTG's overall grade on LA talent and content to a C+. Is Bring It On actually set in California, too? Pasadena Pla…
The Geffen Playhouse has been closely identified with its founder and producing Gil Cates. Let's take a quick tour through the Cates years and then ask the inevitable question -- what now? W…
A Noise Within opens its new Pasadena home with a Twelfth Night set in pre-revolutionary Cuba. And Latino Theater Company moves to LATC's largest venue with Evelina Fernandez's Hope, set a f…
Two revivals of plays from 1947, both of them about how civilians behaved on the home front during World War II, offer distinctive twists. Antaeus' revival of Noel Coward's Peace in Our Time…
Stephen Metcalfe's The Tragedy of the Commons isn't quite a tragedy, but it an uncommonly penetrating portrait of an aging blogger who's in a modern California story reminiscent of The Cherr…
I've Never Been So Happy and Monkey Adored are fables about animals behaving like humans, but they're very different in tone. Way to Heaven at the Odyssey is not only about Nazi p.r. efforts…
Revivals of the hilarious Kvetch and the moving Falsettos reveal similarities -- and differences -- between the two. South Street stinks. How the World Began shows us both sides of a debate …
The opening of Cirque du Soleil's astonishing new Iris at the Kodak Theatre raises a self-serving but inevitable question within the LA theater community " "what's in it for us"? On the one …
Twenty-four years after its US premiere in downtown LA, Cirque du Soleil is finally becoming a permanent Angeleno. After Iris, a new Cirque show about the essence of cinema, opens Sunday, it…
Michael Ritchie's grade of using LA content and LA talent is moving from last year's F to this year's C, thanks to scheduled shows at the Mark Taper Forum and the Kirk Douglas Theatre, if no…
The panel and talkback following My Name is Rachel Corrie at the Theatricum Botanicum is much more dramatic than the solo play itself, especially if devoted advocates of Israeli and Palestin…
My Name Is Rachel Corrie, one of the most debated plays of the last decade, finally arrives in LA at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum -- a venue not previously known for red-hot controvers…