THE ANTICHRIST IN A COLLEGE DORM The Amoralists' staging of Lyle Kessler's new play Collision, directed by David Fofi, is an admirable but flawed effort to explore the motivations of a young…
SLOW, SAD AND STRANGE Sooner or later (preferably the former), we expect a play to pay off " to deliver a "gotcha" revelation that makes sudden or accumulated sense out of what seemed to be …
A LOT OF HOLES IN THIS CONCERT, AND A LOT OF PROBLEMS ARE BURIED IN THOSE HOLES Mean Streets, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas…
AMERICA'S BEST NOTES Beginning its first new season of self-generated musicals, the Mercury Theater has, true to its name, raised the temperature with A Grand Night for Singing, a heartfelt,…
DOSTOEVSKY’S NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground at Zombie Joe's Underground Theatre in North Hollywood ought not to surface. This willfully banal production of …
FIXING WHAT WON'T HEAL Jon Robin Baitz' Broadway drama Other Desert Cities depicts a crisis of apparent betrayal and imminent exposure that besets the Wyeth clan, a wealthy Jewish family she…
ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF A PLAY Anarchy is not chaos. The former means "without law," and the latter means "without form." This is an important distinction to consider in a play that intends to m…
ONE RIVER CITY DESERVES ANOTHER If ever a show spelled out summer, it’s Meredith Willson’s 1957 masterpiece The Music Man. Throughout the rollicking story the title character exu…
AS HARMLESS AS A PICNIC Roundabout Theater Company's revival of William Inge's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Picnic is the perfect show to take your mom to. I know because I did. An excellent …
STURM AND SLANG Every generation writes its own playbook for tackling the game of life. These new rules are encoded in language that the previous generation (parents, Old School, The Est…
TALKING HEADS Mark St. Germain's commercially successful two-hander Freud's Last Session, suggested by The Question of God by Dr. Armand M. Nicoli, Jr., is about a speculative meeting betwee…
A FINE MESS The Grand Irrationality:Â The title of playwright Jemma Kennedy's romantic comedy refers to the concept found in astrology relating to ultimate chaos " e.g., the idea that som…
BREAKING THE LANGUAGE BARRIER The French expression “C’est du Chinois” means “It’s all Greek to me” " or, literally translated, "It's Chinese." The phrase…
BACK TO BACK BRINGS ISSUES TO THE FRONT The concept for Ganesh versus the Third Reich is staggering: the Indian god Ganesh travels through Nazi Germany to confront Adolf Hitler and reclaim t…
MULTI-DIMENSIONAL The virtuosic Fleur Elise Noble (performer, director, and set designer) constructs a world of artistic possibilities in 2 Dimensional Life of Her. Across a series of flat s…
NOTHING HOLLOW ABOUT IT Is it possible for a person of color to have a "neutral narrative": A story untainted by race or gender, disentangled from the ghosts of the past, unaffected by theor…
THE ACTORS’ GANG’S TARTUFFE RETURNS FOR THREE NIGHTS BEFORE NATIONAL TOUR The Actors' Gang, the critically acclaimed Los Angeles based ensemble theatre company, will present high…
ASSAULTED If you’re looking to experience the shell shock and the trauma that soldiers undergo during wartime and its aftermath, then head on down to the Michael Schimmel Center for th…
THE HONESTY OF HYPOCRISY The Motherfucker with the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirgis is a crackling, compelling play that finds genuine comic pathos not only in its characters' struggles with addi…
PETER PAN AND CATHY RIGBY HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON: THEY WON'T GROW UP When the musical fantasy adaptation of James M. Barrie's Peter Pan landed on Broadway in 1954, it received rave reviews…
THE MANY FACES OF LOVE Even before you walk into the First Floor Theatre at La Mama to attend Something’s Got Ahold of My Heart, creators Hand2Mouth ensemble are already selling you a …
THAT KINKY KINESCOPE It's a time trip that denies the original intent"a live taping of a dead T.V. series. The iconic archetype of the boob tube's "golden age," I Love Lucy wasn't just the l…
'TIS PITY IT'S A SHORT RUN Cheek by Jowl's touring production of John Ford's revenge tragedy, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, landed at UCLA's Freud Playhouse for a brief run. The true pity would b…
LAURIE METCALF BELONGS IN THE OTHER PLACE In The Other Place, Sharr White's riveting and affective play, Laurie Metcalf delivers a poignant and masterfully crafted performance as Juliana, a …
HATS OFF TO STEPPENWOLF If the title wasn’t enough of a clue, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Motherfucker with the Hat is filled with bad language. But what’s really surprising…