All Entries Tagged With: "blog critics"
CRUMBLE (LAY ME DOWN JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE) (THEATRE 68): 92% – SWEET
BITTERSWEET ‘Twas a shame such a marvelous canvas wasn’t utilized by stronger performances. G.S. Morales – LA Theater Critic SWEET Strip the play of all its craziness and universal struggles emerges that everyone deals with: death and discovering what it means to love. At the end of the day, Crumble is a coming-of-age story about [...]
THE MIRACLE WORKER (ACTOR’S CO-OP): 93% – SWEET
SWEET These actors bring visceral intensity to the battle of wits and will that erupts when Sullivan attempts to civilize the wild child, culminating in the ferocious battle over the breakfast table. Neal Weaver – LA Weekly SWEET That aside, it’s an earnest production and worth attending for the performances of the two leads. Kurt [...]
SLIPPING: 100% – SWEET
SWEET The deconstructed text is challenging – hopping back and forth in place and time utilizing a plethora of short scenes packed into eighty-five minutes – but the experience is compelling and occasionally shocking (there is also male nudity in this production). Ultimately, the play’s strength lies in its honest depiction of abuse and loneliness. [...]
MARILYN – MY SECRET: 81% – SWEET
SWEET Like all great film actors, Marilyn radiated a magic all her own. This dramedy with songs fleetingly captures Marilyn – then she’s gone – but Kelly Mullis deserves applause for her delightful, loving impersonation. Morna Murphy Martell – Theatre Spoken Here SWEET This is a scintillating, bawdy, and well performed production. A voyeuristic crowd [...]
ONE NIGHT WITH JANIS JOPLIN: 95% – SWEET
SWEET In a cosmic collusion of persona and perception, this electrifying concert musical resurrects the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll with the sort of seismically sensational results normally encountered at stadiums and pop festivals. David C. Nichols – LA Times BITTERSWEET What with Carten carrying half the show, “One Night” is hardly a re-creation of [...]
TRAINSPOTTING (ELEPHANT THEATRE): 89% – SWEET
SWEET “Trainspotting” is definitely not for the squeamish or faint of heart. It is often as gag-inducing as it is thought-provoking, but with strong direction and performances the production finds the right balance between grim and funny. Katherine Davis – Backstage BITTER The play lives up to expectations – a waste of time. Serita Stevens [...]
EARLY PLAYS (REDCAT): 67% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET On the whole, Early Plays is often rocked by crosscurrents. The magnificent focus and masterful irony of Wooster Group’s leading lady Kate Valk, for instance, don’t seem to jibe with the cut of Maxwell’s jib. She and Fliakos have too much going on in their minds to abstain wholly from interpreting the text. This [...]
THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS (THEATER ASYLUM): 83% – SWEET
BITTER Overall this is not really a night of theater. It is a night of soap-boxing, and a poor one at that. Mickala Jauregui – A Little Night Musing SWEET In short, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” is a wonderfully-orchestrated piece of theater that successfully walks the fine line between entertainment and [...]
TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK (ACTORS CO-OP): 67% – BITTERSWEET
BITTERSWEET Actors Co-op gives us a well-mounted production, as usual, but the decision to have three actors portray the playwright prohibits emotional investment in the character. Perhaps when the play was originally produced in 1969, the battle for racial equality and the still-fresh wounds caused by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. the year [...]
THE SNAKE CAN: 80% – SWEET
SWEET Yet Graf’s core instincts are sound, the quips and faceoffs suggesting actual human discourse, and Kaczmarek and Harrison form the tonal poles of a wonderful ensemble. See it with someone you love in spite of yourself. David C. Nichols – LA Times BITTERSWEET Director Steven Robman does the heavy lifting of keeping his talented [...]
AVENUE Q (DOMA THEATRE): 100% – SWEET
SWEET With its unique blend of humor and heart, complete with puppet sex, inappropriate language, Internet porn, partial puppet nudity, and a final message that reminds us that “Everything in life is only for now,” I guarantee you’ll leave with a smile on your face. Ellen Dostal – Musicals in LA SWEET DOMA Theatre Company [...]
BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK: 73% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark” would rather be antic than preachy. This is a reasonable if not an entirely necessary trade-off. But Lathan fills out the human dimension of a character Nottage clearly loves too much to weep over. Charles McNulty – LA Times BITTERSWEET The evening at the Geffen is overall something [...]
I LOVE A PIANO (3-D THEATRICALS): 100% – SWEET
SWEET It’s a thread of a story, to be sure, but enough to make this evening more than just a walk down memory lane. Each section – from Tin Pan Alley to The Great Depression to the Stage Door Canteen and Post World War II – is a winner. Ellen Dostal – Musicals in LA [...]
THE BOOK OF MORMON (PANTAGES): 100% – SWEET
SWEET This national tour production gets the job done, matching the stampeding verve, if not the granulated sharpness, of the original Broadway production. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET The joyous West Coast premiere of Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone’s Tony-winning gusher doesn’t just meet expectations; it tramples them. Neither Broadway musicals nor [...]
THE BELLFLOWER SESSIONS: 67% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET A gritty, hard hitting look at the dark places people’s psyches will go … when put in compromising life situations, this is a psychologically intriguing and most involving story. Pat Taylor – Tolucan Times BITTER Despite director Rasmussen’s clever compartmentalized staging and the valiant efforts of Nagle, Monks, and Erb, “The Bellflower Sessions” is [...]
XANADU (DOMA): 92% – SWEET
SWEET DOMA Theatre Company has hit it out of the park, er, out of the skating rink, with its production of “Xanadu,” a fun-filled, high-energy, camp evening of strong voices, good dancers and feel-good 1980s songs. Gil Kaan – Culture Spot LA BITTERSWEET The script is full of clever lines and funny quips and boisterous [...]
SILENCE! THE MUSICAL: 91% – SWEET
SWEET Musically, the show wants only to get a rise out of the audience. Silliness is the name of the game, and there’s a slapdash quality to the proceedings that, were it not so openly embraced, might seem amateurish. Instead, the buffoonery (although a tad prolonged) seems almost artful. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET [...]
EURIPIDES’ HELEN: 73% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET Rivera’s production swerves—not always smoothly—between consequences-of-war pathos and high comedy, usually defaulting to the latter. Evan Henerson – Backstage SWEET But Rivera’s staging, floating on music composed by musical director David O, has its scattershot charms. The production, enriched with Adam Flemming’s video design and Mylette Nora’s flamboyant costumes, is a jaunty visual stew. [...]
THE FANTASTICKS (THEATRE WEST): 66% – BITTERSWEET
BITTERSWEET Sorry to say that this production of the now classic The Fantasticks is a notch below what we’ve come to expect from Charlie Mount and the Chestnuts series at Theatre West. Don Grigware – Grigware Blogspot SWEET It’s hard to go wrong with a musical that audiences have already loved for more than 50 [...]
AN ILLIAD (LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE): 96% – SWEET
SWEET The plaintive question “Do you see?,” repeated in the course of “An Iliad,” raises this sleek distillation of Homer’s epic from a mere platform reading to a transformative act of theatrical magic. Bob Verini – Variety SWEET The Trojan War has never been more enthralling or thought provoking than in this La Jolla Playhouse [...]
THE RETURN TO MORALITY (PRODUCTION COMPANY): 75% – BITTERSWEET
BITTERSWEET Yet the play takes on some painful contortions in order to drive home that point. Even Kellogg’s doctor, active in the Anti-Defamation League, refuses to treat him because of his book — the first in too many plot twists that grow increasingly strained. Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly SWEET With the United States [...]
THE GRONHOLM METHOD: 97% – SWEET
SWEET Director BT McNicholl does a laudable job of keeping the action kinetic while leading his actors to remain calm, cool, and cagey. All four performers are outstandingly understated, though their roles could be played to the hilt of theatrical grandiosity. Travis Michael Holder – Backstage SWEET Director BT McNicholl often takes the audience to [...]
BLAME IT ON BECKETT: 96% – SWEET
SWEET Under the serendipitous leadership of director Andrew Barnicle, these stellar players rock a comedy that could potentially be funny only to a select group of patrons—those who have been through the slings and arrows of creating theater—making their characters just vulnerable enough to appeal to everyone. Travis Michael Holder – Backstage SWEET Playwright John [...]
ASSASSINS (COEURAGE THEATRE COMPANY): 93% – SWEET
SWEET The cast is terrific in the Coeurage Theatre Company’s revival of Assassins at the Actors Circle Theatre—and it is their commitment to the material that highlights both the strengths and weaknesses in this rarely performed Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical. Samuel Bernstein – Stage and Cinema SWEET As I watched this sparkling, cleverly bare-bones revival [...]
LA CAGE AUX FOLLES (PANTAGES & SEGERSTROM): 76% – SWEET
SWEET Equally undeniable is that Herman’s inspiration pales in Act 2, Hamilton’s musical theater abilities are sorely limited, and the Pantages is three sizes too big a venue. Given the rapturous reception at the reviewed performance, such caveats are immaterial. Die-hard fans, reserve immediately. David C. Nichols – LA Times BITTERSWEET I saw this version [...]
TAKE ME OUT (RATMO): 67% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET Great production mixed with America’s favorite past time makes this a wonderful show and a definite must see. Mary E. Montoro – LifeInLA BITTERSWEET Either because the material itself is now somewhat dated or the cast is too green to pull it off, Take Me Out ultimately lacks the impact that its playwright surely [...]
DOOMSDAY CABARET (BLANK THEATRE): 100% – SWEET
SWEET It’s a brisk and amusing show. Kurt Gardner – Blog Critics SWEET There were some spoken moments at the beginning that almost petered out the fun, and a few of the gags are a bit ‘put on’ but by the time “The End Approaches” the audience is right there with them in zany spirited [...]
HEARTBREAK HOUSE (THEATRICUM BOTANICUM): 100% – SWEET
SWEET Rarely will you see a production of such an intricate comedy of ideas rendered so clearly, and with such a clear purpose. Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly SWEET The open-air theatre of Theatricum Botanicum struck me as an odd choice for the company to perform Shaw’s Heartbreak House. I was wrong, very wrong. [...]
WAR HORSE (AHMANSON THEATRE): 88% – SWEET
SWEET If you can only see one play this year, make it “War Horse.” Jean Lowerison – SDGLN SWEET Yes, it’s sentimental. Yes, there are scenes that might have given even as inveterate a melodramatist as Charles Dickens pause. But this 2011 best play Tony winner, which launched its national tour at the Ahmanson Theatre [...]
NO WAY AROUND BUT THROUGH: 58% – BITTERSWEET
BITTER Something feels wrong when you’d rather follow the B story of Jacob and Holly’s best friends, sex addicts who at least get to the point (and amiably played by Bre Blair and Val Lauren, who also directs). Caan is interested in the limits of language, yet sometimes his muddled, logorrheic lovers suck too much [...]
