All Entries Tagged With: "huffington post"
THE PARISIAN WOMAN (SOUTH COAST REP): 85% – SWEET
BITTERSWEET The result, at least in this entertaining if ultimately puzzling world premiere — which unites the star power of rising director Pam MacKinnon (“Clybourne Park”); actors Dana Delany, Steven Culp and Steven Weber; scenic designer Marion Williams; and sound designer Cricket S. Myers — still feels stuck between two genres, its transformation incomplete. Margaret [...]
HEART OF DARKNESS (ACTORS’ GANG): 100% – SWEET
SWEET This stripped-down Actors’ Gang production zooms in on Finney’s intensely contained performance as Marlow, the seaman who tells the story of his obsessive pursuit of the mysterious Kurtz, an ivory trader who has come to symbolize, among other things, the insatiable greed of imperial conquest. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET The Actor’s Gang [...]
ASSISTED LIVING: 87% – SWEET
SWEET Holzman/Dooley fans (as well as fans of quality theatre in Los Angeles) are in for a treat as their absorbing, witty and intricately woven, Assisted Living, is making its world premiere at The Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles running weekends through May 12. Xaque Gruber – Huffington Post SWEET This amiable item from [...]
AMERICAN BUFFALO (GEFFEN): 80% – SWEET
SWEET David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” is set in a junk shop, but there are jewels to be found in the play and they are thrillingly laid out for us in the Geffen Playhouse’s dynamically acted production directed by Randall Arney. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET Nevertheless, Mamet’s world, despite its grounding in acute social [...]
CHAPTER TWO (LITTLE FISH): 100% – SWEET
SWEET Neil Simon’s Chapter Two is but the latest reason for Los Angeles theatergoers to head on down the 110 to San Pedro and check out this gem of a Little Fish in our very big L.A. theater pond. Steven Stanley – StageSceneLA SWEET The four actors who perform this riveting piece are not only [...]
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 [...]
COMPLETE: 58% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET The play is always interesting and fun to watch, and director Jennifer Chambers keeps the comedy in the forefront, but the insistently nonlinear structure sometimes proves distracting. Credibility also is an issue. Neal Weaver – LA Weekly SWEET The play goes back and forth in time, and director Jennifer Chambers, who was once a [...]
THE GIFT: 55% – BITTERSWEET
BITTER An appealing and capable cast keeps the flicker of hope alive that Joanna Murray-Smith’s play “The Gift” will be worth our time despite the mounting evidence to the contrary. But by the end of this 90-minute comedy even the actors seem done in by the effort of sustaining the illusion that there’s something important [...]
WALKING THE TIGHTROPE: 100% – SWEET
SWEET Director Debbie Devine and her cohorts have fashioned from scratch something incredibly special, suggesting the feeling of a sweet summer dream staged by Federico Fellini. Travis Michael Holder – Backstage SWEET Devine’s staging is quite entrancing, and White even overcomes the perils of being a grown woman cast as a young girl. Don Shirley [...]
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 [...]
FREUD’S LAST SESSION (BROAD STAGE): 76% – SWEET
BITTERSWEET For “Freud’s Last Session” to be a deeper play it would have to take a freer hand with the characters, exploring the textures of their inner lives rather than simply surveying their intellectual positions. St. Germain playfully illuminates some of the contradictions in their characters, but the piece sticks mostly to the surface, satisfying [...]
THE MOTHERFUCKER WITH THE HAT (SOUTH COAST REP): 94% – SWEET
SWEET If it’s possible to write a play about addiction and attempted recovery that’s both darkly earnest and ruthlessly funny, then Stephen Adly Guirgis has done exactly that. His incisive 2011 Broadway hit “The Motherfucker With the Hat,” about drugs and drinking, love and infidelity, pulls no punches in depicting characters who are messed up [...]
THE RAINMAKER (EDGEMAR CENTER FOR THE ARTS): 91% – SWEET
SWEET All the players are ablaze in this terrific version of N. Richard Nash’s classic play, thanks to Jack Heller’s careful direction, Christopher Stone’s beautiful set design, Juliet Klanchar’s lighting, and Kelly Fluker’s costumes. But, bottom line, the play belongs to Tanna Frederick, and Meryl Streep couldn’t do it better. Cynthia Citron -LA Examiner SWEET [...]
Huffington Post’s Top Los Angeles Theatre Productions of 2012
This latest Best of LA Theater List over at HuffPo is from writer Brad Schreiber. It’s a very eclectic offering. And when I say “eclectic” I mean that I saw almost none of them. Which means nothing really, as many of these were on a lot of the Best Of Lists which you can peurse [...]
SILENT: 100% – SWEET
SWEET This is a performance worth your time and will linger in your imagination for a long time to come. Sarah A. Spitz – Santa Monica Daily Press SWEET It makes for daring, bravura-like theater. Willard Manus – Total Theater SWEET His flair for speaking on behalf of society’s throwaways was showcased in the Odyssey [...]
ANYTHING GOES (AHMANSON THEATRE): 90% – SWEET
SWEET After seeing opening night of “Anything Goes” at that Ahmanson, I’m still humming the tunes this morning. In these dark economic times this top notch Roundabout Theatre Company production is a great pick me up. Jana Monji – LA Examiner SWEET Could tap-dancing possibly be as fun as Rachel York makes it look? She [...]
BAD APPLES: 77% – SWEET
SWEET Anybody concerned that Circle X’s new musical about America’s most notorious prisoner-torture atrocity was going to be some sort of Abu Ghraib: The Musical! can rest easy; Bad Apples is a thoughtful, penetrating and theatrically thrilling meditation on the all-too-human dimensions of what Hannah Arendt famously called the banality of evil. LA Weekly BITTER [...]
YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU (ANTAEUS): 95% – SWEET
BITTER It’s the kooky mayhem that’s this production’s undoing. There’s not enough space on Tom Buderwitz’s crowded set for all the horseplay. But the bigger problem is that the lunacy has no liftoff. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET Perhaps the most impressive thing about this production is how Bermingham has physically manipulated 17 game [...]
SEMINAR: 70% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET Theresa Rebeck’s “Seminar” is a sturdy example of a genre that once ruled Broadway but is now more or less defunct: the intellectual light comedy. With its literary lion (Jeff Goldblum) roaring and sniffing out red meat among his writing group’s eager acolytes, “Seminar” is fueled more by plot mechanics than by the thrum [...]
TROJAN BARBIE (GARAGE THEATRE): 100% – SWEET
SWEET Treviño does a fine job combining the elements she has on hand for maximum effectiveness, incorporating lighting, sound, acting, and even dance in such ways that the whole is always properly served. Greggory Moore – Greater Long Beach SWEET The best thing that can be said about a playwright you’ve experienced for the first [...]
RECLINING NUDE ON LA CIENEGA: 67% – BITTERSWEET
BITTERSWEET By Karam’s own admission, her life’s a work in progress. So too is this production. It merits your patronage, but just barely. James Scarborough – Huffington Post BITTER But this one-woman show is the wrong vehicle for Karam: Her talent gets buried under an ineffective experiment that finds her literally painting her way through [...]
UNDER THE DESERT: 75% – BITTERSWEET
BITTERSWEET Dusty truck stop. Lonely waitress. Mysterious stranger. A hoary premise can come alive in expert hands, but in Raymond King Shurtz’s “Under the Desert” at the Lounge Theatre, familiarity doesn’t breed much freshness. Charlotte Stoudt – LA Times BITTERSWEET It’s not terrible, and there are good things in it, but I’m not happy I [...]
DAVID DEAN BOTTRELL MAKES LOVE! (BEST OF FRINGE): 100% – SWEET
SWEET Watching David Dean Bottrell Makes Love my heart broke while my sides hurt from laughing as he dished about his disastrous blind date, a boyfriend with a substance abuse issue, and most touching, his complicated relationship with his Kentucky father. Xaque Gruber – Huffington Post SWEET Even when he’s insulting everybody in the room, [...]
A WOMAN IN MIND: 100% – SWEET
SWEET Director Lebano is both faithful to Ayckbourn’s play and imaginative in his execution, guiding the ensemble through the tricky shifts in tone throughout the play. Hoyt Hilsman – Huffington Post SWEET At that time a departure for Ayckbourn, “Woman in Mind” is an honest look at a seriously dysfunctional family—and at the limited choices [...]
IT IS DONE: 67% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET Angelinos can count themselves fortunate indeed that Goldberg and Ojeda have made the transcontinental jump to our left coast shores and brought It Is Done with them. With its truly surprising twists and turns, Goldberg’s thriller is a gasp-worthy winner and its leading lady’s performance a bona fide dazzler. Steven Stanley – StageSceneLA SWEET [...]
LOVE STRUCK: 68% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET As StageSceneLA readers may have noticed, this reviewer rarely attends one-acts, preferring full-length plays in the same way I invariably opt for novels over short stories. Still, there are times when I make exceptions, and in the case of Love Struck, I’m quite glad I did. Steven Stanley – StageSceneLA BITTER Maggie Grant’s direction [...]
WAITING FOR GODOT (MARK TAPER): 100% – SWEET
SWEET Any chance the Taper could produce more revivals of this caliber? Beckett is no doubt right about the confounding ache of existence, but this “Waiting for Godot” provides theatrical hope. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET Michael Arabian’s stunning revival of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” at the Mark Taper Forum never wears the [...]
THE SPIDEY PROJECT: 89% – SWEET
SWEET What emerges for the audience is the enjoyment of watching a young and eager group of well-meaning performers having a darn good time. There’s something quite infectious about that. Travis Michael Holder – Backstage SWEET In a nutshell, The Spidey Project is an immensely fun, funny, and lean 75 minutes of good time. Ellen [...]
WHY WE HAVE A BODY: 44% – BITTER
SWEET As a director, Tanna has done a great job of moving the play along and getting excellent performances out of her talented ensemble cast. Irene Rubaum-Keller – Huffington Post BITTERSWEET Chafee has a knack for creating engagingly oddball characters and finding the humor in their eccentricities, but her disjointed narrative sometimes makes “Body” seem [...]
THE SEAGULL (ANTAEUS): 82% – SWEET
SWEET I’ll admit it. When I hear the name Chekhov, the first words that pop into my head are dull, somber, and talky. That’s why it’s such a pleasure to report that the Antaeus Company’s revival of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull not only held my attention virtually throughout, it actually had me laughing more times [...]
