All Entries Tagged With: "stage"
THE FANTASTICK (SOUTH COAST REP): 100% – SWEET
SWEET Purists may howl — I noted scattered walkouts at intermission — but that’s their loss, because ultimately this ingenious revival is enchanting. David C. Nichols – LA Times SWEET Tricks and illusions give ‘Fantasticks’ magical new life. Paul Hodgins – OC Register SWEET It’s easy to see why The Fantasticks is the longest running [...]
OPENING NIGHT (THEATRE 40): 87% – SWEET
SWEET The entire fiasco offers an evening of laughter throughout, and all of the actors prove their comedic talent. Former Canadian actor Bruce Gray directs. Carol Kaufman Segal – Reviewplays SWEET The show beamed with brilliance… from the direction, acting, and writing. Even the set decorators were deserving of applause, proving yet again, what Theatre [...]
THE CRUCIBLE (ANTAEUS): 94% – SWEET
BITTERSWEET As for the differing styles of delivery, it’s a brave theatrical device, but it was used for one of the few plays I know that doesn’t need deconstructionist staging. It’s like chipping away at some of the marble on Michelangelo’s David to display it in a smaller museum. Yes, there were moments that I [...]
Extended! The World Premiere of Lisa Phillips Visca’s Raise Me Up
“An unforgettable love story with humor and heart.” – Martin Short “A warm-hearted romance … possesses an engagingly old-fashioned mood that feels as timeless as romance itself.” –LA Weekly Do you believe in love at first sight? soul mates? eternal love? By the time the final curtain falls, you’ll believe. A true story about a “moonstruck” couple’s forbidden love, [...]
CHESS (EAST WEST PLAYERS): 75% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET There’s much more to say about this vivid production, but its best left to experience yourself. There are things here and there that were different from previous productions of the show (“Someone Else’s Story” and “Pity the Child” are both moved to the first act, albeit fairly effectively) and the love story needed a [...]
TRUE WEST (STAGES OF GRAY): 33% – BITTER
BITTER However, I felt this project was just too ambitious for this new theater company. I want a large stage for Shepard’s plays; there exhausting and I feel you need the space between the actors and the audience. Gray tried to use too different casts one with a traditional approach and one group more edgy. [...]
RICHARD III (ZOMBIE JOE’S): 75% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre, is a small black box theater but they can put on Shakespeare with the best of them. Spencer Cotter – The_Detective BITTERSWEET The basics are there, but if you aren’t familiar with the story and the relationships, it isn’t always easy to distinguish one character from another. This can be [...]
THE SIZE OF PIKE (MOVING ARTS): 100% – SWEET
SWEET Boys will be boys and men will be men, though the distinction between the two is more likely one of personal income rather than emotional maturity. Or so it is with the three middle-aged children (Dennis Delsing, Jon Amirkhan and Gregg Christie) who explore their frayed adult bonds in this engaging revival of playwright [...]
THE WOMEN (THEATRE WEST): 88% – SWEET
SWEET The women created by Clare Boothe Luce may have been born a century or more ago, but her comedy classic remains as sharply-clawed and freshly-mascaraed as if it had been written just last week. Those requiring proof positive of the above need only check out the entertaining revival confectioned by The Women Of Theatre [...]
THE MATCHMAKER (ACTORS CO-OP): 100% – SWEET
SWEET With a whopping cast of 14 nutty actors darting on and off the stage, there are many belly laughs, and countless twists n’ turns to follow. Pat Taylor – Tolucan Times SWEET In a season that has included a brilliantly reconceived The World Goes Round and superbly acted revivals of Agatha Christie’s And Then [...]
THE NORTH PLAN: 67% – BITTERSWEET
SWEET The North Plan written by Jason Wells and directed by David Fofi presented by Elephant Theatre Company in its Los Angeles Premiere is a fast-paced, overlapping dialogue, prodigious show with wonderful performances by an astonishing cast who will have you on the edge of your seat! And the ending will have you begging for [...]
MY MOTHER’S KEEPER: 100% – SWEET
SWEET The writer, Jane Press, brings this remarkable cast of women to life in a real, funny, touching way. Tommy Lightfoot Garrett – Highlight Hollywood SWEET It is a moving, though sometimes very disturbing – yet ultimately healing – piece of work. Shari Barrett – BroadwayWorld SWEET The dialogue is engaging, amusing and at times [...]
PARADE (3-D THEATRICALS): 100% – SWEET
SWEET The company 3-D Theatricals attains a rarefied level of artistry with this arresting, beautifully appointed take on Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s Tony-winning 1998 account of the notorious Leo Frank trial in 1913 Atlanta. David C. Nichols – LA Times SWEET At any rate, T. J. Dawson’s staging of Parade overcomes the boxy [...]
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 [...]
STEEL MAGNOLIAS (LAGUNA PLAYHOUSE): 100% – SWEET
SWEET The cast absolutely radiates a core of true “giving” & “forgiving” beneath a delightfully teasing and tough-skinned script. Joseph Sirota – Laguna Beach Patch SWEET At the Laguna Playhouse, a solid cast distinguished by a couple of talented veterans delivers a well-crafted version of Robert Harling’s 1987 play, which was made famous two years [...]
WHAT THE BUTLER SAW (MORGAN-WIXSON): 67% – BITTERSWEET
BITTER Problems plaguing the above cast members include overplaying, underplaying, mugging for laughs rather than allowing the laughs to come from the script, inserting unfunny physical shtick not in Orton’s script, and/or insufficient command of lines. Not everyone is ideally cast. All could have done much better with a firmer, surer, clearer directorial hand. Steven [...]
REAL MEN SING SHOW TUNES…AND PLAY WITH PUPPETS: 100% – SWEET
SWEET Like Avenue Q before it, Real Men Sing Show Tunes…and play with puppets proves that you can get away with just about everything (and keep even your oldest and most conservative matinee subscriber rolling in the aisles) if you do it with puppets. Looks like co-creators Louis and Santa Maria have a franchise on [...]
ONE WHITE CROW: 100% – SWEET
SWEET That being said, this is a great script and it’s a decent enough production that I am comfortable recommending it. Rose Desena – The Los Angeles Post SWEET Now onstage at the Edgemar Center for the Arts, One White Crow, labeled a work in progress, is intelligent, stimulating theatre with superb direction form Deborah [...]
FLASHDANCE, THE MUSICAL (SEGERSTROM CENTER): 42% – SWEET
BITTER Most of the original score, though, is period-unspecific, ultra-low-grade, ingénue-with-a-dream stuff. Poor Alex has to sing what seem like thousands of lines about “knowing that this is my moment” and how leaping and falling is better than never leaping at all — generic, yearning ballads that Ariel, Beauty, and the heroine of “Tangled” all [...]
JOE TURNER’S COME AND GONE (MARK TAPER): 95% – SWEET
SWEET This powerfully acted production of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” which opened Wednesday at the Mark Taper Forum under the direction of Phylicia Rashad, is a gift for audiences hungering for theatrical nourishment after being fed a steady diet of snacks. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET Thesps Keith David, Glynn Turman and John [...]
THE ROYALE: 65% – BITTERSWEET
BITTERSWEET “The Royale” doesn’t penetrate all that deeply into the story of a boxer who made history for himself, his sport and his country. But its lively manner of telling reanimates this breakthrough saga for a new generation. Charles McNulty – LA Times SWEET Daniel Aukin stages a mesmerizing spectacle with a perfect five-member ensemble. [...]
HOT CAT (THEATRE OF NOTE): 90% – SWEET
SWEET Yet Hot Cat is as ironic as The Royale is earnest — until the finale, a moving pas de deux between the estranged Maggie and Brick, set to the laconic sounds of a piano, in which the entire lunatic tragedy settles into a poignant tenderness. Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly SWEET The performers [...]
TIMON OF ATHENS (PORTERS OF HELLSGATE): 100% – SWEET
SWEET At its worst, their production is good. At its best, it is absolutely stunning. Kat Michels – Culver City News SWEET The Porters of Hellsgate always do a splendid job of interpreting the text and addressing it into a modern context. Although not one of Shakespeare’s better-known works, Timon of Athens is still potent [...]
HEMOPHELIA’S HOUSE OF HORRORS: 100% – SWEET
SWEET Cleverly conceived and directed by Dan Spurgeon, with the manic sketches and darkly whacky songs written by Matt DeNoto … this is an eerily entertaining production. Pat Taylor – Tolucan Times SWEET The Visceral Company presents a frightfully fun excursion into laugh-out-loud funny horror; an eclectic collection of sketches that range from macabre jokes [...]
THE ANATOMY OF GAZELLAS: 87% – SWEET
SWEET Aided by a superb design team, director Jon Lawrence Rivera neatly addresses the play’s vagaries, balancing the playful and the mysterious in a thoroughly nifty production that contains a wealth of ingenious effects, most notably Keith Skretch’s knockout video design. And if we sometimes suspect that Schoenberg and Rivera are merely messing with our [...]
KILL ME: 93% – SWEET
SWEET Dark, provocative, unmistakably a creation of theater, Kill Me leaves the audience thinking and feeling. Richard Becker – Creepy LA SWEET I enjoy seeing a performance that makes me think. Even more so when days after I am still having trouble putting my finger on just every thought evoked. My cerebral enjoyment aside this [...]
I’M NOT RAPPAPORT (WEST COAST JEWISH THEATRE): 90% – SWEET
BITTERSWEET The play, like its central characters, was showing its age. Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly SWEET In a tribute both to Herb Gardner’s brilliant play which, through his comically sharp dialogue, explores a myriad of social issues, especially the challenge of aging and dodging adult children who think they have your best interests [...]
MISS JULIE (GEFFEN PLAYHOUSE): 67% – BITTERSWEET
BITTERSWEET A few minutes into this “Miss Julie,” you might think that the Geffen Playhouse started out with a traditionally cast “The Heiress” and then switched plays after losing a few key supporting players. Julie’s fall at the hands of this John isn’t so devastating. But the injustice of her money and his lack of [...]
BRECHT ON BRECHT (ATWATER PLAYHOUSE): 100% – SWEET
SWEET On the small, basically barren stage, featuring five mismatched chairs and one door frame attendees must walk through to enter, the sense of being in for a real treat is palpable—and this welcome new mounting of the 1961 Off-Broadway classic does not disappoint. Travis Michael Holder – ArtsInLA SWEET Directed with a keen vision [...]
IT GOES LIKE THIS: 67% – BITTERSWEET
BITTER Written and directed by veteran actor Jack Betts, It Goes Like This is a personal story, clumsily told. Leaden-footed, as if cast in concrete, the melodramatic saga manages to be both utterly predictable yet also contain enough dramatic revelations to rival a telenovela. Pauline Adamek – LA Weekly SWEET Bold in their own ways [...]
