If a playwright has the nerve to use a racial slur for her play’s title, the play better deliver some biting commentary on race relations, either in hysterical parody or heart-wrenching drama. Lauren Yee’s award-winning “Ching Chong Chinam*n,” currently receiving its LA premiere at The Actors Company, does not come close to either.
The show centers [...]
A stunningly spot-on cast, led by Geoffrey Nauffts, the playwright himself, makes for a mesmerizing two-and-a-half-hour theater experience with “Next Fall,” deftly directed by Sheryl Kaller, at the Geffen Playhouse.
The West Coast premiere of “Next Fall” opens with a draped landscape of a scenic park in its autumnal browns and oranges with the peaceful sounds [...]
Los Angeles, we have liftoff. The dancers in Twyla Tharp’s “Come Fly Away” spend more time in the air, at different levels, in varying positions, than on any part of the stage at the Pantages Theatre. Before I saw this production, which first hit Atlanta in 2009, Broadway in 2010 and most recently Las Vegas [...]
How can one critique an Arthur Miller play? Miller, one of theater’s long-enduring icons, has written such classics as “Death of a Salesman,” “The Crucible” and “All My Sons,” which opened on Broadway in 1947.
Miller’s words deserve a stunning showcase with a firm-handed director, excellent actors, and good all-around production values.
Miller’s “All My Sons” gets exactly [...]
To be completely honest, I’m a hip-hop dancer who considers herself pretty narrow-minded when it comes to other styles.
Sure, my parents took me to The Nutcracker when I was a kid, and I have seen several performances by American Ballet Theatre. But overall, my assessment of ballet was pretty bleak.
I am, however, on a quest [...]
Watching Hofesh Shechter perform their U.S. premiere of Political Mother this past Thursday night strangely brought to mind two related scenes in the recent release of the remake of Footloose.
Ren, the main character of Footloose, is starting a petition to repeal the ban on public dancing in the small town where he has relocated to [...]
Kyle Abraham’s skill at picking dancers is as great as his talent for choreography. During the 75 minutes that The Radio Show tickled our senses at REDCAT on Oct. 21, the audience was treated to bodily perfection. It was a combination, of course, of gracefully rhythmic movements, subtly seductive outfits and bodies that boasted sculpted [...]
Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominee Anne Archer heads a very believable cast in “Jane Fonda in the Court of Public Opinion” at the Edgemar Center for the Arts. The play is a behind-the-scenes look at Jane Fonda’s not-so-secret meeting with a group of hostile war veterans protesting the use of their small-town Waterbury, [...]
Oscar-nominated Karen Black makes a welcome return to the Los Angeles theater scene as Cookie Green, a wacky, vulnerable housewife-turned-tour-guide celebrating her 35th wedding anniversary in Ellen Melaver’s new comedy “Moses Supposes” at The Zephyr.
Unfortunately, this two-hour-plus comedy mines no laughs. Fortunately for Melaver, Director/Producer Lee Sankowich deftly steered his talented cast of four through [...]
Who loves Lucy? From the production I saw at the Greenway Court, everyone involved in “I Love Lucy Live on Stage.”
Rick Sparks has staged and directed a very affectionate homage to those involved in the original “I Love Lucy” sitcom. From the replication of the Ricardos’ living room, detailed down to a pair of Asian [...]
