Review: THE ALLSTORE at Theatre Of NOTEMarch 16, 2024Whether or not he has personally ever put himself through this, Evan Marshall has imagined life from the floor of a big box store and infused it – literally – with poetry. Part love story, part workers unite-inspired corporate dramady, ALLSTORE hits some satisfying beats. ALLSTORE – like much of this company’s work – has much to recommend it.
Review: REDWOOD at La Jolla PlayhouseMarch 6, 2024In REDWOOD, a new musical by Kate Diaz, and Tina Landau partially conceived by Idina Menzel and enjoying a visually arresting if somewhat simplistic world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, Menzell confronts something even more formidable than encroaching yuppie cyber cafes, enraged Oz-ians or life-altering roads not taken….
Review: BLACK CYPRESS BAYOU at Geffen PlayhouseFebruary 23, 2024Part mystery, part cathartic family drama ruminating on legacies of evil and forgiveness, director Tiffany Nichole Greene’s production grips us tightly from the outset and does not easily let us go. Thankfully, along this 80-minute journey, we also get to laugh as well as exhale.
Review: LA COCINA at Loft EnsembleFebruary 2, 2024The high wire act that is Tony Meneses’ play LA COCINCA is a feat that companies of greater capabilities than Loft Ensemble might not pull off. There are 19 performers barreling across that stage, dispatching orders, picking up plates, whisking, saucing, grilling and doing all the other things that we hungry oblivious patrons don’t see.
Review: SUKKOT at Skylight TheatreJanuary 21, 2024Nestled uneasily in a space between comedy and misery, SUKKOT makes shoddy use of a good cast to serve up a banquet of familial angst and misery.
Review: A CHRISTMAS STORY at AhmansonDecember 17, 2023Lenz’s production is solid family stuff, a little bit cock-eyed, and easy on the treacle. Knowledge of the original movie is by no means a prerequisite to enjoyment of ACS: TM. If you’re craving certain iconic moments from the movie, rest assured you’ll find them, possibly even amped up or with a musical number built around them.
Review: A PERMANENT IMAGE at Pacific Resident TheatreDecember 17, 2023The production directed by Andy Weyman for Pacific Resident Theatre taps the bile and makes use of Hunter’s scabrous humor. The journey to that resolution is an uncomfortable slog in which we share the company of some pretty despicable people who, at PRT, are portrayed by actors who embrace their characters’ meanness and little else.
Review: FREIGHT at Fountain TheatreNovember 29, 2023Per playwright Howard L. Craft, the spirit of the human soul has the capacity to return to earth multiple times until it successfully learns…well…whatever it is supposed to learn. Can’t speak for the soul, but the performer J. Alphonse Nicholson needs no do-overs to embody the five incarnations of Abel Green within Craft’s play FREIGHT. Simply put, Nicholson nails each Green ably, in every possible way. Completely.
Review: INHERIT THE WIND at Pasadena PlayhouseNovember 16, 2023Director Michael Michetti has put thought and heart into his production and peopled it with a strong cast whose characters opt for playing the strength of their convictions over histrionics. A hurricane force this WIND is not, but there’s plenty to enjoy.
Review: ROMEO AND JULIE: LOVE IS A FIRE at Santa Monica PlayhouseOctober 30, 2023Neno Pervan’s production takes no risks and provides not a shred of insight - within the text or outside it - why this tale unfolds as it does. A few textual adjustments notwithstanding, Pervan’s production is standard issue ROMEO AND JULIET, fire or chill.
Review: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM at A Noise WithinOctober 23, 2023Visually and acoustically, from performances to pacing, this DREAM directed by Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott is so beautifully thought out and rendered that the Noise Within brain-trust should consider filming it for posterity.
Review: BISEXUAL SADNESS at Road TheatreOctober 16, 2023By its very title, BISEXUAL SADNESS plays and feels like it should be the topic of a seminar or an article in a clinical journal, maybe even the theme of a discussion group. Which is, in a lot of ways, how India Kotis’s play comes across in its world premiere at the Road Theatre.
Review: TACOS LA BROOKLYN at Latino Theatre Company At LATCOctober 11, 2023A co-production with East West Players, Ulloa’s play makes the case for deeper investigation and against the kind of snap judgments that its hero, Chino, endures and fuels. Engagingly performed and containing plenty of cool visuals, Fidel Gomez’s production is a bit of a group hug. But it plays.
Review: THE UNTITLED UNAUTHORIZED HUNTER S. THOMPSON MUSICAL at La Jolla PlayhouseSeptember 27, 2023As the singing, dancing, attention-whoring engine of THE UNTITLED UNAUTHORIZED HUNTER S. THOMPSON MUSICAL, Gabriel Ebert gives Thompson the idol treatment. Featuring music and lyrics by BE MORE CHILL’s Joe Iconis and directed by Christopher Ashley, UUHTM blows the doors off the La Jolla Playhouse’s Potiker Theatre.
Review: THE ANGEL NEXT DOOR at North Coast RepertorySeptember 19, 2023Two of Smith’s previous plays have been mounted at the Solana Beach company, and the company commissioned Smith to create a new work to kick off NCR’s 42nd season. That play, THE ANGEL NEXT DOOR, directed by Artistic Director David Ellenstein, is a kick and a hoot. Maybe that makes it a kick-oot.
Review: THE SOUND INSIDE at Pasadena PlayhouseSeptember 19, 2023when you’ve got a guy like Adam Rapp writing a cerebral two-handed dance between a Yale creative writing professor and her enigmatic new student, and you pepper it with scribes ranging from Dostoevsky to Anne Tyler, and you give the whole shebang to the Pasadena Playhouse and cast Amy Brenneman in the lead role, well, what’s not to like.
Review: KILL SHELTER At Theatre of NOTESeptember 12, 2023A mother-daughter tale that traffics in regrets, dreams deferred, selfishness and the value of all lives human and animal, KILL SHELTER barely elevates the contrivances of its plotting. A larger problem in this four-character world premiere is the casting, which – at least as regards the Blue Cast (the production is double cast) – is lacking.
Review: HEROES OF THE FOURTH TURNING at Rogue Machine-MatrixSeptember 1, 2023The L.A. premiere of Will Arbery’s HEROES OF THE FOURTH TURNING is an example of Southland live stage at its finest – an intelligent, slickly-cast think play, compellingly directed by Rogue Theatre Company Artistic Director Guillermo Cienfuegos for a company that rarely misfires.