All Entries in the "review" Category
STREEP TEASE: 83%- Sweet
SWEET Of course, if you haven’t seen all of the films in question, some of the humor might whiz over your head. However, this brisk, hour-long sampling of Streep’s oeuvre, directed by Ezra Weisz, features a gamely goofy cast, including Drew Droege (“Cry in the Dark”), Ron Morehouse (“Death Becomes Her”), Steve Hasley (“The Bridges [...]
THE CLEAN HOUSE (INTERNATIONAL CITY THEATRE): 100% – Sweet
SWEET Costume designer Kim DeShazo provides Lane with a white pantsuit in almost great-white-hunter style, which softens to a pink sweater and white slacks by play’s end. Virginia’s clothing, by contrast, begins as prim but comfortable and ends as happily comfortable. As does the audience’s tour of this odd, unique, and ultimately cathartic play. Dany [...]
MILKMILKLEMONADE: 67% – Sweet
SWEET “MilkMilkLemonade” is a great stage production for those who enjoy letting their imaginations run wild and also for those who need help letting loose. Those feeling will subside, and you’ll be relieved you finished that chapter! Danielle Lee – Campus Circle BITTER The play is nothing if not edgy, perfect for the off-off-Broadway world [...]
TITUS REDUX: 100% – Sweet
SWEET The minimalist settings are dynamic in their flexibility. Using two tables and a few other bits and pieces, the nearly two-hour narrative, unbroken by intermission and strewed with terrible soliloquies, create the pain, suffering and grief that few of us would dare even to imagine. Laurence Vittes – Hollywood Reporter SWEET The story’s pieces [...]
NEIGHBORS: A PLAY WITH CARTOONS: 100% – Sweet
SWEET The Brooklyn-based playwright, precocious at 26, now works in Berlin on a project about black soldiers stationed in Germany. Every element of his vivacious play is fresh, alive, and communicates. It’s wildly intelligent, unafraid, and wickedly funny. Debra Levine – Arts Meme SWEET Jacobs-Jenkins has written a play that is heartfelt, ambitious, angry, outrageous [...]
Critique of the Week
EAT THE RUNT Review by Madeleine Shaner – Park La Brea News/Beverly Press (opens in pdf) The lapel pin that’s clipped to the Press Kit for Avery Crozier’s new (and first full length) play pictures a quartet of multi-colored shaggy dogs, semi-circled with the cryptic phrase ‘Anyone can dribble a Pollock’, seems to suggest that [...]
TOPDOG/UNDERDOG (FREMONT PRODUCTION): 100% – Sweet
BITTERSWEET As Booth, Rider has an appealing intensity that bounces nicely off of Jed Reynolds’ low-key Lincoln. James Reynolds’ simple staging is clear and clean, and the young actors own the play’s many comic moments. They have more difficulty mining the complexity of the material—reaching the depths it demands—and at times handling the heightened language. [...]
A STRING OF PEARLS: 33% – Bitter
SWEET “A String of Pearls” is an ambitious play, but one the Group Rep at the Lonny Chapman Theatre pulls off beautifully. Jackie Houchin – NoHoArtsDistrict BITTER This one just wasn’t my cup of tea… or favorite style of play. Sorry… non-linear offerings always trip me up a bit, and this one often missed its [...]
A WITHER’S TALE: 91% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET A Withers Tale is a nice change of pace for the Troubadour Company but as they are so cosmically gifted at side-splitting silly stuff, let’s hope that their next production is more seriously funny. Lynne Bronstein – Santa Monica Mirror SWEET The somber saga builds to Walker’s showstopping rendition of “Ain’t No Sunshine,” enhanced [...]
KARMA, THE MUSICAL: 100% – Sweet
SWEET And the production gains traction from Liz Heathcoat’s lively choreography, executed by an enthusiastic ensemble, and from videographer Scott Hunter’s background montage of cultural icons. That said, the show has multiple rough edges, including an uneven standard of performance and vocals that need improving. Director Michael Eiden does a respectable job of maneuvering a [...]
CHESS IN CONCERT: 100% – Sweet
SWEET I’ve attended many concert and staged readings of musicals in Los Angeles and most tend to be simple presentations, on book at music stands, with little or no additional production elements. CHESS in Concert at Musical Theatre of Los Angeles has elevated the concert reading convention to new heights, with a lush 9-piece orchestra, [...]
ALL MY SONS (RUSKIN GROUP THEATRE): 100% – Sweet
SWEET Director Edward Edwards does not attempt any revisionist flourishes in the current production of “Sons” at the Ruskin Group, but although his simple staging may seem somewhat tame at intervals, it has, on the whole, an emotional authenticity that honors the play’s timeless themes. F. Kathleen Foley – LA Times SWEET Trust me, there [...]
STILL STANDING: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Shyla Marlin’s new play sets forth a compelling premise in portraying the intersecting quests of two women to solidify their self-identities and familial roots. Director Nick Mills has assembled a solid cast to explore the sociological and psychological ramifications of Marlin’s intelligent themes. Yet the script is hampered by a choppy pseudo-cinematic quality and [...]
Critique of the Week
THE EXERCISE Review by Tony Frankel – Stage and Cinema Reviewer on the phone with his editor: “Listen, I got a problem. I just got out of The Exercise over at The Lounge Theatre. Listen, it’s not going to be a pretty review. I feel almost maligned. I’m so upset that I can’t – nor [...]
Critique of the Week – Runner Up
MY PENIS – IN AND OUT OF TROUBLE Review by Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Let’s not mince words. Any man who devotes a show to the subject of his own penis has way too much time on his hands. Puppetry of the Penis would be Exhibit A were this theory ever to be [...]
EAT THE RUNT (Theatre of NOTE): 80% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Written by Avery Crozier with mind-boggling brilliance… This one will twist your brain! One of the most innovative, funny, wildly creative, ingenious, and theatrically challenging staged concepts I’ve ever seen! Pat Taylor – Tolucan Times SWEET As to whether this reviewer will be back for more runt eating, the answer is yes indeed. Stay [...]
MY PENIS – IN AND OUT OF TROUBLE: 100% – Sweet
SWEET For fans of the one person memoir, MY PENIS – IN AND OUT OF TROUBLE is a breezy hour that touches on issues of import to us all- without getting preachy or mired in a self help, tell all, work through my issues trap that many solo performers face. Sacre has given himself the [...]
THE MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP: 100% – Sweet
SWEET There’s a mildness that prevents Lorre and Remington’s handling, played out on a set of black furniture adorably marked with chalk, from becoming an unfettered tour de force. (A few bald comic patches could use a directorial comb-over.) But the duo’s gentle playfulness has its own rewards — first and foremost, a chuckling sincerity. [...]
THE GOOD NEGRO: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Such a weighty matter could easily dip into the self-righteous, but what makes The Good Negro so compelling is it refrains from being preachy and gives us characters just as flawed as the historical ones from which Ms. Wilson obviously draws her inspiration. Rev. Lawrence, although committed to nonviolence and a noble cause, has [...]
GROUNDLINGS RIVER ADVENTURE: 33% – Bitter
BITTER What has not changed for the better since this reviewer’s last visit to the Groundlings is a weakness in improv. One understands director Damon Jones and the Groundlings institution provide a training ground for improv, as well as sketch. But on the night reviewed, the improvised pieces often felt forced, too controlled; for example, [...]
THE EXERCISE: 33% – Bitter – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET Notwithstanding the excellent acting, the real exercise is more to see if the audience can sit for two hours plus coping with dialog that at first starts out bland and then escalates to predictable. There are some detours that are funny and a couple more that are poignant, but the questions that kept nagging [...]
A WOLF INSIDE THE FENCE: 75% – Sweet – UPDATED
BITTER One of three plays in the First Look Festival, Joseph Fisher’s dramedy creeps along at a maddeningly slow pace with a plot as thick and tedious as any world history textbook. The knock-you-on-the-side-of-your-head stock characters are of the typical all-American high school trope: the bad girl that smokes out front, a frustrated history teacher, [...]
FREE MAN OF COLOR: 100% – Sweet
SWEET Smith’s spare three-character study unfolds through intimate moments and intellectual discourse, powerfully examining the issues of its day, as well as questions surrounding citizenship and belonging, which continue to occupy us. The dialogue is especially refreshing for its crisp diction, for which the credit goes to both the cast and director Dan Bonnell. The [...]
PARASITE DRAG: 100% – Sweet
SWEET The final plot turn is raw and dirty. Notwithstanding the play’s bleak tapestry, Roberts instills plenty of comic relief into his writing. The characters are well sketched and without a trace or urbanity. David Fofi delivers spot-on direction and draws very good performances from his cast, particularly Nowicki, who artfully blends Southern charm and [...]
Critique of the Week
[title of show] (Celebration Theatre) Review by Harvey Perr – Stage and Cinema Friend: Wasn’t that fabulous? I mean, what can you say? Didn’t you just love it to bits? Reviewer: What are you talking about? Friend: Hello. Where are you? The show we just saw. “[title of show].” Didn’t you think it was just [...]
ENGAGEMENT: 50% – Bittersweet – UPDATED
BITTER Granted, Barton’s curiously unedited spate offers flashes of fresh and funny philosophical insight. However, like pyrite in a streambed, obscured by the rushing flow of verbiage, the occasional nugget is not worth the excavation. F. Kathleen Foley – LA Times BITTERSWEET Unhappily, she is, so the course of their love does not run smooth. [...]
BECOMING NORMAN: 100% – Sweet
BITTERSWEET It’s an evident labor of love, and more power to Dixon for sharing it. Whether this virtual memoir achieves a broader reach is another matter. There are missed opportunities, as when Dixon remembers childhood dress-up without donning the skirt hanging upstage, and the literal recounting of conversations is at times like a self-realization exercise. [...]
CARRY IT ON: 100% – Bittersweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET What becomes legends most? Not necessarily treating them with respect. “Carry It On,” Theatricum Botanicum’s musical survey of American idealists and activists, has a faultless heart, but its showbiz instincts could use a goosing. Charlotte Stoudt – LA Times BITTERSWEET Not to say there weren’t any odd moments in the play: Isadora Duncan explaining [...]
BOY’S LIFE: 75% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET Howard Korder writes insightfully—and hilariously—about the male psyche in his 1988 comedy Boys’ Life, smashingly revived (and smoothy updated to the 21st Century) by Crown City Theatre Company. Impeccably acted and directed, this is a production which ought to disprove once and for all any notion of Los Angeles not being the great theater [...]
TOPDOG/UNDERDOG (LILLIAN PRODUCTION): 71% – Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET In an intimate space re-creating the size of the original off Broadway production, Martin Papazian’s direction doesn’t allow for a moment’s respite in the escalating chaos of jealousy and confusion. The ritualized partitioning of the room and the relationship between the two figures — one a former card shark haunted by death, the other [...]