All Entries Tagged With: "critique"
Critique of the Week
PO BOY TANGO by Steven Stanley – StageSceneLA East meets West in Kenneth Lin’s Po Boy Tango, a culture-clash dramedy now getting its West Coast premiere at Little Tokyo’s East West Players. Representing the East is Richie Po, a 50ish Taiwanese immigrant and longtime Long Island resident. The West is represented by 40something African American [...]
Critique of the Week
MADNESS IN VALENCIA by Eve Meadows – Stagehappenings Although Lope De Vega allegedly wrote over 1,500 plays, sailed with the Armada, ended his life as a priest, and lived at the same time as Shakespeare and Cervantes, judging by this play, he is no match to his illustrious contemporaries. One wonders why this piece was [...]
Critique of the Week
HALF OF PLENTY by Joel Elkins – LA Theatre Review Let’s see … Young couple, wacky neighbors, senile parent, absurd situations. Yep, all the ingredients for madcap comedy and Half of Plenty (now playing at Theatre/Theater) has got ‘em all. One thing it forgot: the humor. It answers the age-old question: What would happen if [...]
Critique of the Week
RANTOUL AND DIE by David Ng – LA Times A profane and violent odyssey through America’s white-trash psyche, “Rantoul and Die” is a strangely captivating comedy — a rude belch in the direction of tasteful theater. Playwright Mark Roberts has created a seething suburban microcosm populated by working-class troglodytes who subsist on beer and soft-serve [...]
Critique of the Week – Runner Up
RANTOUL AND DIE by Jay Reiner – Hollywood Reporter Bottom Line: An original and devastatingly funny new play helped immensely by a superb cast. A new play that surpasses its advance billing — “a romantic comedy wrapped in razor wire” — is rare. Mark Robert’s “Rantoul and Die” is such a play, and razor wire [...]
Critique of the Week
THE IDEA MAN by Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly The unspecified manufacturing plant at the heart of Kevin King’s comedy-drama The Idea Man (which opened last week at Hollywood’s Elephant Theatre) has a “Gillette account,” referring to the razors and razorblades being produced there, among other products. There’s a cutting metaphor in there which [...]
Critique of the Week – Runner Up
THE AFTERMATH by F. Kathleen Foley – LA Times Theatrically speaking, Fiesta Hall in West Hollywood’s Plummer Park is an unforgiving space, more auditorium than theater, with spine-numbing folding chairs and glaring lighting fixtures that are a poor substitute for professional-grade equipment. Put preconceptions about the venue aside, however, and you may well be dazzled [...]
Critique of the Week
R.U.R. by Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly Czech playwright Karel Capek’s 1921 sci-fi horror show is about people’s desire to outsource drudge labor to robots, which are created (birthed in test tubes) by the thousands in a factory where the play transpires. A woman named Helena Glory crosses the ocean to defend the rights [...]