Posts Tagged ‘deborah klugman’
WIT: 100% Sweet
SWEET
Edson’s commentary on American medical practice, however salient, merely lays the groundwork for the play’s most compelling and universal theme: the human struggle not only with mortality’s looming oblivion [...]
OEDIPUS EL REY: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET
Alfaro spins much of this in a colloquial lexicon that makes it all the more forceful. Some of his passages — Tiresias’ musings on what a father really is, after [...]
FORGIVENESS: 100% Sweet
SWEET
The human heart’s capacity to get past the atrocious sins of others in order to grant forgiveness is bracingly dramatized in stage and TV scribe David Schulner’s world premiere, packing [...]
CELADINE: 60% Sweet – UPDATED
BITTERSWEET
Evered apparently set out to write a modern Restoration comedy, but his play is too pale, genteel, and bloodless to qualify. It’s all pleasant enough, and it’s not without charm, [...]
SIDHE: 83% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET
Full of dark turns, Noble’s story is so packed with tension and conflict that at times it’s hard to believe only four characters are taking part. Not every twist is [...]
COUSIN BETTE: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET
At least one key performance is over laden with shtick, and some fine-tuning of others is in order. Still, Doukas is terrific, delivering a consummate performance that arouses, for her [...]
THE IMAGINARY INVALID: 100% Sweet
SWEET
Davis’ adaptation retains the French character and some of the original’s vocabulary as it streamlines the tale. The production is a cheerful diversion and accomplishes with flair and good humor [...]
PROOF: 100% Sweet – UPDATED
SWEET
Auburn’s powerful play hinges on the issues of trust and faith. As the playwright Bertolt Brecht observed, “the inflexible rule [is] that the proof of the pudding is in the [...]
Critique of the Week
A VERY MERRY HAPPY KOSHER CHRISTMAS
by Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly
Set in 1978, playwright Mark Troy’s musty comedy employs a plethora of zany characters to compensate for its stale gags [...]
A VERY MERRY HAPPY KOSHER CHRISTMAS: 33% Bitter
BITTER
Playwright Mark Troy’s efforts to offend every ethnicity, religion, institution, and tradition imaginable bring to mind vintage Mel Brooks. Though there are inspired moments in the world premiere staging of [...]
