Christopher Lloyd Bratten

CAN HORROR WORK ONSTAGE? PARANORMAL ACTIVITY MAKES ITS CASE I imagine most people’s response to hearing that Paranormal Activity has been turned into a stage play is a raised eyebrow—doubt mixed with intrigue. How is that going to work? Horror—especially supernatural horror—isn’t a genre you often find in theatre. It thrives in film, where the…

NEITHER FOOLS NOR COWARDS Michael Arden is a Renaissance artist. He approaches his work with a humanist curiosity, an intricate yet organic perfectionism, and a keen eye for composition, movement, and light. He’s a two-time Tony Award-winning director, the first of which was for his 2023 Broadway revival of Parade. This production is now on…

A LIVING PORTRAIT Regular patrons of the theatre are accustomed to passively sitting back, letting the story flow off the stage and course through them. Life & Times Of Michael K is not traditional theatre. It’s not really a play. This beautiful and spellbinding stage adaptation of the award-winning 1983 novel by South African-born writer…

YOUR GREAT ADVENTURE AWAITS If you rearrange the letters of “progeria,” you can get “opera rig,” or “rigor ape,” or “prior age.” That last one is befitting. Progeria is an incredibly rare syndrome that causes people to age faster than normal. Though the turmoil of high school, a troubled home, and growing up in New…

RONNIE BURKETT HAS THE WORLD ON A STRING You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Santa as a beer-bellied, Silverlake bear puppet twerking in a nightclub with Jesus and the Tooth Fairy. Wonderful Joe, presented by Ronnie Burkett, OC, and his Theatre of Marionettes this past weekend at The Nimoy in Westwood, was an experience I…