Marc Wheeler

SCHISM BUDDIES “Are you Jewish?” Spoken by the leading players in playwright Lindsay Joelle’s Trayf, the question could also be relevant for the audience itself. Before you walk away dejected, know this: if you’ve never greeted anyone with “shalom” or heard of a “Mitzvah tank,” you’re probably (surprisingly) the play’s target audience – or at…

THE PLAY WE NEED What starts as a joke ends in a laugh — all the way to the bank! — in The Play You Want, a world premiere comedy by Bernardo Cubrí­a. Directed by Michael John Garcés, the play is a product of The Road Theatre Company’s playwriting workshop, Under Construction. I don’t know…

THE KIDS AREN’T ALL RIGHT Ever heard of Godwin’s Law? If you’ve spent a sizable amount of time on social media you’ve surely experienced it. An adage from the ‘90s, Godwin’s Law states that the longer an online discussion continues the chance that someone gets compared to Hitler (or Nazis) is inescapable. The Law serves…

CAGES : AND THE FUTURE OF THEATER In late September, the long-delayed Tony Awards proudly announced: “Broadway’s Back!” Yet even before Christmas, theaters from The Great White Way to L.A. have canceled performances — even closed shows early — due to an upward surge of Omicron, the latest COVID-19 variant. This, of course, falls on…

SCROOGED After a year or two since Covid shutdowns made in-person theater nearly unheard of, a new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has made its way from London to Broadway to sunny L.A. to liven our world-weary spirits. And luckily, surprisingly : eventually : it manages to do just that, if only in…

WHAT A WONDER Childhood whimsy is seen through the looking-glass of adult sophistication at A Noise Within. Based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871), this 1932 stage adaptation — co-written by Eva Le Gallienne and Florida Friebus — faithfully honors its source materials,…

OUR INKBLOT INTERPRETATIONS: SPLAT, SPLAT, SPLAT, SPLAT, SPLENDID Theater isn’t just what it brings to us, it’s also what we bring to it. At least, that’s the general idea behind Open Fist Theatre Company’s Rorschach Fest, a series of five experimental one-act plays from risk-taking playwrights: John O’Keefe, Harold Pinter, Daniel MacIvor, and Caryl Churchill….

LOST … AND FOUND Found: A New Musical is determined to find its way. After a run off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theatre Company in 2014, this reworked West Coast premiere —   now playing at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in Downtown L.A., stumbles through its first act with vague ambitions, disconnection, and cloying clichés, only…

MONSTER MASH In an effort to strip away the centuries, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has gone under the knife. Revitalizing the 200-year-old classic is the Beverly Hills-based performing arts center, The Wallis, which has commissioned a reimagining by Four Larks, an innovative L.A.-based theater company known for their interdisciplinary stylings. In this intimate world premiere production…

LIFE IMITATETH ART In Christopher Guest’s brilliant 1996 mockumentary Waiting For Guffman, the smalltown residents of Blaine, MO, come together to put on a show. But what if instead the residents in the film made the movie themselves? That’s the level of ironic self-unawareness permeating The $5 Shakespeare Company, a woeful work by Matthew Leavitt…

PAPA, CAN YOU HEAR ME? Every once in a while a play reminds us what – and how exciting – theater can be. In The Father (Le Père), French playwright Florian Zeller doesn’t just present a man with dementia, he makes us feel as if we have it, too. Electrifying Southern California with Zeller’s genius…

PASS THIS ROACH After a convoluted build-up, there’s a late scene in I Decided I’m Fine: A Roach Play that actually works. In it, Ellen (Veronica Tjioie), a trauma-stricken hoarder, exposes her “dirty secret” by welcoming outsiders into her shockingly cluttered home. If one can get past the improbability of such a willing invitation, the…

HYMN-DINGER Sweet lovin’ Jesus, Del Shores is back, and he’s brought a band of gospel singers with him. In This Side of Crazy, writer/director/producer Shores introduces us to a Southern family comprised of the Christian singing trio, The Blaylock Sisters, and their gospel legend momma, Ditty Blaylock. These Christian ladies — well, one’s now an…