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A TREE GROWS ON 24TH STREET Mike Kenny’s lyrical world premiere makes magic Simplicity fused with memory is one of the foundations of poetry, and truth finds its most eloquent expression in an economy of words. This is certainly exquisitely exhibited in Mike Kenny’s Winter’s Bench, presently enhancing the stage of the 24th Street Theatre….

MAMET MAKES A PASS AT THE LADIES Three women turn Victorian propriety into a wicked game of lust, jealousy, and verbal warfare David Mamet is best known for plays populated by men who lie, bully, bargain, betray, and verbally bludgeon one another. Then there’s Boston Marriage. Written in 1999, the comedy centers on three women…

DONIZETTI’S BURIED TREASURE AND RUBBLE POP finds music worth hearing in a comedy better left buried Pacific Opera Project did not pull Il fortunato inganno (The Fortunate Deception) from a library shelf. Artistic director Josh Shaw traced the score to Italy and a 1998 revival at the Festival della Valle d’Itria, three years after its…

A MOST ACCOMMODATING DISASTER Frisch’s comedy leaves no one comfortably outside the joke Gottlieb Biedermann tells his wife and his maid that even if he had three spare beds standing empty, taking in a stranger would still be out of the question. He says this in one breath. In the next, he offers the stranger…

THE BLUES COME WITH A PRICE Power, ownership, and exploitation run through a sharply realized production of August Wilson’s classic A stew uses whatever is in the house. Carrots. Potatoes. A piece of meat, if there is one. Maybe the marrow worked out of the bone. Then dinner ends. What remains sits in the pot,…

PERICLES IS WORTH THE VOYAGE A questionable framing device doesn’t sink Boston Court’s lively take on Shakespeare’s rarely staged adventure The groundlings who attended William Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre back in 1608 (or 1619, hard to nail these dates down) would certainly have gotten their penny’s worth, as did the audience at the West…

THE MONSTERS HAVE NOTES Two kaiju flatten a city, then stick around to argue Godzilla generally has better things to do after destroying a city than discuss the cultural implications. KAIJU, a world-premiere play by Dan Caffrey, starts with the destruction and then asks its gigantic monsters to talk about it. That premise alone should…

PIAF, WITHOUT THE PARROTING Eleanora Owen finds the heartbreak and defiance inside the Little Sparrow’s songs Édith Piaf’s life overflowed with the severest of extremities: the writhing, rapturous harmony of joyous consonances and agonized dissonances, hastened with the rapidity of a tempo that flamed out after a brief 47 years, and woven with counterpoints of…

IF THIS TREE COULD TALK Anne Gee Byrd listens for a voice from the past in Mike Kenny’s lyrical world premiere Trees talk to each other. Really. Scientists have discovered that beneath our feet, trees use vast underground networks to communicate and share resources. But what if a tree decided to strike up a conversation…

HANG ON TO YOUR SEATS Gallows humor meets murder and mystery in Martin McDonagh’s wicked comedy I saw this play on Broadway and it rocked my world! Fun, intrigue, mystery and some jolts that only Martin McDonagh can provide. So I’m particularly excited that Long Beach Playhouse is bringing McDonagh’s Hangmen to its intimate Studio…

RIGHT, LEFT AND NO WAY OUT Faith, politics and generational divides collide in a provocative portrait of an America at war with itself Will Arbery’s haunting Pulitzer Prize finalist Heroes of the Fourth Turning, now playing at The Broadwater by Catharsis Theatre Collective, speaks to the heart of a country at war with itself, offering…