Los Angeles

OUTBREAK OF MANNERS: WHEN POLITENESS TURNS CONTAGIOUS The play begins with a picture of composure. Five parents sit at a polished library table in a progressive private school in Berkeley. They lean forward, nodding with exquisite concern, and speak in the gentle cadences of inclusivity. Words like “shared narrative” and “holding space” float through the…

A GEM OF A PRODUCTION FOR THERESA REBECK’S DAZZLING SUNDAY ON THE ROCKS Solid. Diamond Solid. Strength and luster. That is what’s most striking about Sunday on the Rocks by playwright Theresa Rebeck, now at The Actor’s Company Theatre.   The finest razzle-dazzle that money can buy? Not in this production; there is just good old-fashioned…

FLY ME TO THE SUN… AND LEAVE ME THERE I confess, playwright Brian Quijada was an unknown quantity to me, and after attending Fly Me to the Sun at the Fountain Theatre, I was of the mind that he could remain so. But, I’ve a good deal of experience with the Fountain, which is one…

IT MAY BE JUST ANOTHER DAY, BUT THIS ISN’T JUST ANOTHER PLAY If I were to start by telling you what author Dan Lauria’s sly new play is about, a great number of you might stop reading in disgust, thinking, “I’ve lived through that; I don’t need to see a play about it.” However, Just…

ACHILLES’ HEEL IN ARCADIA There is a misunderstanding of critics among some circles, a sense that they are all cast in the mold of Ellsworth Toohey, the sniveling, Machiavellian art critic from Ayn Rand’s heavy-handed, objectivist treatise masquerading as a novel, The Fountainhead. Toohey is a vile creature who resents anyone who displays the talent…

A MASTERPIECE OF MUSICAL MISCHIEF In 1911, the Louvre was the largest building in the world, containing more than a thousand rooms, spread out over 45 acres and housing over a quarter million works of art.  As it had a security force of just over a hundred guards, it is not surprising that someone was…

MOTHERFUCKER! WHAT A COLOSSAL MISSED OPPORTUNITY With heightened and relentless dialog, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Motherfucker with the Hat follows Jackie, a recently paroled ex-con and recovering addict whose fragile new life teeters when he finds an unfamiliar hat in his girlfriend Veronica’s apartment. The discovery ignites suspicions of betrayal that ripple through his relationships—with…

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME A friend warned me that The Heidi Chronicles might feel dated—after all, Wendy Wasserstein’s Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play ends in 1987. Nothing could be further from the truth. Group Rep’s production, directed with a sure hand by Brent Beerman, proves Heidi’s journey from the late…

TIME IS OUR FRIEND A Victorian inventor travels thousands of years into the future, only to discover that humanity has evolved—and devolved—into two radically different species. The 14/48 Hollywood Company’s production of The Time Machine gleams with ingenuity, its low-budget aesthetic burnished by a fiercely imaginative ensemble and a clear reverence for the source material….

ONE UP PLAYS TO WIN– WITH A CHEAT CODE FOR CHARM One Up: The Musical, which premiered at this year’s Hollywood Fringe and returns for encore performances, is a charming, if uneven, 80s-inspired tuner about an underdog game developer trying to make her mark. Set in 1987, the book by creator Mary Bonney and Weslie Lechner takes…

WHY CAN’T A SUPERHERO CATCH A BREAK? (OR A BROADWAY RUN) Foster Cat Productions is taking a gleeful leap off the tall building that is It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman!, the 1966 Broadway musical that dared to blend comic book heroism with musical theatre razzmatazz. The result? A full-out, knowingly ridiculous, intriguingly…

Let there be no mistaking it, Mark Vigeant is so funny that if he was performing on an amphitheater set up in front of Mount Rushmore, after the first five minutes milk would be shooting out of Lincoln’s nose, Washington would be laughing so hard his cumbersome dentures would go flying out of his mouth,…

SEXLESS IN THE CITY Have you ever been with a guy who won’t shut up and just enjoy the blow job? That’s what it’s like to sit through Ashley Griffin’s new two-person play, The Opposite of Love, which premiered last year off-Broadway, and is now having its first West Coast performances at the Hudson Backstage…