Los Angeles

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED Take a look at the highly decorated diorama just before you go upstairs to the Henry Murray Theatre for one of the most exciting world premieres you will ever see. It’s a miniature school room with one open text book about statistics and others involving math problems. Notice the circles….

GRANDMA’S A BADASS It’s Grandma Maria Porkalob Sr.’s 60th birthday party, she’s living in her son’s mother-in-law basement and he’s just given her a karaoke machine as her birthday present. She’s about to fire it up to tell granddaughter Sara Porkalob her dramatic life story. Upstairs, her birthday is being both celebrated by most of…

TRIUMPH OF THE WILL I love how the press notes for A Noise Within‘s stupendous revival of Thornton Wilder‘s The Skin of Our Teeth  noted a quote from original director Elia Kazan: “I overheard one couple talking as they left the theater. ‘What’s it all about?’ the man complained to his wife. ‘Why, George,’ she said,…

A MUSICAL THAT’S TOO CIVIL TO RESONATE Union soldier Jeffrey N. Davis (no relation to President of the Confederate States of America Jefferson Davis), is on the hunt for his best friend, Albert Cashier, a fellow soldier in the the 95th Illinois Infantry. Following a skirmish, the brave sharpshooter Cashier stayed behind to place a…

THE DOUBLE V GETS A DOUBLE D It’s a shame that Carole Eglash–Kosoff’s  period drama The Double V is such a lackluster, overwritten, repetitive piece of didacticism. The story is one which should be told. It concerns the The Pittsburgh Courier, which served the large Black population based there. In 1942, they receive a letter from…

Now playing at the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Renberg Theatre is the world premiere  of Happy Fall: A Queer Stunt Spectacular. Performed by an enthusiastic and energetic ensemble, and written by Lisa Sanaye Dring  with Rogue Artists Ensemble, director Sean Cawelti interviewed over a dozen stunt performers (several closeted) who shared intimate stories about the challenges they…

THIS SIZE FITS ALL Opening the 2024/25 season of Geffen Playhouse is The Brothers Size, written by the Geffen’s Artistic Director Tarell Alvin McCraney, performed in the smaller of the Playhouse’s two stages, the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater. Sheaun McKinney, Alani iLongwe This infinitely adaptable black box space is transformed here in the simplest way….

Dido of Idaho, now playing at Atwater Village, is yet more proof that Echo Theater Company really knows how to pick bold original scripts. And usually they have a heart of darkness coated with offbeat humor. Abby Rosebrock‘s latest one-act is no exception   The essence concerns Nora (the always fascinating Alana Dietze), a young woman…

ALL SCRIPTS SHOULD BE THIS GROWN UP One of the most riveting and original pieces of theater I have ever seen, The Grown-Ups is now playing outdoors around a campfire near you. Funny, spooky, and sometimes purposefully enigmatic, I simply can’t stop thinking about it, along with all of those psychological Easter Eggs in Skylar…