Los Angeles

AN AMAZING INCIDENT Meet Christopher, a wannabe bloodhound who has significant social, behavioral and communication challenges; we assume the unnamed disorder is on the autism spectrum, but this magnificent play isn’t about his mental challenges. The British teen — the unlikely hero of Mark Haddon’s best-selling novel and Simon Stephens’ equally valued adaption, The Curious…

NOT A SEVEN-COURSE DINNER, BUT FILLING JUST THE SAME While on a Midwest lecture tour, arrogant and overbearing critic and radio commentator Sheridan Whiteside slips on an icy doorstep, injures his hip, and is confined to a wheelchair in a small Ohio town for six long weeks of recovery. He completely disrupts and unnerves the…

HAIL, CAESAR! Shakespeare’s 1599 history play has, of course, had many lives – conservative as well as wildly interpretive – which has kept the slain Dictator of Rome in the forefront of our histories. Some directors have kept to the known facts as imagined by the Bard, and some have modernized it for contemporary comment….

GET YOUR SOUL SALVAGED The minute I sat down at the Lounge theatre and saw the rundown bar on the stage equipped with a few tables, a jukebox and several guitars hanging on the walls along with a photograph of a famous country musician named Floyd Whitaker, I was transported to some small rural town…

PUNK’D In many ways, Gregory S. Moss’s 1980s-themed punkplay feels like a dream. Props and seasons are generically labeled. Flights of fancy are realized like make-believe. Even the era itself is presented as a distant memory we’re not sure really happened. Unfortunately, the wistfulness of a nighttime enigma doesn’t always make for compelling storytelling. Co-directed…

A JOYOUS JITNEY The late August Wilson (1945-2005) was a truly great American playwright, the most prolifically produced African-American playwright of all time. Jitney, now at the Mark Taper Forum until December 29, was his last play of his “Century Plays” to be produced on Broadway (winner of the 2017 Best Revival) but was the…

NOT AS KEYED UP AS IT SHOULD BE The Geffen Playhouse has really been on a roll under the newest Artistic Director Matt Shakman. There are many more interesting scripts, and many more chances are being taken. And as always, both of Geffen’s playhouses are given Broadway-caliber production values. Shakman is also to be thanked…

CYNICS UNITE These days when directors revive a classic, they have to decide whether their approach will be either to modernize the play or mount it as a period piece, true to the spirit of the times in which it was created. Sometimes, as in the case of The New American Theatre’s Uncle Vanya, director…