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Theater Review: THE SHARK IS BROKEN (Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach)
THREE MEN IN A BOAT, WAITING FOR A FISH At Laguna Playhouse, the making of a blockbuster becomes a chamber piece about ego, craft, and survival Gildart Jackson, Will Block, and Adam Poole The mechanical shark that tormented Steven Spielberg during the filming of Jaws in the summer of 1974 was nicknamed Bruce, after the…
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Theater Review: THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO (Goodman Theatre)
NOT QUITE WONDROUS A Pulitzer winner takes a bumpy trip to the Goodman stage Fans of Junot Díaz’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao are in for a bit of a shock with the world premiere of the English-language stage adaptation by Marco Antonio Rodríguez, now being performed at the Goodman. Examining…
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HOW “VIEW FROM SEAT” CAN HELP BOOK THE BEST BROADWAY THEATRE SEATS AT THE BEST PRICES
There are 41 theatres in Broadway with a seating capacity of between 500 and over 1900. Gershwin Theatre (originally called The Uris Theatre) on the second floor of the Paramount Plaza office building has 1933 seats, making it the largest theatre in Broadway. Picking the right seat from the hundreds on offer can highly impact…
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Theater Review: INHERIT THE WIND (Arena Stage, Washington, DC)
WHEN THE LAW PUTS IDEAS ON TRIAL A clear-eyed revival that finds urgency in an old argument about truth and belief The recent production of Inherit the Wind at Arena Stage offers a compelling and timely revival of one of America’s most enduring courtroom dramas. Directed by Ryan Guzzo Purcell, the production highlights the play’s…
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DESIGNING STAGE SPACES: THE ROLE OF VISUAL DISPLAYS AND SIGNAGE
Stage design plays a central role in shaping how audiences experience performances, presentations, and live events. Whether the setting is a concert, conference, theater production, or community event, the visual environment around the stage helps communicate information, establish atmosphere, and reinforce branding. Lighting, backdrops, and signage all contribute to the overall design, guiding the audience’s…
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Off-Broadway Review: OUR HOUSE (TOSOS at A.R.T./New York Theatres)
ACTIVISM, FAMILY, AND A BACKYARD BATTLE The new play at TOSOS revisits the legacy of ACT UP and the uneasy quiet that followed CJ DiOrio & Nancy Slusser TOSOS, New York City’s oldest producing queer theater company—debuting in 1974—presents the world premiere of Our House by Barry Boehm. Set in Iowa in 2014, the year…
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Off-Broadway Review: BURNOUT PARADISE (Astor Place Theatre)
FULL SPEED AHEAD Pony Cam turns burnout, chaos, and cardio into delirious theater Dominic Weintraub, Claire Bird, Hugo Williams, William Strom Are you, perhaps, missing the wild energy of Blue Man Group at the Astor Place Theatre? Good news: it has been replaced with something just as unconventional. Welcome Burnout Paradise, the theatrical event that…
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Theater Review: ALL MY SONS (Berkeley Rep)
A POSTWAR MORAL RECKONING INSIDE A FAMILY HOME Arthur Miller’s classic still asks uncomfortable questions about responsibility and denial Jimmy Smits Berkeley Repertory Theatre is reviving Arthur Miller’s 1947 postwar classic All My Sons, a heavy family drama whose themes of duty, guilt, and moral responsibility still resonate today. We meet the Keller family: Joe, the…
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Theater Review: ALL MY SONS (Antaeus Theatre)
THE POSTWAR AMERICAN NIGHTMARE STILL RESONATES A gripping Antaeus revival reminds us how easily communities excuse the unforgivable A successful small-town businessman, a distraught wife, a lovelorn idealistic son, and the ghost of a missing pilot haunt the yard. The themes that moved audiences in the 1940s still touch us today in Antaeus Theatre Company‘s…
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Theater Review: DESTROYING DAVID (Dezart Performs)
There is a profound beauty in watching something fragile survive. In Dezart Performs’ breathtaking West Coast Premiere of Jason Odell Williams’ Destroying David, that fragility is everywhere: in the literal cracks of a 500-year-old statue, in the fractured heart of a grieving mother, and in the very air of the theater itself. Running through March…
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Theater Review: MORNING, NOON, AND NIGHT (Shattered Globe at Theater Wit)
A POST-PANDEMIC RECKONING WITH ISOLATION AND MENTAL HEALTH A moving character study elevated by a nuanced central performance The oddest thing about Kirsten Greenidge’s Morning, Noon, and Night is how fundamentally conventional its construction is. Not that this is necessarily a negative, but for a play that involves eco-doom-scrolling, cheating on exams with Google, and…
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Theater Review: HAMNET (Royal Shakespeare Company at Chicago Shakespeare Theater)
SHAKESPEARE’S NAME, SOMEONE ELSE’S STORY A generic weepie that gloms onto the prestige of Shakespeare while offering nothing of substance in return Rory Alexander and Kemi-Bo Jacobs as William and Agnes Shakespeare Let’s start with a simple exercise: If you were to replace the name “Will,” as in William Shakespeare, with a random name—say, Robert,…
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Theater Review: POT GIRLS (The Story Theater at The Raven)
A SMART, PLAYFUL SPIN ON A FEMINIST CLASSIC Paul Michael Thomson’s witty homage to Top Girls is dazzling—if occasionally too clever for comfort Myah Bridgewater and Laney Rodriguez A world premiere from Story Theatre, performed at the Raven, Paul Michael Thomson’s Pot Girls is a charming update on Caryl Churchill’s Thatcher-era feminist classic Top Girls,…
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Theater Review: BARTLEBY (Fiasco Theater at The Old Globe)
A SCRIVENER WHO PREFERS NOT TO A minimalist Melville adaptation turns quiet resistance into compelling theater Andy Grotelueschen as The Lawyer and Michael Crane as Bartleby Fiasco Theater is presenting the world premiere of Bartleby at The Old Globe in Balboa Park. The play is a stage adaptation of Herman Melville’s 1853 short story, “Bartleby…
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Off-Broadway Review: CHINESE REPUBLICANS (Roundabout Theatre Company)
A POWER LUNCH WITH KNIVES UNDER THE TABLE Ambition, rivalry, and assimilation simmer in Alex Lin’s sharp corporate comedy There are ordinary lunches, and then there are Chinese Republicans lunches, the subject of a new play by Alex Lin, directed by Chay Yew at Roundabout Theatre Company’s Laura Pels Theatre. In it, four high-achieving Chinese-American…
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Theater Review: GOD OF CARNAGE (South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa)
CIVILITY CRUMBLES, BUT THE COMEDY NEVER BUILDS South Coast Rep’s revival exposes how thin satire needs sharper direction to truly sting Melinda Page Hamilton and Kim Martin-Cotten The first time I saw Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage was at The Ahmanson Theatre with an all-star cast, one so good that they practically hid that the…
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Theater Review: TOP GIRLS (Raven Theatre)
A 1982 CLASSIC THAT REFUSES TO AGE Raven Theatre’s revival lets Churchill’s blistering feminist satire land without cosmetic updates Yourtana Sulaiman, Hannah Kato, Claire Kaplan, Luke Halpern, Morgan Lavenstein, and Susaan Jamshidi Almost 45 years after its debut, Caryl Churchill’s seminal play is as depressingly relevant as ever. In 1982, three years after Margaret Thatcher…
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Theater Review: CHARGES (THE SUPPLICANTS) (North American Premiere at Theatre Y)
A CHORUS OF EXILE IN AN ARCHITECTURE OF ISOLATION Theatre Y’s North American premiere immerses its audience in complicity and unease Makai Walker Before we get into the merits of Elfriede Jelinek’s Charges (The Supplicants), now at Theatre Y in its North American premiere, we need to talk about Steven Stoll’s set: a series of…
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Off-Broadway Review: PETITE ROUGE (Company XIV at Théâtre XIV in Bushwick, Brooklyn)
A FAIRY TALE REBORN IN HEELS, CORSETS, AND CANDLELIGHT Little Red gets very bad — and very fabulous — in Company XIV’s Petite Rouge PhillVonAwesome In its twentieth anniversary season, Company XIV unveils Petite Rouge (from Charles Perrault’s 1697 Le Petit Chaperon Rouge) and allows the classic fable of Little Red Riding Hood to frolic…
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Opera Review: AKHNATEN (LA Opera)
STILL THE PHARAOH-EST OF THEM ALL, AKHNATEN STUNS AT LA OPERA An intellectually rigorous, visually arresting production that embraces the opera’s challenges rather than disguising them John Holiday as Akhnaten There is a structural difficulty at the heart of Akhnaten that admiration alone cannot resolve—although admiration at last night’s opening at The Chandler is never…
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