Theater

SOBER TRUTHS AND SLIPPERY MEMORIES IN A COMIC, CHAOTIC QUEST FOR CLARITY Alcoholism and Alzheimer’s. What a combo. Sounds serious, right? They both are, of course. But in the hands of playwright Jake Brasch, The Reservoir at Geffen Playhouse pulls off a theatrical magic trick: a powerfully moving and poignantly funny play, melding millennial angst…

WHEN THE ONLY TENSION IS IN THE CORSET: GASLIGHT IS ALL DIM AND NO SPARK AT PRT Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play, Gas Light (now known as Gaslight) is a melodrama which follows a young woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing she is descending into insanity. This one-time taut psychological thriller is set in Victorian…

SEAGULL INTERRUPTED An extraordinarily well-written play—and a perfect choice for the Hollywood Fringe—Steven Dietz’s 75-minute one-act, The Nina Variations, takes the final scene of Chekhov’s The Seagull—that charged, heartbreaking reunion between Nina and Treplev—and explodes it into 43 compact riffs, each a new lens on longing. Dietz isn’t attempting parody or pastiche; instead, he digs…

FIRE AND BRIMSTONE FATIGUE One must admire Antony Zioni for his aspirations with Tales of the Ancient East, which, regrettably, makes the failure of this production all the more lamentable. Tales of the Ancient East is a tribal experience. Entering the Hudson Guild Theatre one is confronted by an environment cloaked in a primitivism that…

A GAME OF HEARTS PLAYED FACE DOWN There is no question that Ann Noble is one of the most talented actresses gracing the stages of Los Angeles. There are moments in her bitter-sweet, two-person clown show 52 Pick-Up at the Broadwater Studio, where this shines through. However, the show itself does not work. At the…

ALL IN ONE AND ONE IN ALL With Except Myself at the Broadwater Black Box, playwright Drew Petriello has achieved a clever, slick, and absolutely entertaining deconstruction of the solo show concept. Using the template of the classic absurdist play Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello, Petriello has fashioned his own “five…

THE GOOD ANDREW BYRON CREATES A LONG AND WINDING RUSSIAN Andrew Byron frames his one man show The Good Russian within the historical context of 2018, when Sergei Skripal, a Russian expatriate who had worked as a double agent for MI6, the British Intelligence Agency, was found poisoned along with his daughter in his home in…

SHAKESPEARE GOES BRAT PACK The trouble with tribute plays is that not all audiences are necessarily as knowledgeable about the subject of the homage as the creators are.  In the case of Phil S. Gould’s faux Shakespearian The Club of Broken Fasts, the object of his retooling is the 1985 coming-of-age teen comedy-drama The Breakfast…

PULP FRICTION Reservoir Dolls is a witty, sharp satire of several sociological concerns currently occupying center stage in the cultural consciousness of both “tinsel town” and the nation: the exploitation of women in films and their limited access to roles in an image-driven industry; the institutional gender inequality and barriers facing women in the studio…