D DEB DEBBIE DEBORAH
Friday, August 12th, 2016RECOMMENDED
Twilight Zone meets Theater Of The Absurd in D Deb Debbie Deborah, Jerry Lieblich’s trippy journey to a land where no one, not even the title character, is who they seem, and though it’s anyone’s guess what Lieblich is getting at throughout most of his play’s seventy-five minutes, confusion hardly matters till a sudden eleventh-hour try for profundity takes Quadruple D from entertaining to exasperating.
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BABY DOLL
Saturday, July 30th, 2016
A just-right darkly comedic tone and pitch-perfect performances turn minor Tennessee Williams into major summer entertainment as the Fountain Theater gives West Coast audiences their first taste of Pierre Laville and Emily Mann’s streamlined, Williams-estate-approved adaptation of the 1956 movie potboiler Baby Doll.
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SPACE
Saturday, July 30th, 2016
Disproving the oft-suggested notion that a playwright should never direct his own work, Stefan Marks not only scores a double bulls-eye at the Stella Adler; in never leaving the stage as Space’s riveting protagonist, the Ovation Award-winning director-writer-actor proves himself a bona fide triple-threat in this brain-teasing dazzler of a play.
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ONE OF THE NICE ONES
Tuesday, July 19th, 2016
Expect the unexpected—and then some—in Erik Patterson’s One Of The Nice Ones, an edge-of-your-seat dark comedy so filled with “I didn’t see that coming” twists that it’s almost impossible to review without revealing a spoiler or two, but I’ll do my best, while at the same time still providing a taste of the latest from one of L.A.’s most exciting contemporary playwrights now making his Echo Theater Company debut.
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CHURCH & STATE
Sunday, July 3rd, 2016
A North Carolina senator’s “Road To Damascus” conversion from staunch 2nd Amendment advocate to gun control champion may sound about as improbable as Barbara Boxer suddenly turning pro-life, but it makes for powerful, thought-provoking comedy (that’s right, comedy) in Jason Odell Williams’ Church & State, now being given a sensationally acted and directed NNPN Rolling World Premiere* by Skylight Theatre Company.
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BAD JEWS
Friday, July 1st, 2016
Cousins clash over religion, their heritage, and a precious family heirloom in Joshua Harmon’s equal parts side-splitting, button-pushing, discussion-provoking Bad Jews, back in L.A. as a mostly quite successful guest production at Hollywood’s Theatre Of NOTE.
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THE ARMADILLO NECKTIE
Monday, June 27th, 2016
From the moment the lights go up on a mobile command center somewhere in the Iraqi desert where a hooded man finds himself strapped to a chair, a pair of jumper cables attached to his nuts by a military officer whose first words are “Whatsup, mothafucka?” you know you’re no longer at your grandparents’ Lonny Chapman Theatre as The Group Rep debuts Gus Krieger’s outrageously dark, outrageously foul-mouthed, outrageously funny The Armadillo Necktie.
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MAJOR BARBARA
Saturday, June 25th, 2016
Terrific performances spark Infinite Jest Theatre Company’s revival of George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara under Branda Lock’s assured direction. Sets and lighting may give the production a rather low-end look, but some particularly fine work by Samantha Barrios, William Reinbold, and Graciela Valderama (among others) make it worth your while to catch Shaw’s bitingly comedic, still relevant look at religion and war and wealth and poverty and morality in all their shades of gray.
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