MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION
Saturday, July 26th, 2008
With eight fully staged productions in a scant ten months, The Production Company (aka TheProdCo) has quickly established itself as Los Angeles’ most prolific new theater company. It is also one of the most consistently reliable, opening one excellent production only days after the preceding has closed, with yet another in rehearsal. Amazing!
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AMERICAN DEAD
Friday, July 25th, 2008
Five years ago, Grace Tisdale, a young Midwestern deputy sheriff and Mark Shawver, a teenage bagger, were gunned down in a grocery store robbery, precisely the kind of crime big city dwellers read about on a daily basis. To the residents of this small American town, however, it was not merely the deputy and the teenager who were victimized. Grace Tisdale left behind a husband and a brother, both of whose lives were forever changed.
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FACING EAST
Sunday, July 13th, 2008RECOMMENDED
Who is to blame when a gay man kills himself? Is it the “sin of homosexuality” that is at fault, or is it the judgment of those around him who chose to shun and shame, rather than to embrace? Sadly, even in the year 2008, there are far too many who believe the former. Religious faith, instead of being based on love and acceptance, is too often used to judge and condemn, something which author/playwright Carol Lynn Pearson knows all too well.
METAMORPHOSES
Thursday, July 10th, 2008RECOMMENDED
Athena Theatre has undertaken its biggest challenge yet in staging an Equity waiver production of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses.
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MY ANTONIA
Sunday, July 6th, 2008
Willa Cather’s epic 1918 novel has been transformed into an absolutely exquisite memory play by writer/director Scott Schwartz. For those like myself who missed the production’s debut at the Ventura’s Rubicon this past May, Antonia is back, in the more intimate setting of Venice’s Pacific Resident Theatre, and certain to enchant audiences of all ages for weeks to come.
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SPRING’S AWAKENING
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008NOT RECOMMENDED
German playwright Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play Spring’s Awakening was so shocking for its era that when it finally opened in New York 26 years later, it took a Supreme Court injunction to allow the show to go on … and then only for a single performance before closing. With scenes of masturbation, violence, and sex between 14-year-old characters, it is no wonder that pre-Roaring 20s audiences were shocked to the point of outrage.
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THE LAST SEDER
Sunday, June 29th, 2008
Jennifer Maisel’s warm and winning family dramedy The Last Seder opens with Michelle (Elisa Donovan), the youngest of four adult sisters, inviting Josh (Douglas Dickerman), a total stranger, to her family home. Michelle’s Alzheimer’s afflicted father Marvin (Joseph Ruskin) is about to be moved for long-term care into the serenely named Serenity Willows and the family home is soon to be sold, thus this year’s Seder will be the family’s last together and Michelle does not want to arrive empty-handed, so to speak.
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BETRAYAL
Saturday, June 28th, 2008
In the year 1999, Jerry confesses to Emma, his best friend’s wife, that he has loved her since he was best man at her wedding to Robert, and they begin an affair which goes on for years. In 2008, two years after ending the affair, Jerry and Emma meet again. With her marriage breaking up, she needs someone to talk to. In the course of conversation, Emma reveals (to Jerry’s dismay) that Robert knew about (and didn’t particularly mind) their affair. Indeed, says Emma, he knew about it as far back as 2004.
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