SPRING AWAKENING
Thursday, May 24th, 2018
A century before Spring Awakening The Musical took Broadway by storm (and won eight Tony awards in the bargain), German playwright Frank Wedekind shocked and outraged audiences on both sides of the Atlantic with Frühlings Erwachen, whose 2007 Jonathan Franzen translation proves a sensational UCLA Department Of Theater showcase for its director, designers, and cast.
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WOOD BOY DOG FISH
Sunday, May 20th, 2018
Wood Boy Dog Fish, Rogue Artists Ensemble’s deliciously twisted take on Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio has moved uptown and upscale from the Bootleg to Toluca Lake, terrific news for those who like their fairy tales dark and dirty and theatrically magical.
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THE BABY DANCE: MIXED
Sunday, May 6th, 2018
Playwright Jane Anderson factors in race to her 1991 hit The Baby Dance’s already heady mix of adoption and class to give 2018 audiences a play distinct enough from its source material to merit World Premiere status, Rubicon Theatre Company’s compelling, talk-provoking The Baby Dance: Mixed.
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CARDBOARD PIANO
Saturday, May 5th, 2018
War and homophobia wreak havoc on the lives of an overseas missionary couple’s teenage daughter, her Ugandan girlfriend, and the outwardly maimed, inwardly wounded 13-year-old soldier who interrupts their impromptu wedding ceremony one dark and devastating night in Hansol Jung’s Cardboard Piano, the gut-punching latest from International City Theatre.
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BELLEVILLE
Monday, April 23rd, 2018
Young marrieds don’t get much more appealing than Americans in Paris Abby and Zack, but don’t let their Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks looks and charm fool you into thinking Amy Herzog’s Belleville will be the next big romcom. What the Obie-winning Pulitzer Prize finalist has up her sleeve in Belleville is something considerably darker and more twisted, just one reason the latest from the Pasadena Playhouse is one of the season’s must-see productions.
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NATIVE SON
Saturday, April 21st, 2018Lead performances are powerhouse and production design one of the year’s most electrifying, but Richard Wright’s 20th-century classic Native Son is ill-served at Antaeus Theatre Company by Nambi E. Kelley’s 21st-century stage adaptation’s temporal zigzags, sledgehammer approach to issues of race, and the addition of a “character” not found in the original novel.
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WHAT HAPPENED WHEN
Thursday, April 19th, 2018The survivor of a horrific childhood is visited by ghosts of his dark and desolate past in Daniel Talbott’s memory play What Happened When, now getting an exquisitely designed Echo Theater Company West Coast Premiere unfortunately made more cryptic than already written by one bad casting choice.
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LITTLE BLACK SHADOWS
Tuesday, April 17th, 2018Kemp Powers’ Little Black Shadows takes an intriguing concept (the lives of teenage house slaves serving white teen masters in early-1850s Georgia), then veers off track into family dysfunction, folktales, magical realism, and a couple of weird plot twists that left me scratching my head despite the best efforts of a Grade-A cast headed by the simply sensational Giovanni Adams and Chauntae Pink.
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