FARRAGUT NORTH
Monday, May 8th, 2017
Farragut North, Beau Willimon’s riveting look at the behind-the-scenes maneuverings and back-stabbings of a Presidential primary campaign, a Geffen Playhouse hit just months after the first Obama win, now gets a solid Odyssey Theatre guest production with a far different man in the White House.
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THE HOUSE IN SCARSDALE: A MEMOIR FOR THE STAGE
Monday, May 8th, 2017
A disowned playwright embarks on a quest to uncover his dysfunctional family’s long-buried truths in Dan O’Brien’s powerful, poetic autobiographical memory play The House In Scarsdale: A Memoir For The Stage, now being given a superbly acted, directed, and designed World Premiere Production at The Theatre @ Boston Court.
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OF MICE AND MEN
Friday, May 5th, 2017
Spencer Cantrell and Gregory Crafts give riveting performances as migrant farm workers George and Lenny in Theatre Unleashed’s intimate revival of John Steinbeck’s classic tale of human loneliness and impossible dreams, the 20th-century classic Of Mice And Men.
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UNCANNY VALLEY
Friday, April 28th, 2017
Hot topics don’t get much hotter than artificial intelligence, whether in headline news, or movies like Ex Machina, or Jimmy Fallon interviewing “Robot Sophia” on late-night TV, or in Thomas Gibbons’ fascinating, discussion-prompting, edge-of-your seat two-hander Uncanny Valley, now getting its Los Angeles Premiere at Long Beach’s International City Theatre.
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PURE CONFIDENCE
Sunday, April 16th, 2017
Pure confidence is just one of the qualities distinguishing Simon Kato from his fellow Kentucky slaves in the year 1860. Another is the champion jockey’s talent for winning any race he sets his mind to, and these days what Simon wants to win (or more precisely to buy) is his freedom.
Welcome to the world of Carlyle Brown’s Pure Confidence, the latest from Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble and quite possibly the most purely entertaining (and elucidating and emotionally powerful) show in town.
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LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD’S HOME FOR UNWED MOTHERS
Saturday, April 15th, 2017Unplanned pregnancy yields ghastly consequences in Louisa Hill’s Lord Of The Underworld’s Home For Unwed Mothers, a Skylight Theatre Company World Premiere whose cast, director, and production design succeed as often as not in overcoming the memory play’s abrupt second-act tonal shift, some cardboard supporting characters, and too much narration throughout.
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PUNK ROCK
Thursday, April 13th, 2017
The Breakfast Club’s all-American teen quintet may have found themselves holed up in the high school library like the seven English “sixth-formers” of Simon Stephens’ Punk Rock, but the world inhabited by those 1980s John Hughes archetypes seems positively Disneyesque compared to the dystopia their contemporary UK counterparts call home in Stephens’ riveting slice of middle-class private-school life, now being given an edge-of-your-seat Los Angeles Premiere by the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble.
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BUILDING THE WALL
Tuesday, March 28th, 2017Donald Trump’s campaign promise to rid America of its millions upon millions of “illegal aliens” reaches extremes that would do a certain WWII dictator proud in Building The Wall, Robert Schenkkan’s ham-fisted “It darn well could happen here!” two-hander now getting the first of a series of rolling World Premieres at the usually laudable Fountain Theatre.
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