MIDDLE8
Monday, November 19th, 2018
If Thornton Wilder were still alive to write a rock opera about five musicians dealing with issues of love, life, death, and what comes after, he might choose to title it Our Band. Stefan Marks calls his play-with-songs Middle8, and for anyone who’s seen the playwright-actor-director-musician-designer’s past work, it should come as no surprise that Middle8 is label-defyingly special.
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TWO MILE HOLLOW
Monday, October 29th, 2018Anton Chekhov meets Aaron Spelling in Leah Nanako Winkler’s Two Mile Hollow, an Artists At Play World Premiere whose first act is so deliciously, risk-takingly hilarious, one can’t help wishing there were about a quarter-hour less of Act Two.
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ROPE
Monday, October 1st, 2018
Cohabitating young Londoners strangle a university classmate to death, hide the body in a living room trunk, then welcome the victim’s father, his aunt, a pair of fellow students, and the teacher whose beliefs inspired their cold-blooded act for a dinner soiree in Patrick Hamilton’s Rope, easily the darkest. deadliest, and most daring offering in Actors Co-op’s 27-year history.
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THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK
Saturday, September 8th, 2018Director Stan Zimmerman’s high-concept, Latino-cast The Diary Of Anne Frank scores points for its thought-provoking premise. In execution, however, it proves a mixed bag at best.
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SPRING AWAKENING
Sunday, September 2nd, 2018
Spring Awakening has arrived at Hollywood’s Lounge Theatre in what is easily the most “high-concept” of the fourteen productions I’ve seen. Promoted as “Spring Awakening For Gun Safety” and drawing overt connections between its 1891 teen protagonists and the 2018 world we live in, this thoroughly original vision is as stunningly directed and choreographed as it is strikingly designed and powerfully performed.
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MARIAN, OR THE TRUE TALE OF ROBIN HOOD
Saturday, August 25th, 2018
Maid Marian is far from the only resident of Nottingham and its neighboring Sherwood Forest to blur gender and sexuality in Adam Szymkowicz’s LGBTQ-celebratory, song-and-swordplay-packed Marian, Or The True Tale Of Robin Hood, one of Theatre Of NOTE’s most exhilarating hits in years.
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THE MOTHERF**KER WITH THE HAT
Tuesday, August 7th, 2018
Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Motherf**ker With The Hat proves a terrific showcase for the young professional actors studying at the Gloria Gifford Conservatory at the school’s spiffy new digs on Hollywood Theatre Row.
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FAMOUS
Sunday, July 29th, 2018
Fame wields a double-edged sword for those who come to Hollywood in search of it in Michael Leoni’s Famous, and if the latest from the writer-director of the smash hit Elevator is often flashier than it is profound, it is also without question one of the year’s electrifyingly staged productions, and thanks to the #metoo movement, just about as timely as a World Premiere play can get.
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