DEATHTRAP


Ira Levin’s spine-tingling thriller Deathtrap is back, and while it’s not in fact “the first Los Angeles production in 20 years” as proclaimed in press materials (San Pedro’s Little Fish Theatre revived it terrifically in 2009), its arrival at the Davidson/Valentini Theatre is exciting news indeed, particularly since the Ken Sawyer-directed production is a prime example of L.A. theater at its all-around finest.
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LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT


The word dysfunctional may not have been bandied about in the early 1910s when Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night takes place, nor in the early ‘40s when it was completed, nor even in the middle of the Eisenhower ‘50s when it was published posthumously and made its Broadway debut. Still, if anyone understood dysfunctional families, or at least one dysfunctional family in particular, it was O’Neill, as Actors Co-op’s powerful 21st Century revival makes amply clear.
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SPRING AWAKENING


Spring has sprung in L.A. big time with the sensational Los Angeles intimate theater debut of Spring Awakening, the Steven Sater/Duncan Sheik musical adaptation of Frank Wedenkind’s groundbreaking 1891 drama.
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WORKING


Following its critically acclaimed revival of Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen Of Leenane, The Production Company makes it two in a row with its sensational intimate staging of Studs Terkel’s Working, as adapted by Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso.
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THE COLOR PURPLE


The 2005 Broadway smash The Color Purple now makes its Los Angeles Intimate Theater debut in a production so spectacular that it virtually redefines the term “intimate theater musical.” Brilliantly directed by Michael Matthews and starring as musically and dramatically gifted a cast as you’ll see this year on any stage large or small, this Celebration Theatre production looks to be the Intimate Theater Event of 2012.

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BRILLIANT TRACES


A bedraggled young woman barges into a seemingly deserted Alaska cabin in the midst of a raging snowstorm, a frenzied look on her face, a torn, filthy wedding dress hanging off her like a grubby old rag. Suddenly becoming aware of a blanket-hooded figure seated on the cabin’s sole bed, she launches into a stream-of-consciousness monolog describing in detail how she kept from getting frostbite on the way from a dead car to the stranger’s cabin following days upon days of near nonstop driving, with only rare pauses for gas, a pee, a candy bar, or a Coke. Eventually, the combination of sugar withdrawal (“This is a Mars bars tremble,” she explains when she can’t get her hands to stop shaking) and multiple swigs from a whiskey bottle left conveniently atop the stranger’s kitchen table, the young woman crumples gracefully to the floor in a faint. Only then does the stranger rise and reveal himself to be a handsome, bearded young man with an unconscious woman in the middle of his house.

Thus begins Cindy Lou Johnson’s utterly riveting comedy-drama Brilliant Traces, now being revived (and quite terrifically so) at Hollywood’s Lounge Theatre.
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BALM IN GILEAD

NOT RECOMMENDED

Balm In Gilead, Lanford Wilson’s gritty slice of the lives of a couple dozen addicts, hookers, hustlers, pimps, and thieves has been enthusiastically lauded by theater critics since its 1965 premiere and its roles welcomed by actors eager for a walk on the wild side. Having now spent two and a half hours with these largely unsympathetic, offputting folks, however, this reviewer does not particularly share their enthusiasm.
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THE COST OF THE ERECTION


Pulitzer Prize nominee Jon Marans plays headily with time and space—and two couples’ lives—in his tantalizingly complex new play The Cost Of The Erection, masterfully directed at Hollywood’s The Blank Theatre by its founding artistic director Daniel Henning.
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