IN LOVE AND WARCRAFT

Playwright Madhuri Shekar updates a genre at least as old as Shakespeare, sets it in today’s world of online gaming, and populates it with an appealing college-age cast to give live theater audiences a delightful, mostly successful romcom for the 21st century in In Love And Warcraft, the latest from the Asian-American troupe Artists At Play (in association with The Latino Theater Company).
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CHINGLISH

East West Players continues its two-year-long 50th-anniversary celebration with Chinglish, David Henry Hwang’s hilarious, perceptive, eye-opening look at Chinese-American relationships (including one of a particularly romantic/sexual nature), a Los Angeles Premiere that could well prove one of EWP’s most popular productions ever. It’s certainly one of the finest I’ve seen onstage at the David Henry Hwang Theater.
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AMERICAN FALLS

George Gibbs and Emily Webb may have come of age over a hundred years ago in the New England equivalent of American Falls … but they had their lives a hell of a lot easier than the citizens of playwright Miki Johnson’s 21st-century Our Town, now getting an impressive Los Angeles Premiere by The Echo Theater Company.
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EL GRANDE CIRCUS DE COCA-COLA

Impresario extraordinario Pepe Hernandez is back, una sensacional bit of news for anyone looking for 90 minutos of nonstop hilardad. Simplemente put, El Grande Circus De Coca-Cola, now playing at the Skylight Theatre, is the funniest show you’re likely to see in todo el año de 2015.
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LUKA’S ROOM

Leave it to Rob Mersola, the playwright who gave audiences Backseats & Bathroom Stalls and Dirty Filthy Love Story, to subvert the teenage coming-of-age tale in the most outrageously unexpected of ways in Luka’s Room, the latest Rogue Machine World Premiere and sure to be one of this summer’s most buzzed-about productions.
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GHOST LIGHT

NOT RECOMMENDED

Deborah Puette is luminous, but the four vignettes that comprise Tommy Smith’s Ghost Light add up to a rather low-wattage half-hour solo show.
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NO HOMO

RECOMMENDED

The 2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival hit NO HOMO now gets the fully-staged production I put on my wish list when writing about Brandon Baruch’s hilarious bromcom last year. It also gets a new ending likely to disappoint if not downright infuriate those like this reviewer who fell unreservedly in love with NO HOMO 1.0.
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ASTRO BOY AND THE GOD OF COMICS

The words “You’ve never seen anything like this before” may sound cliché, but trust me, you have never seen anything like Sacred Fools’ West Coast Premiere of Natsu Onoda Power’s Astro Boy And The God Of Comics, a mind-boggling blend of fact and fantasy that weaves together human performers and live action with still-&-animated video projections, puppets, and most exciting of all, live cartooning by some skilled actors/pen-&-ink artists—all of which adds up to what is certain to be one of the summer’s most gigantic hits.
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