PREMEDITATION
Friday, October 24th, 2014
Style may not be everything in Evelina Fernández’s Premeditation, but it plays a big part in making the playwright-actor’s comédie noire (or comedia negra) the exhilaratingly theatrical experience it is, and with Premeditation currently Ovation Award-nominated for Best Production, Direction, and Lighting Design, theatergoers can rejoice at the Latino Theater Company’s decision to bring it back as part of the month-long Encuentro 2014 festival at downtown’s Los Angeles Theatre Center. Premeditation is as stylishly directed, performed, and designed a production as you’re likely to see this or any month—and that is saying something indeed.
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FLOYD COLLINS
Saturday, October 18th, 2014RECOMMENDED
USC’s Musical Theatre Repertory undertakes one of its most daunting projects to date in Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s Floyd Collins, and if MTR’s latest entirely student performed, directed (by Victoria Pearlman), and designed production isn’t as thoroughly successful as many previous undertakings, some outstanding lead performances and a superb student orchestra are just two reasons to check it out.
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BETTER
Monday, October 6th, 2014
When humorist Erma Bombeck wrote about “loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that [binds] us all together,” the family she was referring to could easily have been the one to whose nest successful New York restaurateur Annie returns to face her father’s imminent death in Jessica Goldberg’s funny, perceptive, beautifully acted and directed new drama Better, the latest World Premiere from The Echo Theater Company.
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YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN
Sunday, October 5th, 2014
Lucy and Linus and Schroeder and Sally and Snoopy and the Good Man himself are alive and well and singing and dancing and reawakening memory after memory after memory as Sustaining Sound Theatre Company and Chromolume Theatre present their family-pleasing intimate revival of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.
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SPRING AWAKENING
Friday, September 19th, 2014
See Deaf West Theatre’s Spring Awakening. See it if you’ve never seen Spring Awakening before. See it if like this reviewer you’ve seen nearly a dozen Spring Awakenings in all. Just do it, because you won’t see direction more brilliant nor a cast more gifted nor a production more awe-inspiring than the Spring Awakening now being staged by Deaf West.
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COCK
Wednesday, September 17th, 2014
It’s time for John to stop letting M down (and standing him up and cheating and lying and failing and generally cocking things up), or so the 20something gay Brit’s lover informs him upon learning of his younger partner’s serious fling with a member of the opposite sex in Mike Bartlett’s provocative (and provocatively titled) dramatic comedy Cock, now getting an imaginatively directed, thrillingly acted West Coast Premiere at Rogue Machine.
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ANIMALS OUT OF PAPER
Thursday, September 11th, 2014
A woman who has become a virtual recluse in the months since the breakup of her marriage and the disappearance of a cherished pet. A high school calculus teacher who’s been keeping a written record of his life’s every blessing since the age of twelve. The teacher’s star student, an Indian-American math nerd who fancies himself a black rapper.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph weaves these three ordinary lives into something quite extraordinary in his 2008 dramedy Animals Out Of Paper, now being given a pitch-perfect Los Angeles Premiere as the opening salvo in East West Players’ two-year-long celebration of its 50th season of offering Angelinos of every ethnicity the finest in Asian-American theater.
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BULRUSHER
Monday, September 1st, 2014
The power of live theater to transport an audience to another time, another place, while exploring and revealing the mysteries of the human heart, is made gorgeously, magically clear in Skylight Theatre Company and Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble’s co-production of the Los Angeles premiere of Eisa Davis’s Pulitzer Prize finalist Bulrusher.
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