HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE
Friday, January 22nd, 2010Paula Vogel tackles pedophilia in her 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned To Drive, and if the sexual abuse of an eleven-(to seventeen)-year-old sounds like unpleasant subject matter for an evening of theater, you’re absolutely right. Told by its heroine Li’l Bit as a series of flashbacks, How I Learn To Drive is a play that had me squirming almost from its first moment. Notwithstanding, The Production Company’s current revival is as superbly performed, directed, and designed as they get.
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A VEGAS HOLIDAY! SONGS FROM “LIVE AT THE SAHARA”
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
Louis And Keely are back in town at NoHo’s El Portal Theatre with A Vegas Holiday! Songs From “Live At The Sahara,” an evening of the hits that made stars of Louis Prima and Keely Smith. They’re also the songs that made Louis And Keely: Live At The Sahara one of L.A. musical theater’s greatest success stories in recent years.
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HAMLET
Monday, December 14th, 2009
From its opening moments, it’s clear that this Hamlet will be quite unlike any you’ve seen before. Two young actors (Peter Weidman and Kirsten Kuiken) stand center stage in modern dress and begin reciting Hamlet’s instructions to the traveling players. You know the words. “Speak the speech I pray you as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue …” These oft-quoted acting tips will serve as advice to the cast of tonight’s performance of Hamlet, and the two actors are soon surrounded by the entire ensemble, joining voices till the final “Go make you ready.”
Lights down. Lights up. The Tragedy of the Prince of Denmark has begun.
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JUST IMAGINE
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
Just imagine you could turn back time and spend two hours with one of the most influential music superstars of the 20th Century. Just imagine that this pop music legend is John Lennon, a month or so before his tragic murder at the age of forty. Just imagine that during these two hours, you could hear Lennon perform live and in person several dozen of his greatest compositions, backed by some of the best rock musicians in the business. Just imagine that Lennon would, between songs, share stories about his life—from his childhood in working class Liverpool to his rise to superstardom in the mid-60s to the controversies which surrounded him during the turbulent Vietnam years to the happiness he eventually found as husband and father. Just imagine that all this could actually take place in an intimate setting, say in one of L.A.’s finest 99-seat theaters.
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A BIG GAY NORTH HOLLYWOOD WEDDING
Friday, November 6th, 2009
Run, don’t walk, to see A Big Gay North Hollywood Wedding!
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AS WHITE AS O
Friday, October 23rd, 2009RECOMMENDED
Synesthesia is a neurological condition involving an involuntary cross-wiring of the senses, in which people may taste what they feel, smell what they touch, and see letters in color, something like this: 
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SWEENEY TODD
Saturday, October 3rd, 2009
Anyone in need of proof that theatrical miracles can indeed take place in our fair city need look no further than The Production Company’s miraculous new revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd—miraculous because who could possibly imagine Sondheim’s big-stage, big-cast musical scaled down to a stage area about one-tenth the size of the Ahmanson’s with a cast totaling only ten—and having it work to near perfection?
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CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
It’s been thirty years since Mark Medoff’s Children Of A Lesser Gods opened theatergoers’ eyes to a new world, a silent world in which hand gestures take the place of the spoken word, and to a character who steadfastly refuses to venture out into what most would call “the real world.” Technological breakthroughs since 1979, particularly the growth of the Internet and more recent developments like cell phone texting, have considerably reduced the schism between the hearing and deaf worlds. Still, as Deaf West Theatre’s fine 30th Anniversary production of the Tony, Drama Desk, and Olivier Award-winning play makes clear, the deaf world and that of hearing people remain very different indeed.
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