DRY LAND
Monday, May 15th, 2017Teagan Rose and Connor Kelly-Eiding reprise their fearless star turns in Ruby Rae Spiegel’s darkly comic, graphically disturbing Dry Land, a 2016 Echo Theater Company smash now returning to riveting, larger-sized life as the third and final offering of Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theatre Block Party 2017.
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SPECIES NATIVE TO CALIFORNIA
Sunday, May 14th, 2017Imagine if Chekhov had set The Cherry Orchard in 21st-century Mendocino County and you’ve got Dorothy Fortenberry’s Species Native To California, am IAMA Theatre Company World Premiere dramedy that proves that every good story is worth a good retelling.
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THE LYONS
Saturday, May 13th, 2017Ben, Rita, Lisa, and Curtis Lyons give the Lomans, the Tyrones, and the Giddenses a run for their dysfunctional family money, albeit with considerably more laughter-provoking results in Nicky Silver’s The Lyons, the latest darkly comedic bit of brilliance from The Road Theatre Company, a Los Angeles Premiere incisively directed by Scott Alan Smith.
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ACTUALLY
Friday, May 12th, 2017
We all know that “No” means “No,” but what’s a college student to think and do when the young woman with whom he thinks he’s having consensual, albeit drunken sex tells him “Actually, um…” mid-coitus?
Anna Ziegler takes this question as her point of departure in Actually, the New York playwright’s darkly comedic, compellingly dramatic look at sex, race, gender, and booze now getting a first-class co-World Premiere* production at the Geffen.
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FEFU AND HER FRIENDS
Wednesday, May 10th, 2017If, as Shakespeare put it, the play’s the thing, then I must confess that Maria Irene Fornés’s avant-garde Fefu And Her Friends is not my thing, that is unless it happens to performed inside (and in the gardens of) the architectural masterpiece that is Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House. For its one-of-a-kind setting alone, Hollyhock Fefu merits attention (if not absolute affection).
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ARCHDUKE
Wednesday, May 10th, 2017Leave it to playwright Rajiv Joseph to turn the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, the event that led directly to the outbreak of the First World War, into Archduke, not only the year’s screwballsiest comedy but one with contemporary relevance in a world of suicide bombers and suicide voters.
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FARRAGUT NORTH
Monday, May 8th, 2017Farragut North, Beau Willimon’s riveting look at the behind-the-scenes maneuverings and back-stabbings of a Presidential primary campaign, a Geffen Playhouse hit just months after the first Obama win, now gets a solid Odyssey Theatre guest production with a far different man in the White House.
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THE HOUSE IN SCARSDALE: A MEMOIR FOR THE STAGE
Monday, May 8th, 2017A disowned playwright embarks on a quest to uncover his dysfunctional family’s long-buried truths in Dan O’Brien’s powerful, poetic autobiographical memory play The House In Scarsdale: A Memoir For The Stage, now being given a superbly acted, directed, and designed World Premiere Production at The Theatre @ Boston Court.
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