Posts Tagged ‘Center Theatre Group’

THE NEW ONE

Stand-up comedy at the Ahmanson? Say what?

Now before you rush to judgment, be aware that the stand-up comic in question is actor-director-producer-writer Mike Birbiglia and The New One, the show he’s now touring the country with, comes direct from a successful run on Broadway no less. In other words, if you can afford $35 to $145 per ticket, you won’t find eighty more entertaining, relatable, ultimately powerful minutes of solo-performance theater in town.
(read more)

LATIN HISTORY FOR MORONS

If John Leguizamo’s Latin History For Morons sounds like it’s going to be nothing more than a light-hearted accumulation of dates and names and facts we all ought to know but don’t, think again. Though Leguizamo’s one-man show is indeed as funny and elucidating as any theater-going moron could wish for, it’s also a justifiably rage-filled attack on those who’d rather see his people erased not just from history books (as they already are) but from America itself.
(read more)

THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG

So nonstop hilarious is the latest National Tour playing a visit to the Ahmanson, The Play That Goes Wrong just might hold the laugh-a-minute record for a West End-to-Broadway comedy smash.
(read more)

INDECENT

A gut-punching, all-too relevant look at Antisemitism, censorship, homophobia, anti-immigration hysteria, the Holocaust, and McCarthyism during the first half of the 20th Century, Paula Vogel’s Indecent is also a thought-provoking demonstration of the power of live theater to both inspire and inflame, and for Los Angeles theatergoers, a chance to see the production that scored director Rebecca Taichman a Tony win two years ago.
(read more)

FALSETTOS

A freshly out New Yorker’s life before and after the AIDS epidemic wreaked havoc on his city makes for the most unlikely of Broadway musicals, and one of the most richly rewarding, in Falsettos, now moving audience to laughter through tears at the Ahmanson.
(read more)

FOR THE LOVE OF (OR, THE ROLLER DERBY PLAY)

With director Rhonda Kohl choreographing like you’ve never seen a play choreographed before, it’s perhaps no wonder CTG picked Theatre Of NOTE’s For The Love Of (Or, The Roller Derby Play) to open year’s Block Party at the Kirk Douglas despite its overly familiar coming-of-age love story and a two-and-a-half-hour running time that could stand some significant snips.
(read more)

LINDA VISTA

Tracy Letts could just as easily have called his latest play Train Wreck, so hot a mess is its 50-year-old protagonist that much of the pleasure of Letts’ relentlessly funny, defiantly unsentimental Linda Vista (a Steppenwolf visitor to the Mark Taper Forum) is watching its antihero (emphasis on the anti) get what he so richly deserves.
(read more)

VALLEY OF THE HEART

Epic in scope, educational in intent, and exquisite in design, Luis Valdez’s Valley Of The Heart examines America’s WWII internment of its Japanese-American citizens and their foreign-born family members in ways both familiar (the Broadway musical Allegiance played L.A. just ten months ago) and original (our narrator is Mexican-American). If only the Zoot Suit playwright proved more adept at creating authentic-sounding dialog. If only Valley Of The Heart didn’t so often feel like Wikipedia on stage.
(read more)

« Older Entries Newer Entries » « Older Entries Newer Entries »