Posts Tagged ‘Center Theatre Group’
LINDA VISTA
Thursday, January 17th, 2019Tracy 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.
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VALLEY OF THE HEART
Thursday, November 8th, 2018Epic 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.
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QUACK
Tuesday, October 30th, 2018Allegations of medical advice turned fatal threaten to destroy TV’s most beloved physician in Eliza Clark’s Quack, a Center Theatre Group World Premiere that proves as hilarious as it is timely as it is button-pushing and thought-provoking.
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SCHOOL GIRLS; OR, THE AFRICAN MEAN GIRLS PLAY
Monday, September 10th, 2018Regina George has met her Ghanaian match in Jocelyn Bioh’s side-splittingly funny, acerbically perceptive, unexpectedly touching School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play, imported to the Kirk Douglas Theatre from its hit off-Broadway run with most of its original MCC Theater cast intact.
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SWEAT
Friday, September 7th, 2018Playwright Lynn Nottage gives voice to blue-collar America in her Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat, now making a gut-punching Los Angeles debut at the Mark Taper Forum, a suspenseful, insightful look at an electorate so disillusioned by their failed American Dreams that they ended up doing the unthinkable.
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THE HUMANS
Wednesday, June 27th, 2018Laughter and fears go hand in hand at Thanksgiving dinner in Stephen Karam’s justifiably honored Best Play Tony-winner The Humans, now playing at the Ahmanson with its Tony-winning stars Jayne Howdyshell and Reed Birney (and all but one of its original Broadway ensemble members) intact.
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SOFT POWER
Friday, May 18th, 2018A New York cast and production team bring Los Angeles audiences the World Premiere latest from Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang and Tony-winning composer-lyricist Jeanine Tesori, the crowd-pleasing East-meets-West “play with a musical” Soft Power, as audacious in concept as it is for the most part effective in execution.
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DIE, MOMMIE, DIE!
Sunday, May 13th, 2018Over-the-top doesn’t begin to describe the performances–or the fun of seeing so much scenery chewed by so sensational a cast–in Center Theatre Group’s Block Party reprise of Celebration Theatre’s 2017 comedy smash Die, Mommie, Die!
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