Posts Tagged ‘Los Angeles Theater Review’
RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN
Saturday, August 6th, 2016San Pedro’s Little Fish Theatre scores a major programming coup in offering Angelinos their first 99-seat look at Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright’s tangy examination of how much—and how little—women’s lives have changed from the pre-Betty Friedan 1950s to the post-post-Feminist today.
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LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
Friday, August 5th, 2016Save for one teensy tiny potted plan that doesn’t even make it through Act One, there’s nothing even vaguely botanical-looking in The B Productions’ 99-seat revival of Menken & Ashman’s Little Shop Of Horrors. What there is is an abundance of talent both onstage and off, making the NoHo Arts Center guest production a winner even if its central conceit (“Technology Can Kill”) will probably work best for those who’ve already seen Little Shop umpteen times.
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A RAISIN IN THE SUN
Sunday, July 31st, 2016Star turns you’d expect to see at the Pasadena Playhouse or the Geffen distinguish Ruskin Group Theatre’s 57th-anniversary revival of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award-winning A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry’s piercing look at racial discrimination, gender roles, family values, and burgeoning African-American identity—a modern American classic that remains as relevant today as it was in the pre-Civil Rights Era 1950s.
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BABY DOLL
Saturday, July 30th, 2016A just-right darkly comedic tone and pitch-perfect performances turn minor Tennessee Williams into major summer entertainment as the Fountain Theater gives West Coast audiences their first taste of Pierre Laville and Emily Mann’s streamlined, Williams-estate-approved adaptation of the 1956 movie potboiler Baby Doll.
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SPACE
Saturday, July 30th, 2016Disproving the oft-suggested notion that a playwright should never direct his own work, Stefan Marks not only scores a double bulls-eye at the Stella Adler; in never leaving the stage as Space’s riveting protagonist, the Ovation Award-winning director-writer-actor proves himself a bona fide triple-threat in this brain-teasing dazzler of a play.
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I LOVE YOU BECAUSE
Saturday, July 23rd, 2016A sparkling book, a dozen or so delightfully quirky characters, and above all one of the catchiest (and often most gorgeous) scores in recent years add up to Joshua Salzman and Ryan Cunningham’s unabashedly romantic I Love You Because, at long last getting the Los Angeles staging I’ve been wishing and hoping for since first falling in love with the musical’s original cast recording nearly ten years ago—and what a terrific production ILYB has been given at Hollywood’s Hudson Theatre.
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