Posts Tagged ‘Theatricum Botanicum’
THE CRUCIBLE
Monday, August 13th, 2018
The Topanga hills prove the ideal setting for Theatricum Botanicum’s gut-punchingly powerful revival of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the first of the six Crucibles I’ve seen to get everything right.
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HAITI
Monday, July 30th, 2018
Theatricum Botanicum breathes new life into William DuBois’ swashbuckling historical soap opera Haiti, giving the long-forgotten look back at the Haitian Revolution its very first production—and a rip-roaring one at that—since the New Deal-funded melodrama made theatrical history in 1938 by featuring a black-and-white cast performing side by side on a Harlem stage.
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OTHER DESERT CITIES
Monday, September 4th, 2017
Real-life sisters Ellen Geer and Melora Marshall and Geer’s daughter Willow play characters with matching family ties in Theatricum Botanicum’s superb outdoor revival of Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities.
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TROUBLE IN MIND
Monday, August 28th, 2017
Pioneer African-American playwright Alice Childress takes a surefire theatrical genre (the backstage comedy à la Moss Hart’s Light Up The Sky or Ken Ludwig’s Moon Over Buffalo) and transforms it into an examination of mid-20th-century race relations in Trouble In Mind, every bit as relevant at Theatricum Botanicum in 2017 as it was in its 1955 off-Broadway debut … and every bit as hilarious as it is thought-provoking.
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THE IMAGINARY INVALID
Sunday, August 14th, 2016
Theatricum Botanicum legend Ellen Geer follows her 2014 Queen Lear with another gender-bending star turn, this time as Molière’s Malade Imaginaire, aka The Imaginary Invalid, Constance Congdon’s 21st-century adaptation turning a three-and-a-half-century-old farce into a playfully raunchy laughfest that would do Mel Brooks proud.
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GREEN GROW THE LILACS
Sunday, August 9th, 2015
Theatricum Botanicum revives a Golden-Era theatrical gem in a production worth a whole heap of whoopin’ and hollerin’ … but before I go ahead and name it, here’s a question for all you theater lovers out there.
AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY
Monday, July 6th, 2015
It’s hard to imagine a more gorgeous setting for Tracy Letts’ sprawling August: Osage County than under the Topanga stars at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, just one reason why the Oklahoma family saga’s return to L.A. (for the first time since A:OC’s Broadway National Tour played the Ahmanson back in 2009) makes for news worth shouting to the heavens and beyond.
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EQUIVOCATION
Saturday, September 13th, 2014
Imagine that you, as the foremost writer of your time, have been ordered by your country’s leader upon pain of imprisonment, torture, and death to come up with a play that would dramatize a supposed plot against your government, solidify its legitimacy, and demonize many of your fellow citizens simply because of your words. What would you do?
This is the conundrum faced by Shag (aka William Shakespeare) in Bill Cain’s extraordinary Equivocation, back in L.A. for the first time since its 2009 pre-off-Broadway engagement at the Geffen in an absolutely superb production at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, one that tops its predecessor if only for the clarity that director Mike Peebler (doing outstanding work) and his all-around sensational cast bring to Cain’s labyrinthine tale.
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Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Scenies.
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