Evan Henerson - Page 3

The Pasadena Playhouse has drawn the curtain on its 2023 Sondheim Celebration with a lush and poignant rendering of SUNDAY. Directed by Sarna Lapine, the production is a west coast remount of her 2017 Broadway revival with an entirely new cast, but with the same technical team.

Huzzahs, most certainly, to New Village Arts Executive Artistic Director Kristianne Kurner not only for having the moxie to program Butterworth’s play in the first place, but also for directing it with the passion, fire and insight that the play deserves.

BASEBALL SKY, directed by James Vasquez, is a message-heavy, odd coupl-y tale that feels like a Latinx mash-up of THE KARATE KID and FIELD OF DREAMS.

Where the classics are concerned, L.A. doesn’t have any institution stronger than A Noise Within and if director Guillermo Cienfuegos, his wonderful actors and designers are working hard, they sure make it looks easy. From the first glimpse of that rampaged stage to the final dance, this MUCH ADO is an end-to-end delight.

Given the heightened emotions and nuclear climaxes of Colston’s play, there is something almost operatic in scope about THE FIRST DEEP BREATH.

Alessandra Assaf, who enacts the Hollywood icon in 12 O’CLOCK TALES WITH AVA GARDNER, the play she has written with Michael Lorre, brings out all of the actress’s fire, charisma and messiness.

After spending 90 minutes with the O’Shea family, we can thank whatever gods we pray to that we A. did not grow up in the early 1970s, B. that we do have the Internet and C. that this loving but dysfunctional family is not our own.

“On a night like this, anything can happen,” says Lt. James Walker, “The world is never going to be the way it was.” In a strong West Coast premiere at the Victory Theatre directed by Maria Gobetti, Warren Leight’s gut punch of a play, HOME FRONT, proceeds to prove Lt. Walker both correct and devastatingly wrong.

Skillfully melding elements of traditional strip tease with a knowledge and deep affection of the STAR WARS franchise, THE EMPIRE STRIPS BACK figures to attract both leering dude bros and sci-fi obsessed geeks, to say nothing of the curious.

Watching the mega-blast that is AIN’T TOO PROUD, the musical written by Dominick Morisseau based on the group’s history, this critic wanted nothing more than to be able to move like the members of Des McAnuff’s cast even for five minutes.

Serving up a stage adaptation of DIE HARD featuring the music of Heart, the Troubies have once again given L.A. theatergoers a plum of a yuletide gift to unwrap and savor.

Misfiring on a lot of levels though it does, the production’s world premiere, directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene, has no shortage of electricity. Greene’s young and spirited ensemble pumps away to some quite familiar songs and to others that are less well-known.

Prince Gomolvilas’s tale of a pair of aspiring sibling ghostbusters is actually a shrewd rumination on cultural identity and the processing of grief that also happens to contain – in director Jeff Liu’s solid production – some first-rate scares.

Where the much-acclaimed TV adaptation of Atwood’s THE HANDMAID’S TALE coincides with the heat of the #MeToo movement, not every Atwood adaptation is created equal.

Nearly from the second he takes the stage in Aaron Sorkin’s stage adaptation of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, Richard Thomas establishes himself as being comfortably at home both in the clothing and in the moral garb of Atticus Finch. What did our critic think of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD at Pantages Theatre?

The West Coast premiere of DRIVER'S SEAT at NoHo’s Theatre 68 Arts Complex gives us an actor/playwright very much on top of her game.

THE INHERITANCE is designed to make an audience feel quite a few different kinds of emotions: sadness certainly over lives lost and squandered; seething bitterness over a country adrift; humor over the many creative ways in which smart people cope and endure; and perhaps even a strong inclination to read or stream E.M. Forster’s HOWARDS END.

Rogue Machine Theatre has produced several of the Samuel D. Hunter's works and in A GREAT WILDERNESS, director Elina de Santos, knows exactly which gears to pull.

As directed by Zi Alikhan with a pitch-perfect technical team and acted to the nines by Ana Nicolle Chavez, Miles Fowler and Kanoa Goo, SANCTUARY CITY is the kind of intelligent evening that may get you talking before the final blackout.

As these projects go, the Alanis Morissette-scored JAGGED LITTLE PILL may not have entirely broken the mold of jukebox musicals, but it has sure put a dagger-sized gash in it and made it bleed.