REVIEW ARCHIVES
2006
All My Sons / Geffen PlayhouseAnd the Winner Is / Laguna Playhouse
Arms and the Man / A Noise Within
As You Like It / A Noise Within
As You Like It / Pasadena Playhouse
Autobahn / Open Fist Theatre
Bach at Leipzig / South Coast Repertory
The Bigger Man / Circle X
The Black Rider / Ahmanson Theatre
Blue Door / South Coast Repertory
A Body of Water / Old Globe Theatre
Boston Marriage / Geffen Playhouse
Christmas on Mars / The Old Globe
The Constant Wife / The Old Globe
Curtains / Ahmanson Theatre
Demeter in the City / Cornerstone Theater Company
Fences / Pasadena Playhouse
The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler / South Coast Repertory
God of Hell / Geffen Playhouse
Hitchcock Blonde / South Coast Repertory
The Importance of Being Earnest / Ahmanson Theatre
In the Continuum / Kirk Douglas Theatre
Jitney / Stagewalkers / Lillian Theatre
Last Easter / Laguna Playhouse
The Last Five Years / Pasadena Playhouse
Lewis and Clark Reach the Euphrates / Mark Taper Forum
Little Egypt / Matrix Theatre
Man from Nebraska / South Coast Repertory
A Marvellous Party: A Noel Coward Celebration / Laguna Playhouse
Mother Courage / La Jolla Playhouse
Much ADoobie Brothers About Nothing / Troubadour Theatre Company
Nightingale / Mark Taper Forum
Nothing Sacred / South Coast Repertory
Othello / The Old Globe
Phaedra / A Noise Within
The Price / A Noise Within
Pyrenees / Kirk Douglas Theatre
The Real Thing / South Coast Repertory
Ridiculous Fraud / South Coast Repertory
Shear Madness / Laguna Playhouse
Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure / Pasadena Playhouse
Sister Act: The Musical / Pasadena Playhouse
The Sisters Rosensweig / Old Globe Theatre
The 60s / Pacific Resident Theatre
Slow Dance on the Killing Ground / Athena Theatre
Sonia Flew / Laguna Playhouse
The Studio / South Coast Repertory
The Tempest / A Noise Within
Tick, Tick . . . BOOM / Coronet Theatre
The Time of Your Life / Open Fist Theatre
The Times They Are A-Changin' / Old Globe Theatre
A Touch of the Poet / A Noise Within
Trying / Old Globe Theatre
Two Pianos, Four Hands / Laguna Playhouse
Ubu Roi / A Noise Within
The Violet Hour / Old Globe Theatre
Water & Power / Mark Taper Forum
Wishful Drinking / Geffen Playhouse
Without Walls / Mark Taper Forum
2007 Reviews
2008
2008 Reviews
2009 Reviews
2010 Reviews
2011 Reviews
2012 Reviews
2013 Reviews
2014 Reviews
2016 Reviews
FEATURED REVIEWS
Disgraced | Mark Taper Forum
June 2016 – A powerful Pulitzer Prize-winner is both exceptional drama and insight into the roots and ramifications of one of the most mystifying and polarizing issues in the world today. • FULL REVIEW
Bull | Rogue Machine Theatre
June 2016 – Mike Bartlett's surrealist nightmare comedy makes its West Coast premiere as part of the 2016 Hollywood Fringe Festival. • FULL REVIEW
Romeo and Juliet | A Noise Within
February 2016 – Damaso Rodriguez and A Noise Within have given Shakespeare's love story muscle and maturity to open 2016 with institutional assurance. • FULL REVIEW
Barcelona | Geffen Playhouse
February 2016 – Bess Wohl's seemingly straightforward play has plenty of laughter and wisdom within it. In its West Coast premiere, director Trip Cullman creates a carefully delineated, highly enjoyable staging with a performance likely to be this site's 2016 favorite. FULL REVIEW
Sex with Strangers | Geffen Playhouse
February 2016 – Laura Eason’s play, in a well-realized staging by Kimberly Senior, begins with all the hallmarks of the classic pulp thriller: a beautiful woman alone in a large house when car headlights suddenly sweep the frozen panes followed by the crunch of approaching footsteps and a forceful knocking on the door. But this is a whodunit more concerned with authorship in an era of Internet anonymity and new questions about partner profiles. • FULL REVIEW
Cloud 9 | Antaeus Theatre Company
March 2016 – The sun, it was said, never set on the British Empire during the 19th and early 20th Centuries, but Caryl Churchill set her 1979 comedy to show how a misguided, patriarchal mindset would lead to the Empire's unraveling while maintaining social repression for another 80 years back in England. • FULL REVIEW
Women Laughing Alone with Salad | Kirk Douglas Theatre
March 2016 – Sheila Callaghan gives the play a flywheel heart that sparks numerous inter-related issues: The brighter ones land; the purely playful are just for show. The main target here is the pervasive power of image-based marketing. • FULL REVIEW
THEATER ARTICLES
Bettering the Bard
May 2, 2018 • Amy Freed has thrown herself into an update of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew by inserting a wiley female contemporary of the playwright into his Prologue, and then steering the debate into more acceptable contemporary currents for modern audiences. • READ
'Rock' and the Hard Place
April 18, 2018 • Playwright Lauren Yee first heard Dengue Fever, a contemporary band whose music is based in the Cambodian rock of the early 1970s, seven or eight years ago. It sparked a desire to tell the story of what happened to that country's original rock scene. In March 2018, the world premiere of Cambodian Rock Band, her new play with music, saw her vision land amid standing ovations. • READ
A Bountiful Trip to 'Orange'
March 1, 2017 • After South Coast Repertory's Literary Manager Kimberly Coburn gave the playwright a personal tour of Orange County, Aditi Brennan Kapil doubted it would be a locale in the script she had just been commissioned to write. No problem, write whatever you want. The result, a play called Orange and "one of the most personal plays I have ever written." • READ
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