Evan Henerson - Page 3

For his production of ALL’S WELL, director Peter Francis James has much to work with including plenty of solid actors and an equally strong technical team, but the production’s frothy overlay often feels off key

The knives are lethal and the cuts are man...With Bert Emmett fronting an equally enthusiastic and bloodthirsty cast, the Group Rep’s NETWORK is equal parts rollicking, disturbing and thought-provoking.

This production is erotic, evocative, lean as a bone and, at a certain point, leaves HAMLET behind entirely. Director Robert O'Hara (SLAVE PLAY, BARBECUE) cracks HAMLET open, exposes it to the sun and then keeps on probing.

A dopey story combined with campy acting, an uninteresting score and a general air of corniness halt this sloppy mashup of history and mythology in its tracks.

Featuring a cast who seamlessly transport us to a working-class Dublin community in 1964 – with music to match – ANW’s production spotlights not just its leading player, but pens a love letter to the lure of the stage

Tenderly staged by director Fidel Gomez, the docudrama boils our stomach juices more over the circumstances of our country than over what we witness being played out among the central characters.

The clock is ticking, in the moment and in a greater sense, and a.k. payne’s characters can’t fully enjoy the luxury of a deep restorative breath. So neither, in this haunting but quite tender play, should we.

LOST CELLPHONE WEEKEND takes a clever premise – the reimagining of Billy Wilder’s 1945 film THE LOST WEEKEND, replacing it with cellphone/internet addiction and setting it to music – and has a lot of fun with the endeavor

Chay Yew’s production for East West Players - improbably the play’s L.A. premiere seven years after its debut at South Coast Repertory – is as raw and raucous as it is timely. Yee urges us to remember the past, be watchful of the future and enjoy the holy hell out of the process.

This CURSED CHILD is a banquet of magical delights that also happens to be a crackling good story, which should delight series neophytes and Potter-lovers alike.

What did our critic think of TWELFTH NIGHT at Antaeus Theatre?

To watch these singers perform these numbers is to dream about entire revivals of Sondheim shows built around some of these actors, maybe even productions that have their genesis at the Ahmanson.

With its gung-ho company of actors, clever construction, wicked cool set and general overall braininess, FAKE IT sails blithely along for 90 minutes, liberally trafficking in chuckles and cringes...FAKE IT’s physical and intellectual humor aren’t always completely in synch with each other, but the play is smart enough and directed with enough crispness to keep things entertaining.

For his production of THE SEAGULL at the Odyssey Theatre, Katzman deploys a mostly solid cast (two of whom are also producers), a talented technical team and a vision. The results are plenty engaging.

The production’s thrifty staging directed by Judith Hendra for Topanga Actors Company feels stagnant instead of urgent, indifferent where it could have been thought-provoking.

This deceptively dark world premiere, co-produced by People with Plays Productions and the Road Theatre Company at the Broadwater Studio Theatre, is not one for those looking to 2025 with visions of sunny skies ahead.

The mixture this time around is entertaining if not the company’s A-game. HOME ALONE-LY HEARTS CLUB, while providing plenty of laughs, feels thin…thin on merriment, thin on satirical edge and certainly thin on script.

As embodied by Rainn Wilson and Aasif Mandvi in the revival of GODOT at the Geffen Playhouse, Vladimir and Estragon are a formidable pair. Beckett’s play about the unknowable darkness of the human condition has - go figure! - long been catnip for comedians, and you get why Wilson and Mandvi would want a whack at them.