Jeff Lorch News

Even before the performance began, I was hooked. I couldn’t stop smelling the spices. Two of the three ticket levels for Geffen Playhouse’s world premiere of BOLLYWOOD KITCHEN include a Bollywood Box sent to your home. This beautifully designed box – easily a keepsake in and of itself –  contains recipe cards, a shopping list, specialty ingredients, and jars of the most aromatic spices you can imagine, that you’ll use in Sri Rao’s recipes. Ground cloves, cumin, coriander, and cinnamon, the whole experience begins long before you start cooking. It’s a perfect example of how food conjures memories just by the way it smells.

As one of the nation's most prominent spoken-word artists, and a three-time national poetry slam champion and a four-time national finalist, Javon Johnson now takes to the Pasadena Playhouse stage in STILL. to share his very personal experience growing up as a Black man in America at a pivotal time in our history.

The Geffen is hosting a game night and it's a goofy, geeky, glorious distraction from the gloom and doom of 2020. Created and led by puzzle enthusiast David Kwong, this latest version of the Geffen Stayhouse series, Inside The Box, is a perfect way to connect with others in these isolating times.

CalArts School of Theater's Voice-over class gives graduating actors a comprehensive overview  of all aspects of the voice-over industry. Pictured: CalArts School of Theater's 2020 Graduating  Acting Company. Photo by Jeff Lorch, Courtesy of CalArts. 

With the current theatre world on hiatus, I have created a Spotlight Series which features interviews with some of the many talented artists who make our theatre community so exciting and vibrant thanks to their ongoing contribution to keeping the Arts alive in the City of the Angels. And I wanted to find out how are they dealing with the abrupt end of productions in which they were involved. This Spotlight shines on Scott Jackson who discovered his love of acting after college and now graces stages in the City of Angels. He had just wrapped portraying George Deever in a sold-out production of ALL MY SONS at Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice when the entire theatre world was forced to shut down.

Get your first look at Man of God at Geffen Playhouse!

Opening night of the West Coast premiere of 'Found: A New Musical' was held at the Los Angeles Theatre Center last Thursday, Feb. 20.

IAMA Theatre Company presents the West Coast premiere of Found, a new musical inspired by Davy Rothbart's popular Found Magazine, which features scores of actual discarded notes and letters that have been 'found' in the real world by everyday people.

Since the world premiere of Vietgone in 2015, Qui Nguyen has become one of the most lauded and sought-after contemporary American playwrights, as well as being a writer for Marvel and Disney. The world premiere of REVENGE SONG, his new rousing, romping, music-filled look at the real life of Julie d'Aubigny, a queer 17th century French swordswoman and opera singer, offers an exciting, entertaining, and rollicking theatrical experience, ingeniously directed by Robert Ross Parker that is sure to please rowdy fans of The Rocky Horror Picture Show during the heroine's interactive journey toward self-discovery and acceptance. Adding to the fun are satirical references to more musicals than I could count, including Hamilton, Cabaret, Company, Avenue Q, Beauty and the Beast, and Bye Bye Birdie.

Geffen Playhouse presents its commissioned world premiere production of Revenge Song: A Vampire Cowboys Creation, written by Qui Nguyen (Vietgone, She Kills Monsters) and directed by Robert Ross Parker (Mothers, Disgraced). The production features original songs by Shane Rettig with lyrics by Qui Nguyen.

With Valentine's Day right around the corner, it's time to get your date night plans in order. BroadwayWorld is ready to help with our top recommendations for a theatre night out on the town. It doesn't matter if you're looking to impress your sweetie, meet up with friends, or escape the daily grind on your own, these productions will certainly sweeten the day.

Directed by Hollace Starr, an associate professor of theatre at Pepperdine University, a designated Linklater Voice teacher, and a lifetime member of the Actors Studio, with an innate understanding of feminine emotional turmoil, and John Perrin Flynn's keen eye for multimedia effects, EARTHQUAKES IN LONDON tackles our chronic inability to act in the interest of our future generations. At the center are three very different sisters who are left to raise and care for one another after their mother dies and their father abandons them. Now adults, the sisters find themselves navigating a 21st century London that is at the precipice of both an existential and an all-too-real environmental crisis.

Arthur Miller's electrifying family drama ALL MY SONS won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best New Play and Miller his first Pulitzer Prize when it first opened in 1947, and went on to be a recipient of numerous Tony Awards. Inspired by a story from an Ohio Newspaper on an aircraft factory's troubled contracts during WWII, the tale remains as timely as it is timeless about pointing your finger at someone else rather than soil your own reputation by taking responsibility for your own actions, a personality trait all too evident in today's society.

Geffen Playhouse presents the world premiere adaptation of Key Largo, directed by Tony Award winner Doug Hughes (Doubt, Farragut North) and featuring Academy Award nominee Andy Garcia (Mama Mia! Here We Go Again, The Godfather: Part III) as Johnny Rocco. The Geffen Playhouse production is adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher and Andy Garcia, based on the play by Maxwell Anderson and the screenplay by Richard Brooks & John Huston. Original music is composed by 10-time GRAMMY Award winner and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Arturo Sandoval.

The play adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher and Andy Garcia, produced in association with Frank Mancuso and Andy Garcia, and directed by Doug Hughes, honors the original story in which disillusioned World War II veteran Frank McCloud (Danny Pino) travels to a hotel in Key Largo to pay his respects to Nora (Rose McIver), the young widow of a fallen solider, who now runs the hotel with its owner, her blind father (Tony Plana) who claims to have a?oeseena?? and heard it all during his lifetime. What McCloud doesn't count on is being confronted by an entirely different type of battlefield with mobsters who have overtaken the hotel, led by the ruthless Johnny Rocco (Andy Garcia, who dominates the stage channeling Al Pacino in The Godfather to the hilt), who is waiting for the culmination of a drug deal. As a hurricane barrels toward the Keys, tempers flare and gunfire blares, forcing McCloud to face his demons in order to take down a monster.

Before getting to the review, allow me to write in full disclosure: Approximately a?' of my viewing enjoyment of this production was usurped due to the fact that there was an elderly gentleman having issues with his hearing devices and the one-act that developed in trying to assist him. The billowing and flustering and seat-switching that was going on with the 'annoyed and put-off' audience members added with the bumbling and fumbling of the Front Of-House staff that tried to assist him was, to say the least, amazingly distracting. Mind you, I was equally disappointed in the 50'something crowd expressing their irritation as I was with the lack of decorum from the staff. To the FOH staff, may I highly suggest to have a workshop on working with seniors before, during, and after a performance and allow for all scenarios that may come up during their visit. To the 50'something crowd...we will sometime (soon) be the age of that senior gentlemen, may we remember that and put forth the energy of how we wish to be treated during our twilight years. Seniors deserve our utmost respect!

Geffen Playhouse presents The Thanksgiving Play, written by Larissa FastHorse (What Would Crazy Horse Do?, Landless) and directed by Michael John Garcés (Urban Rez, The Royale).

At its core, the original production of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (and the movie adaptation it spawned) unabashedly celebrated its campy outlandishness. But unlike the original source material which was filled to the brim with sassy sight gags, cartoonish mannerisms, and pulp thrills, this new, gloriously reimagined production---now on stage at the Pasadena Playhouse through October 20, 2019 helmed by director Mike Donahue---feels much more grounded in reality and feels much more guided by the emotions of its characters, rather than have them just play second banana to the monstrous plant of excess vying for all the attention. With this pivoted focus, this incredible new production also now requires a cast of performers that can truly showcase that change---and, wow, did they ever find them in this brilliant ensemble!

Staged on a brilliantly creative two-setting, split-level scenic design by Dane Laffrey which includes a scene-dividing projected face on a screen on which the most extraordinary, ever-changing, light-flashing and color-changing eyes appear, this inventive retelling of a sharp, subversive fable debates how much our souls are worth when hope is hard to come by beginning when a charming Devil (Evan Jonigkeit, a black-clad, roguishly perfect scene stealer) arrives in the quiet village of Edmonton to bargain for the souls of its residents in exchange for their darkest wishes. But which of the five inhabitants will agree to sell their soul to attain whatever it is they think will make them happiest?

In this fiendishly funny new play by Jen Silverman, inspired by The Witch of Edmonton by Rowley, Dekker and Ford, a charming devil arrives in the quiet village of Edmonton to bargain for the souls of its residents in exchange for their darkest wishes.