Pasadena Celebrates Tennessee with Reading Series

By Patrick Hurley

The Pasadena Playhouse will be hosting Four By Tenn,  staged readings of Tennessee Williams plays in conjunction with the Playhouse’s development production of God Looked Away, a play about Williams at the end of his career and starring Al Pacino and Judith Light. 

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A Mystifying Faustian Misfire

By Patrick Hurley

Circle X presents the world premiere of Liana and Ben, playing now at Atwater Village Theater. Calling itself a modern take on Goethe’s masterpiece Faust, this play only skims the surface of the complexities of man’s finite potential, and indeed gets completely lost in the scrambling of mythology and modernity, resulting in a somewhat incoherent hodgepodge of Wikipedia facts and first level dialogue.

Zoot Suit Still Rings True

By Patrick Hurley

In 1978, Luis Valdez wrote a play about the Chicano experience in 1940s Los Angeles. In 2017, the material is strikingly, and somewhat discouragingly relevant as ever. originally commissioned and developed by Center Theatre Group, Zoot Suit, playing now through April 2, at the Mark Taper Forum, originally went on to become Broadway’s first Chicano play.

Murder is Anything but a Drag for this Mommie

By Patrick Hurley

 

Looking for captivating nuance? Hungry for intellectual stimulation? You will giddily find neither of these things in Celebration Theatre’s production of Die, Mommie, Die! Playing now through March 26.  

Long Day is Worth the Journey

By Patrick Hurley

In today’s fast paced theatrical world, where ninety-minute plays are all the rage, there is something immensely pleasurable in the investment of the three-and-a-half hour slow burn that is Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Eugene O’Neill’s loquacious masterpiece, playing now at the Geffen Playhouse.

An Entertaining 946 Lands at the Wallis

By Patrick Hurley

Brecht once asked, “In the dark times, will there also be singing?”. Kneehigh’s production of 946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, asks this question, and then answers it with a somewhat befuddled yes.  There is singing, but the darkness is lightened in order to appeal to a broader audience, and the combination is less than effective. The play, which is playing now through March 5 at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the performing arts, has adapted children’s books into a sweet, somewhat endearing kind of Brechtian family musical experience, and that’s…a unique enough selling point, I’m sure. 

For Every Brilliant Thing, Depression isn’t so Depressing.

By Patrick Hurley

Tackling the topics of depression and suicide isn’t a dark and dreary subject for Every Brilliant Thing, playing now through Feb 12 at the Broad theater. Written by Duncan Macmillan, based on his own short story, the piece is a great reminder about how easily it can be to forget the small things in life.