Basic But Beautiful Battlefield

By Patrick Hurley

Legendary director Peter Brook returns to his legendary roots with Battlefield, playing now at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. Based on his own adaptation of the Mahabharata, a piece he co-adapted three decades ago with Marie-Hélène Estienne, this seventy-minute piece is a triumph of minimalist theatre.

Jersey Boys Is All Jukebox

By Patrick Hurley

The story of the rise of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, Jersey Boys, playing now at the Ahmanson Theatre, is a high-energy juke box musical that relies entirely on spectacle and song recognition and falls completely short of compelling narrative.

Dry Land Proves Unsettling

By Patrick Hurley

Dry Land, playing now at the Kirk Douglas Theatre as part of Center Theatre Groups Block Party, is a theatrical and literary novelty, it’s a coming-of-age story that was written by a playwright who was only twenty-one years old when she wrote it, she had not had time nor space from her own youth before she tackled this very deliberate, awkwardly funny exploration of friendship.  And while some could lay the blame of her inexperience of life on the lackadaisical adherence to traditional plot, it is precisely the lens of inexperience that creates something new and interesting.

History a Laughing Matter in Archduke

By Patrick Hurley

A darkly funny twist on history, Rajiv Joseph’s new play Archduke, making it’s world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum, is a slightly uneven but entirely entertaining endeavor into historical fiction.