Becoming Austin NationReviewed by Joseph KlinkHollywood Fringe Through June 24RECOMMENDEDBecoming Austin Nation – From Crack to PhD: A Drag Queen’s Story is an inspiring, autobiographical account of one person’s overcoming of life’s greatest difficulties and their finding even greater love.The show is performed in the Renberg Theatre, a space with high ceilings, intricate lighting and […]

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Dog Reviewed by Deborah KlugmanHollywood Fringe FestivalThru June 25RECOMMENDEDBen Moroski won a Best of Fringe award in 2012 for The Vicious Minute  and a Top of the Fringe award in 2014 for his solo performance of The Wake. This year he’s back at The Fringe with his latest solo piece, Dog— a downer of a […]

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Uncle VanyaReviewed by Steven Leigh MorrisPasadena PlayhouseThrough June 26RECOMMENDEDHaving been largely weaned on the plays of Anton Chekhov, and his turn of the 20th century mingling of regret and humor while something, always something, is ending (Chekhov wrote as the Russian Revolution was brewing), I admit to a trepidation in seeing productions of plays by […]

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Who Are You Reviewed by Martίn HernándezGreenway Court TheatreThrough June 19RECOMMENDEDWriter/performer Shareen Mitchell’s witty and insightful autobiographical script delivers both a sincere redemption tale and perhaps an inadvertent depiction of the rewards of White privilege, enhanced by Mitchell’s engrossing performance and direction by Kate Jopson.As model and actor Mitchell blissfully arrives at an Ojai meditation […]

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Sleep With the AngelsReviewed by Deborah KlugmanLatino Theatre Company at Los Angeles Theatre CenterThru June 26RECOMMENDEDIn Sleep With the Angels, directed by Jose Luis Valenzuela, playwright Evelina Fernandez portrays a fragmented family of Latinx extraction — but the truths she seeks to convey might resonate anywhere.Molly (Elia Saldana), a recently separated mother of two, is an […]

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Man Of GodReviewed by Martίn HernándezGeffen Playhouse Audrey Skirball Kenis TheaterThrough June 19RECOMMENDED“I can handle anything with Jesus’s help,” declares one of playwright Anna Ouyang Moench’s characters in her critique of the gender imbalance spawned by the patriarchy, social media, and religion. But it will take more than Jesus to save these four Korean-American high […]

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BelovedReviewed by Deborah KlugmanThe Road TheatreThru June 19RECOMMENDEDBeloved, a world premiere play by Canadian playwright Arthur Holden, opens in a waiting room outside a counsellor’s office at a posh school, where an affluent upper-middle-aged couple await news of their son. Thirty minutes have gone by since they’ve arrived, and no one has summoned them in, […]

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Sondheim on SondheimReviewed by Steven Leigh MorrisOphelia’s JumpThru June 5RECOMMENDEDOriginally conceived and directed by James Lapine for a brief Broadway stint in 2010, this revue of Stephen Sondheim’s life and work received a new charge of pertinence in the wake of Sondheim’s death in November at the age of 91.The show includes a strong video […]

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Hamlet Reviewed by Amanda L. AndreiAntaeus Theatre CompanyThrough June 20RECOMMENDEDI love a stage that rumbles when you walk in. With so many productions and versions of Shakespeare’s Hamletthroughout the centuries, it’s good to be reminded that the theater still growls.With Cricket Myers’ sound design providing the ominous aura, we enter a dark and sparse land, […]

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King of the YeesReviewed by Taylor KassSierra Madre PlayhouseThrough June 12 RECOMMENDEDIn Sierra Madre Playhouse’s production of Lauren Yee’s King of the Yees, the playwright Lauren Yee (Harmony Zhang) is struggling to complete her play King of the Yees, a two-hander about herself and her father, Larry Yee. It’s a Russian doll of play-within-a-play about a […]

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