Shakespeare's underperformed romance is a mishmash of familial ties tested, lighthearted foppery, dark betrayals and supernatural interventions. In the hands of director Bart DeLorenzo and a talented ensemble, the sometimes convoluted proceedings ultimately feel like a satisfyingly complex journey, a romp of sorts in which boys become men and childish......
Audiences arrive at Independent Shakespeare Company's summer shows in much the same way they might arrive at the beach. Flip-flops abound, picnic baskets dot the barely delineated aisles, and children order up frozen treats from a roaming ice cream vendor. Before the shows, there's plenty of time to wander the......
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, but it’s certainly not the performance of Rafael Goldstein as the revenge-bent prince. This briskly paced, two-hour production belongs almost entirely to Goldstein, whose jangled, dangerous Hamlet is not to be believed when he tells Gertrude, “I essentially am not in madness,......
Steve Yockey's series of haunted tales is strung together with expert eeriness by director Michael Matthews. Inspired in part by Japanese folktales and lit to chilling effect by Tim Swiss, the stories center on a hotel in which angry ghosts terrorize the guests, causing lifelong mental anguish or worse. The......
Alan Aymie takes aim at the Los Angeles Unified School District and the L.A. Times in his solo show A Child Left Behind, about his time spent as a teacher in a low-performing school. Laid off from teaching for a second time last year and given a "below average" ranking......
The latest Shakespearean modern-music mash-up from the Troubies is yet another hit for the cheeky troupe of triple-threat performers. Proteus (Matt Walker, who also directs) and Valentine (Rob Nagle) are best friends, but the game of love threatens their bond. Julia (Christine Lakin, who also choreographs) thinks Proteus is her......
Both Itzin and McShane bring insightful shades to the unsatisfied Sorin, though each makes drastically different stylistic choices. Itzin's Sorin is introspective about his failing mind and body, while McShane's Sorin faces his laundry list of life regrets with bumbling bombast. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Starts: March 1......
1930s Memphis blues and African-American traditional folk magic add moody layers to Katori Hall's narrative about an oppressed woman struggling toward uncertain success. Toulou (Andrea Meshel) has escaped cotton picking to chase her dreams of onstage stardom on Beale Street. Ace (Elijah Rock), Toulou's often absentee lover, also wants to......
Exposure to excessive wealth warps reality for one member of a sister duo in Molly Smith Metzler's lively play. Hailing from blue-collar Buffalo, 20-something Simone (Melanie Lora) has fled to Martha's Vineyard to play personal assistant to Michaela (Katrina Lenk), an intensely neurotic, love-starved woman-child prone to fits of rage......
Playing a 40-year-old virgin whose spinsterhood is made certain by her energy-draining mother's omnipresence, Ferrell Marshall boils with a brilliant bitterness portending serious danger in Martin McDonagh's ode to the miseries of parental caretaking. Maureen (Marshall) has been holed up in the small Irish village of Leenane most of her......
