Mayank Keshaviah

Imagine a game of “philosophical tennis” in which the competitors lob theoretical bon mots at each other. Except no one is keeping score, because in this case, the audience is too detached from the piece to do so. So the only redeeming quality of the L.A. premiere of David Mamet’s......

Though the title of Stephen Belber’s play might sound like Homer Simpson praising his favorite beer, it actually refers to Charlie Duff (Josh Stamberg), an upstate New York news anchor who begins praying on air and incites quite a pandemonium in Belber’s thoughtful and earnest exploration of our collective yearning......

“We never were anything. We were always about to be,” says Esther Franz (Kate Burton) to her cop husband Victor Franz (Sam Robards) as they stand in a mid-1960s Manhattan attic, surrounded by stacks of burnished bureaus. The elegance of yesteryear reflected in the finely carved wood (Matt Saunders did......

Los Angeles is a city that often ignores its history. Maybe it’s due to the reinvention promise of Hollywood, or the laid back West Coast vibe, or the large number of transplants who live here. In any case, many of L.A.’s current residents know little about the city’s past, so......

Tim Dang, the producing artistic director of East West Players in Little Tokyo, recently proposed a new diversity initiative called the 51% Preparedness Plan for the American Theatre. The plan suggests that over the next five years, all theaters try to reach a benchmark of at least 51 percent of......

The John Keats poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" might be an apt epithet for Stella Goldschlag, the fair-haired, blue-eyed Jew whose reminiscences British playwright Gail Louw dramatizes in Blonde Poison. The play’s title refers to the nickname given to Goldschlag by the Nazi Gestapo, who used her as a greifer......

Many people are familiar with the Harlem Renaissance, and possibly even the U Street Historic District in Washington D.C., but far fewer — even native Angelenos — know about Central Avenue: the artistic, intellectual, and cultural heart of African-American Los Angeles from the 1920s through the mid-1950s. The crown jewel......

Cult leaders are often charismatic, like Daniel (Jeff Lorch), a 32-year-old slacker who is finally being cut off by his father. Such leaders also dream irrationally big: Daniel doesn’t simply want to pay his rent, he wants to make millions, but without working too hard. His friend Sam (Erik Odom),......

Known for its avant-garde and absurdist fare, City Garage takes a turn for the slightly more naturalistic with its current offering, When the Rain Stops Falling, from Australian playwright and screenwriter Andrew Bovell. But only slightly. Bovell’s widely produced award-winning play skips back and forth in time, providing familial filaments in two-character scenes......

There’s a well-known lyric from the John Cougar Mellencamp song “Jack & Diane” that goes, “Oh yeah, life goes on / Long after the thrill of livin’ is gone.” In Jessica Goldberg’s family drama Better, New York restaurateur Annie (an emotive Meredith Bishop) grapples with this concept when she returns......