The hardest part of dining at Local Kitchen + Wine Bar is remembering the name. Is it Local Food and Wine? Local Wine and Kitchen? Is there a “bar” in there? Frantic Googling to help confirm the name continually brings up places like Local Kitchen and Wine Merchant in San Francisco,......
"Everything goes. Everything happens. ... Things mess up, but the motion keeps happening. The project has a momentum. Nothing stops." Production manager Ash Nichols embraces the chaos of Hopscotch, L.A.'s new "mobile opera." During the two years of planning, it had two previous production managers. They didn't survive. "You just......
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' play Neighbors sparked a national controversy for featuring a family called the Crows, who wear blackface and embody the stereotypes of a minstrel show. Despite the intriguing premise, the Matrix Theatre's 2010 production here felt provocative for the sake of it. (The playwright, 30, has acknowledged that the......
On Monday, Friday and Saturday nights, El Floridita erupts into hot, sweaty, drunken chaos. That's when the dimly lit Cuban restaurant named for a Havana Hemingway hangout hosts a salsa band from 9:30 p.m. to 1 a.m., preceded by an 8 p.m. salsa lesson you can take while waiting for......
Comedy writer Jason Shapiro started the Twitter feed @LosFelizDaycare in 2013, and you would have thought it would be old hat at this point, but there is no shortage of fodder for satirizing young, educated, progressive, Angeleno parents. The feed spoofs not only their child-rearing styles but also their other......
Based on an audience suggestion, the Improvised Shakespeare Company performs an entirely new, made-up-on-the-spot play in the style of Shakespeare. Yes, much of it does rhyme, and yes, it's hilarious, and while there are contemporary references thrown in, it's not just a spoof — the group takes the form seriously,......
After opening a New York theater in 1999, an L.A. branch in 2005 and a second New York venue in 2011, the Upright Citizens Brigade — led by original foursome Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh — took a huge step forward in November 2014 when it......
People who want to find experimental theater in L.A. should of course read L.A. Weekly's theater reviews — but they also should sign up for No Proscenium, an email list for immersive and site-specific productions. Curator Noah Nelson dredges up shows that make you wonder whether they actually exist: A......
The Container Yard is the brainchild of owner Ash Chan, the son of a billionaire real estate mogul who owns Japanese shabu-shabu restaurants in Southern California and Boston. One day, while in the Arts District visiting his brother, he saw a complex of warehouses with a "for sale" sign —......
I don’t mind messing with Shakespeare. I’ll take Kiss Me, Kate over Taming of the Shrew, and the under-appreciated 1971 Broadway musical version of Two Gentlemen of Verona over the original. So I was particularly disappointed that the Geffen Playhouse’s These Paper Bullets, a “mod-ish ripoff” of Much Ado About......
