Tag: mark taper forum

Theater Review: What the Constitution Means to Me at the Mark Taper Forum

January 20, 2020

When playwright Heidi Schreck was in high school, she traveled the country participating in Constitutional debate competitions. It was primarily a scheme cooked up by her mother to pay for college tuition with prize money (it worked), and she became an expert at defending or opposing various amendments to panels of judges that almost always … More Theater Review: What the Constitution Means to Me at the Mark Taper Forum

Theater Review: Lackawanna Blues at the Mark Taper Forum

March 15, 2019

Lackawanna Blues, Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s autobiographical solo show, has been on quite a journey since it first premiered at the Public Theater in New York in 2001. After that first production, which won a special citation Obie Award, it played at multiple regional theaters across the United States before being adapted into an HBO movie in 2005. … More Theater Review: Lackawanna Blues at the Mark Taper Forum

Theater Review: Linda Vista at the Mark Taper Forum

January 18, 2019

What does ‘starting over’ really mean if you’re stuck in the same self-destructive behavior patterns? In Steppenwolf Theatre’s production of Linda Vista, a new play by Tracy Letts that opened this week at Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, a middle-aged man attempts to figure out what options remain for him in … More Theater Review: Linda Vista at the Mark Taper Forum

Theater Review: Valley of the Heart at the Mark Taper Forum

November 8, 2018

Two immigrant families, one Mexican and one Japanese-American, have lived peacefully as neighbors on a ranch in the Santa Clara Valley for years, working together in the fields. The oldest children from each family have even fallen in love with each other—and then Pearl Harbor happens, and soon World War II, and their lives will … More Theater Review: Valley of the Heart at the Mark Taper Forum

Theater Review: Sweat at the Mark Taper Forum

September 6, 2018

Reading, Pennsylvania was always a factory town—a place where generation after generation grew up working at steel mills, until the financial crisis of the early 2000s changed the only life many of these workers had ever known irrevocably. This is the topic of Sweat, the 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Lynn Nottage that opened in … More Theater Review: Sweat at the Mark Taper Forum

Theater Review: Water by the Spoonful at Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum

February 23, 2018

Playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Elliot Trilogy, which begins with Elliot, a Soldier’s Fugue, now playing at Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theatre, continues at the Mark Taper Forum in Water by the Spoonful, which opened last week. Together the three plays, which conclude with The Happiest Song Plays Last, opening this coming weekend at the … More Theater Review: Water by the Spoonful at Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum

Theater Review: Bent at the Mark Taper Forum

July 27, 2015

I have been struggling to find a way to adequately describe Center Theatre Group’s production of Bent since seeing a preview performance nearly a week ago. I can’t remember ever leaving a theater feeling so utterly devastated and, essentially, at a loss for words. None of this is a bad thing—the production is extraordinary on every … More Theater Review: Bent at the Mark Taper Forum