Terry Morgan

While it's great that some plays have important messages and others are triumphs of style and wit, it's worthwhile to remember the considerable pleasures of investing in the trials and tribulations of a sympathetic character. Such is the appeal of Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel, receiving a solidly satisfying production right now at the Pasadena Playhouse.

There's something undeniably thrilling about a theatre company unearthing an obscure play by a famous writer—one hopes one is about to see a forgotten masterpiece. Sometimes, however, an uncelebrated work is justifiably obscure, as is the case with Anton Chekhov’s Ivanov.

Although as a matter of habit I try to always keep my expectations low, the fact is that a tiny part of me is expecting some plays to be great, and I’m disappointed when they’re just good. Such is the case with David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People, which gets a terrific production at the Geffen Playhouse, but the play itself never quite impressed me as first tier.

Pornography and religion are pretty obvious targets for satire, so it's no surprise when comedies concerning these subjects frequently fall short of awesome. Leo Geter's new play, Naked Before God, however, happily manages to avoid clichés. Although the circumstances of the play are deliberately farcical, the characters are not written condescendingly--they're not a joke. Even more happily, the play is very funny, and the current production by Circle X Theatre Company is smart and eminently enjoyable.

William Faulkner once said: “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” Eugene O’Neill took that thought a step further when he wrote: “The past is the present. It’s the future too, isn’t it?”

Actor and playwright Robert Owens-Greygrass is currently performing two one-man-shows in repertory for Native Voices, one of which is the intriguing and entertaining Walking on Turtle Island. The show is narrated by Iyeska, a trickster spirit guide, who surprises with his way of combining talk of traditional Native American culture with more up-to-date terminology, describing himself as a VIP (Virtual Interactive Persona) and delivering sly amusement.

Anton Chekhov famously contended that his plays were meant to be comedies, albeit perhaps with a tinge of melancholy in their makeup but productions of his work over the last century have tended toward the languorous and dour.

Beth Henley's play The Jacksonian, a world premiere at the Geffen Playhouse, is an enjoyable and well-cast dark comedy/drama that is nevertheless marred by a well-meaning subplot that neither pays off in any interesting way nor adds anything to the main story.

Our reviewer, who was a fan of Joel Drake Johnson, had high expectations for The Fall to Earth, but unfortunately it was a disappointment. While the acting is superb, the play is a misfire that lags and strains credulity in equal measure.

Theresa Rebeck’s The Water’s Edge, in a terrific West Coast premiere by the Road Theatre Company, may take things further in its look at family dynamics than most of us would ever go, but the complicated emotions underlying the characters will be familiar to us all.

The thing about Our Town is that pretty much every theater-going adult has seen or read it multiple times, and likely has been in a production of it somewhere along the line.

Filthy Talk For Troubled Times was Neil LaBute's first produced play, and while it has moments that point to the playwright he has since become, overall it's crude in an uninteresting way. City Garage, however, has managed to make a weak play demonstrably worse.