Terry Morgan

Edi Gathegi and Gary Cole in "Superior Donuts." Photo - Michael Lamont With his award-winning drama August: Osage County, playwright Tracy Letts was swinging for the bleachers, although only time will tell if he managed to knock it out of the park. It’s understandable that he’d try to create something lighter and funnier as a follow-up, and in Superior Donuts he has succeeded. Although this new play is somewhat familiar and slight, it’s also...

Brendan Farrell and Kate Huffman in "100 Saints You Should Know." Photo - Sven Ellirand. It's somewhat of a novelty these days to see a Catholic priest in a modern play that isn’t automatically presented as a child molester. In older works, the clergy were perhaps treated too reverentially--genial, saintly figures in sweaters, invariably from Ireland. One of the great virtues of Kate Fodor’s 100 Saints You Should Know is that she portrays a...

Bo Foxworth in "The Malcontent." Photo - Geoffrey Wade The revelatory thing about productions of older plays is that age doesn't necessarily make a show dated--the human verities remain constant--and great art shrugs off accumulated centuries like water drops. The flip side of this, however, is that just because a play happens to be ancient and obscure, it isn't necessarily a classic. The Antaeus Company's raison d'etre is to shine a light on underappreciated...

Alex Levin, Jully Lee and Warren Davis in "The Chinese Massacre (Annotated)." (Photo: Shane William Zwiener.) The Chinese Massacre (Annotated) must have looked great on paper: Circle X is a well admired and award-winning theatre company, and Tom Jacobson (Bunbury, The Twentieth Century Way) is one of the best playwrights L.A. has. Combine that with a little known story of early Los Angeles mob violence, and the excitement of the show being Circle X's...

Philip Baker Hall in "I Never Sang For My Father." Photo - Daniel G. Lam Thomas Wolfe famously opined that "you can't go home again," and that's true as far as it goes, but what if one never truly had a home in the first place? Where does one attempt to return to then? Robert Anderson's 1968 play I Never Sang For My Father tackles this sad issue head-on in its look at an...

Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeff Daniels and James Gandolfini in "God of Carnage." Photo - Craig Schwartz After taking a breather upon winning the Tony award for best play in 2009, Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage is back in the spotlight. Its high-profile movie version, starring Kate Winslet and Jodie Foster, directed by Roman Polanski, is filming now. More importantly, the original Broadway production, cast and director intact, has been brought to the...

Tadhg Murphy and Clare Dunne in "The Cripple of Inishmaan" (Photo by Craig Schwartz.) Largely, the world that Martin McDonagh writes about is one of cruelty and dark humor fitfully illuminated by explosions of sudden violence, from the steady accumulation of hatefulness in The Beauty Queen of Leenane to the poor bastard hung upside down from a cord and tortured in The Lieutenant of Inishmore. There is no lack of unkindness and mockery in...

Michelle Clunie and Johnny Clark in "The Mercy Seat" - Photo by Kimberly-Rose Wolter. The Mercy Seat is often referred to as Neil LaBute's "9/11 play," and while this is technically true, the events of 9/11 are not really what this play is about. It's actually a serious drama about a relationship in crisis, a struggle for dominance in the guise of a love story. The fact that this 2002 work is only now...

Shyla Marlin, Elizabeth Frances, Jane Lind and Kimberly Guerrero in "The Frybread Queen." (Photo by Tony Dontscheff Photography) The title of Carolyn Dunn's The Frybread Queen is mildly misleading. It's not really about frybread, the Native American staple, although there are several frybread recipes discussed. What the show is truly about is family, and the things people will do to keep it safe. Dunn's play, a world premiere by Native Voices at the Autry,...

Graham Skipper in "Re-Animator The Musical" - Photo by Thomas Hargis. Just because a film can be turned into a stage musical, it doesn't mean that it should be. Most 1980s horror films wouldn’t translate all that well to melodies and dance numbers, but cult classic Re-Animator was a gore-fest with a strong sense of humor, and that makes all the difference. The new production of Re-Animator The Musical at the Steve Allen Theater...