Terry Morgan

Theatre Banshee deserves a great deal of credit for taking a risk on a black comedy as dark and difficult as Enda Walsh's The Walworth Farce. It's a loud, confrontational, complicated play, more symbolic than realistic. It requires the audience to sit up and pay attention, to keep up with its tangle of tales and personas and tragedy.

The new play at the Theatre@Boston Court, Steve Yockey's Heavier Than…, is a retelling of the old Greek myth of the minotaur in his labyrinth, but this time from the creature's point of view. It's a professionally done show with a strong cast and a distinctive look, but the play lacks ambition. It's enjoyable while it's going on, but not particularly memorable upon leaving the theatre--a solid base hit, but no home-run.

It shouldn't be a surprise that a new show by Evidence Room is excellent, considering the group's history. For more than a decade the troupe has been one of the most well-respected companies in Los Angeles, winning awards and garnering nominations by the score. Regardless of all this, I was surprised and delighted at how fantastic their new show, the West Coast premiere of Margo Veil, is.

Rogue Artists Ensemble has developed a reputation for wildly creative shows using multimedia, puppets and whatever theatre tools will help to realize their particular visions. The group’s current production, D Is For Dog, retains the striking design elements the Rogues are known for but has pared down the amount.

Marco Ramirez's Broadsword: A Heavy Metal Play, now playing at the Black Dahlia Theatre is funny and well acted with an intriguing plot, and I think most audience members will enjoy it--but I don't think it's reached its full potential yet.

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...