John Dlugolecki

"The Learned Ladies"

Moliere's The Learned Ladies

is this week's Pick. Nods also for Patrick Kennelly's musical mash up of Patty Hearst and Patty Duke: Patty, The Revival, at Highways Performance Space; Padua Productions' production of Murray Mednick's two new "Gary Plays," under the collective title, The Fool and the Red Queen, at the Lounge Theatre in Hollywood; Bitchslap! at West Hollywood's Macha Theatre; The Children at Pasadena's Theatre @ Boston Court, and more. For all New Theater Reviews, go to the jump.

Also, check out the current week's Stage Feature on L.A. Philharmonic's production of Don Giovanni with superstar designers, Frank Gehry, Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte, and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel.

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Craig Schwartz

Ron Raines in "Follies," now at the Ahmanson

Rapturous reviews this week for pianist Mona Golabek

in The Pianist of Willesden Lane at the Geffen, based on her book, and the Kennedy Center's Follies, now at the Ahmanson after a Broadway transfer. Click here for all the latest New Theater Reviews, or after the jump.

We asked artistic directors from around the region what they would produce had they unlimited resources and the cast of their dreams. See what our theater would look like without such constraints in this week's Stage Feature.

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Carla Fallberg

"Hanging On -- Letting Go" at the Fremont Centre Theatre

Bryan Harnetiaux's new play, Holding On -- Letting Go is difficult to watch for the way it captures the realistic agonies of a wife slowly losing her husband to liver cancer. It is nonetheless a tender drama, well rendered under James Reynolds' direction at the Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena.

Click here for all the latest New Theater Reviews

Also, check out this week's Stage Feature on Cornerstone Theater Company's first entry in its "Hunger Cycle," Café Vida. Also currently up, a reaction to the invaluable, ever-provocative Colin Mitchell's post on L.A. Stage Alliance's panel last week on arts criticism.

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Katie Gould

(Left to right) Terence McFarland, Alice Tuan, Steven Leigh Morris, Frances Baum Nicholson, Deidrie Henry and Don Shirley at L.A. Stage Alliance's recent arts criticism panel

On the heels of a panel discussion on arts criticism at KPCC's Crawford Family Forum last week, hosted by Los Angeles Stage Alliance, blogger Colin Mitchell of the website Bitter Lemons critiqued the critics by posing "the question nobody asked: How are theater critics going to remain relevant in a climate where their opinions simply mean less and less?"

Mitchell did praise critics as being vital as historians and contextualizers. But to support his assertion about the growing irrelevance of educated critics to the larger culture, he alluded to so many newspapers' decisions to ax veteran critics, citing the recent, infuriating exit from Back Stage of two highly respected senior local critics and editors, Dany Margolies and Les Spindle. He also noted the ascent of blog critics to fill the void left by the diminishing ranks of print media critics. "All I'm saying is they, the [remaining print] critics, better find a way to remain relevant to an audience that is slowly but surely leaving them in the dust."

Mitchell's Bitter Lemons site has been around four years now, aggregating stage reviews from print and online sources, serving as a community bulletin board and serving up hefty portions of commentary in a fearless, funny and unabashedly vainglorious manner. Anybody who can prompt serious discussion with such personal animation as Mitchell does provides a valuable service.

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Patti Ballaz

Eat or Be Eaten in Hollywood: "The Laughing Cow"

Jessica Abrams comedy about Hollywood, The Laughing Cow,

traffics in stereotypes but is nonetheless so delightful, says reviewer Rebecca Haithcoat, it grabs this week's Pick of the Week. Here are all the latest New Theater Reviews, or you can find them after the jump.

Also, check out this week's stage feature on Cyrano, Stephen Sachs' contemporary adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac, based on the travails of a deaf poet, co presented by Deaf West and the Fountain Theatre -- along with Pasadena Playhouse's latest rendition of The Heiress, starring Heather Tom, Richard Chamberlain and Julia Duffy.

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Alan Aymie in "A Child Left Behind"

Ed Krieger

Alan Aymie's autobiographical saga

of his travails within LAUSD, A Child Left Behind, is this week's Pick. Other New Reviews also include Bill Raden's "GO" review of Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight Los Angeles, 1992, honoring the 20th anniversary of our most recent riots. Smith is not performing in that production (at the Skylight Theatre, 1816 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz), but she is appearing tonight, Wednesday, April 25, 7-9 p.m., for a community discussion of the events of 20 years ago. Robert F. Kennedy Community High School (Cocoanut Grove Theatre), 701 S. Catalina St., Los Angeles.

Click here for the latest New Theater Reviews, or go to the jump. Also check out this week's Stage Feature on The Convert at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, and The Magic Bullet Theory at Sacred Fools Theater in Hollywood.

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David Lindsay-Abaire's Tony-nominated play about class rifts in America, Good People, now playing at the Geffen, is this week's Pick of the Week, by Neal Weaver. Paul Birchall was taken with Doug Knott's autobiographical solo show at the Asylum Lab Theatre, Last of the Knotts. Find all the latest New Theater Reviews after the jump.

Playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes has won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for drama for the second play in her "Elliot trilogy," Water by the Spoonful, about a U.S. soldier returning from Iraq to his hometown, Philadelphia, and working in a doughnut shop. That trilogy's opening play, Elliot: A Soldier's Fugue, was a Pulitzer finalist in 2007. Water by the Spoonful nudged out two other excellent finalists, Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities, about the political reverberations within a Palm Springs family; and Stephen Karam's comedy about capricious tragedy, Sons of the Prophet. (Yours truly chaired this year's nominating drama jury, which included Newsday's theater critic, Linda Winer; CUNY;s David Savran; Rohan Preston, theater critic of the Minneapolis Star Tribune; and last year's Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama, Bruce Norris.)

Check out this coming week's stage feature on Waiting for Godot at the Taper, Billy Elliot at the Pantages and In Paris at the Broad.

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Kate Maher and JD Cullum in "The Bungler," at A Noise Within

Craig Schwartz

Moliere's lesser-known comedy The Bungler

​ is this week's Pick, thanks to what critic Pauline Adamek describes as a riotously funny production. For all the latest New Theater Reviews go to the jump.

This week's Stage feature finds similarities between Val Kilmer's study of Mark Twain, in a workshop production of a play (Citizen Twain) that Kilmer wrote and performed in (closing Thursday at the Masonic Lodge in Hollywood Forever Cemetery), and Matthew McCray's new scifi play, Eternal Thou, about the effects of rapidly changing technology.

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Tim Norris

A sacrifice to the gods

Blending droll wit and broad farce, sketch-comedy troupe Lost Moon Radio hosted the 33rd annual L.A. Weekly Theater Awards Monday night in a taut show at Avalon in Hollywood, handing out more than 30 awards in less than two hours.

The "Lawees" honor the best stage work in theaters of 99 seats or less during the previous calendar year, 2011. The awards are selected by a committee consisting mainly of L.A. Weekly theater reviewers.

Under Lauren Ludwig's direction, the company themed the event as the first-ever theater awards in Athens, circa 450 B.C. -- the Lawees being named after "Laweenius -- muse of self-congratulation," as one presenter put it.

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Theatre Banshee's "The Merchant of Venice" is this week's Pick

Sean Branney

Just about recovered from Monday night's Lawees, described in a stream of personal emails as "the best ever," thanks to hosts Lost Moon Radio.

​. Winners here. Check out our slideshow.

Here are all the latest New Reviews, or you can find them after the jump.

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