Playwright Jeanne Sakata's newly commissioned version of this beloved classic for L.A. Theatre Works is both well produced and thoughtful. It provides backstory for Mary Lennox before turning the dour child over to Archibald Craven, her remaining relative, after an outbreak of cholera takes her family in India. Mary, voiced by Alma Marian, moves from petulance to wonder as she... Read More

A full cast from L.A. Theatre Works performs this short play about Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, voiced by André Sogliuzzo, and his invention of the wireless telegraph. The use of antique Morse code and radio equipment gives a period ambiance to the production, though the dialogue often sounds more modern. The format of an old radio show features Marconi's daughter,... Read More

By the waning months of WWI, English troops remained dug in 100 yards from the enemy. Waiting. In this superb audio adaptation of this 1928 classic drama, the naturalistic dialogue is what will draw the listener into the trenches—it’s that realistic and affecting. The production features a cast of top-tier English character actors. Matthew Wolf finds the gentle humor in Captain... Read More

In this penetrating audio adaptation of Ken Narasaki's 2008 play, an 80-year-old WWII veteran suffers a stroke and lies in bed unable to speak. Showcasing a fine cast of Japanese American voice actors, the story shifts seamlessly from the man's memories of the battlefield to a desolate, wind-beaten internment camp where, years earlier, two teens, portrayed by John Miyasaki and... Read More

Hugo Armstrong and Joanne Whalley lead an exceptional cast of L.A. Theatre Works regulars in this story of a dysfunctional family bravely attempting not to be dysfunctional. The play's conversational dialogue reveals a tense reunion that is gathered around a brilliant, overbearing patriarch (Armstrong) who is dying from late-stage Parkinson's disease and is about to receive a... Read More

Leading a fine ensemble cast, acting stalwart Richard Schiff brings easy kindness, humor, and a delightful Eastern European accent to the brilliant and eccentric Dr. George Papanicolaou, inventor of the Pap smear. It's 1959, and hiring an intelligent young woman as an assistant seems like a no-brainer. But Nan, played with an energetic goodness by Ginnifer Goodwin, has more... Read More

In this smart, sensitive, and faithful adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 masterwork, the ill-fated relationships between a mysterious big spender; a young, married socialite; and their bevy of privileged friends are given center stage. Often THE GREAT GATSBY's 1920s glitz, glamour, and excesses are allowed to overshadow the story, but with audio theater all the action is... Read More

Those interested in the Holocaust have probably heard about the German and Austrian Jews who escaped to Shanghai but may not know much about their experiences. This play, recorded from a live performance by Los Angeles Theatre Works, draws on the testimony of some of the refugees in a montage created by Kate McAll to bring that episode to life. There's no point in calling out... Read More

After years of balancing a brilliant medical career with his secret battles against his murderous alter ego, Dr. Henry Jekyll is prepared to tell all. Seamus Dever takes a nice turn playing the good doctor and Matthew Hancock and Laila Ayad add nuanced performances as the doctor's oldest comrade and his estranged girlfriend in this smart and intimate LATW update of Robert Louis... Read More

This audiobook celebrates Shakespeare's bright turns of phrase, playful puns, and penchant for a little cross-dressing. The core cast and production staff of L.A. Theatre Works take a busman's holiday in this straightforward musical presentation of one of the Bard's most popular comedies. Shakespeare's emphasis on wordplay and language always sounds good on audio, but here the... Read More

The narrators of this play portray actors who are filming a contrived melodrama about climate change. The narrators must make their "film acting" seem credible and different from when they're "not acting." They do this adeptly while at the same time conveying the cast's shallowness and self-absorption, which stand in for the vapidity and self-absorption of a world that is... Read More

Japanese American actor Carie Kawa and Khmer/Chinese/American actor/musician Joe Ngo bring authenticity and a smart conversational style to this heartrending story. A Cambodian brother and sister brought up in the United States struggle with their mother's bouts of depression and anger. The mother, portrayed with defiant warmth and dark humor by Philippine American actor Tess... Read More

Chiara Atik's play is performed with flair by a vivacious cast of talented actors. The play intertwines three subplots involving pregnancy and childbirth. One features hilarious posts on a message board for "December moms," and another is about the tender but comical interactions between a midwife in 1790 and a first-time mother. The play's centerpiece tells the story of... Read More

Brutal, soul-crushing, surreal, and duplicitous. What else would you expect from a North African Nazi labor camp in the midst of WWII? With a voice that is at once heartless and urbane, the camp commandant, portrayed by English voice talent Simon Templeman, pits two young couples--one Jewish and the other Muslim--into betraying their friendships, their faiths, and everything... Read More

Two of Shakespeare's most guileless yet perceptive minor characters board a ship for England, carrying a secret letter for the king. Unbeknownst to them, Hamlet has secretly replaced the note with his own instructions. American television regular Adhir Kalyan and London stage stalwart Matthew Wolf have a wonderful time jumping through the looking glass of Tom Stoppard's 1966... Read More

In this concise and straightforward audio drama adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's hugely influential 1926 novel, a loose-knit group of American and British expatriates tire of the endless parties and soirees of Paris. They head off to the annual bullfights of the Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain, in hopes of adventure and rekindling old romances. Film regulars Patrick... Read More

Television regular Sophina Brown leads a talented and largely African- American ensemble in this story of an inner-city public school teacher, Nya, who enrolls her high-school-aged son, Omari, in a suburban private school to protect him from the “old neighborhood.” When he is accused of physically threatening a teacher, all the mother’s fears are realized. The entire cast ably... Read More

A kite in a storm becomes the perfect metaphor for the life of Benjamin Franklin: Founding Father, inventor, visionary, and dad. In this fast-paced, comically insightful theatrical dialogue, narrators Gregory Harrison and Larry Powell have a wonderful time sparring as the brilliant, abrasive, confident Franklin and his not-so-confident illegitimate son, William. When Benjamin... Read More

Narrators Medalion Rahimi and Jeff Marlow capture the complex relationship between a shy, intense, and extremely intelligent 17-year-old Muslim student and her high school science teacher. She draws him out of his middle-aged doldrums into a swirl of excitement and discovery as they work to design an experiment that will measure the effects of love on the teenage body and mind.... Read More

This adaptation of a classic Christie whodunit to vintage radio drama format is absolutely delicious. Evocative music and portentous sound effects greatly enhance the fun, and the cast is superb. Many great actors have taken on the fussy little Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, but none better than Alfred Molina here. His Poirot is still punctilious and obsessive, but also warm... Read More

During WWII, more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans were denied their personal freedom by being taken from their homes and moved to internment camps across the country. This specially commissioned ensemble production tells the story of a court battle 40 years later that pitted the U.S. Government against a group of young lawyers. They brought the U.S. Army's duplicitous actions... Read More

Greg Watanabe, Kurt Kanazawa, and Joy Osmanski give riveting, emotional performances in this L.A. Theatre Works adaptation of the 1957 novel by Japanese-American author John Okada. After spending years in internment camps and prison, a Japanese-American who had said no to both a loyalty oath and serving in the U.S. military during WWII (hence, the term “no-no boy”) finally... Read More

Herbert Sigüenza delivers an outstanding performance of his acclaimed one-man show based on the life of Pablo Picasso. It is 1957, in the south of France, at the studio of the iconic Spanish artist. While working on a challenging commission, Picasso engages the listener, who plays the role of an uninvited houseguest, in a captivating, one-sided conversation. For three days, he... Read More

In this gentle and affecting one-act play based on the author’s life, 93-year-old actor Alan Mandell captures the old-world charm; easy, hard-earned humor; and unbending faith of Abe Sarna, a Polish Jew who survived three years in the Auschwitz death camp during WWII. Author/actor Stephen Tobolowsky met Abe at their local synagogue while Tobolowsky was saying the Kaddish... Read More

This latest offering from L.A. Theatre Works' science-themed Relativity Series swaps dystopian darkness for a feel-good romantic comedy/drama. Television stalwarts Sarah Drew and Seamus Dever create a nice Hepburn/Tracy-like chemistry in their verbal sparring as a small-town actuary and mother of two takes on a math prodigy hired by an insurance company to lower the payout on... Read More

This four-character production undertaken by L.A. Theatre Works is a send-up of woke culture, a satire of political correctness, and a most entertaining listening experience. The four actors capture the zeitgeist with controlled mayhem. Liza Weil plays well-meaning Logan, who is directing an elementary school drama production with an eye toward grantors. She is trying her best... Read More

With bright-sounding innocence, Sarah Drew portrays an American zoologist working in Australia who makes the discovery of a lifetime when she finds that the endangered carnivorous marsupial the tiger quoll may still exist in the wild. However, to save the species she may have to make a deal with the devil--a timber baron, portrayed by American actor Seamus Dever, who sports a... Read More

Actress Linda Purl shines as the title character leading a fine Hollywood cast in this L.A. Theatre Works 1997 live performance of Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman's penetrating adaptation of A DOLL'S HOUSE, by nineteenth-century Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The original three-act play made quite a worldwide splash in 1879, as it suggests that women might have lives... Read More

David Schwimmer adapted this gritty 1906 novel to a stage performance in 1990 with an ending that may surprise those familiar with Sinclair's classic. The audio recording of the Looking Glass Theatre's performance features showy, impressionistic, and exaggerated acting reinforcing an unpolished effort. Bold sound effects and structure convey, mostly successfully, Sinclair's... Read More

In this L.A. Theatre Works update of the Cold War classic, Emmy Award winner Kelsey Grammer gives a natural and nuanced performance. A prodigal son and prisoner of war returns home from the 1991 Gulf War to find his friends treating him like a stranger and his overbearing mother maneuvering his stepfather into a run for the U.S. presidency. As his headaches and dreams get... Read More

This vivid comedic production set in 1975, after the fall of Saigon, is about two Vietnamese refugees living in America who fall in love. Paul Yen, who portrays Quang, begins the play by blaring rap lyrics to set the tone of the story. Jeena Yi, playing Tong, unmasks her feelings through her sharp, short-tempered tone. Will Dao, Desiree Jung, and Greg Watanabe, who portray an... Read More

This classic novel is performed by a full cast, including Seamus Dever as Captain Robert Walton, Adhir Kalyan as Dr. Victor Frankenstein, and the audibly recognizable Stacy Keach as The Creature. The riveting adaptation of the story within a story, as told by Mary Shelly, is startlingly different from the familiar movie versions. Stacy Keach's deep voice is perfect for the... Read More

Where do ethics and consciousness come from? Do they really exist? Playing a neuropsychologist and her billionaire think-tank-owning boss, television stalwarts Hannah Murray ("Game of Thrones") and Eddie Cahill ("CSI: NY") lead a fine LA Theatre Works cast in this spirited live recording of Tom Stoppard's 2015 satirical examination of how scientists do science. Mixing big... Read More

In this 1992 L.A. Theatre Works live performance, Tony Award winner David Cromer and the irrepressible Shelley Berman (1925-2017) created a wonderful chemistry between a shy rabbinical student who is searching for the perfect mate and an old-style Yiddish matchmaker who possesses a large envelope full of prospects. Always full of heartwarming wit and comic detail, these ace... Read More

This production by LA Theatre Works is excellent. Shocking and disturbing, it is beyond mere entertainment. The play is based on the real-life doctor who created the vaginal speculum and a way to repair post-childbirth fistulas. The doctor--given the fictional name George Barry here--worked in 1840s Alabama, where he refined his techniques by operating on enslaved women who... Read More

Film and television stalwart Marge Kotlisky (1927-1997) and newcomer Malcolm Rothman have a wonderful time sparring in this short audio theater piece, adapted from a short story by one of America's most beloved authors. When a young writer is cornered at a posh New York cocktail party by a brash, overbearing, but absolutely fascinating Jewish matron, he hears the tale of a... Read More

Broadway star, female impersonator, and Tony Award-nominated playwright Charles Busch leads a seasoned group of L.A. Theatre Works regulars over the top in this sweet and sassy spoof of 1950-60s evil glamour queen movies (think Bette Davis or Joan Crawford). "Camp" is the operative word here as the fine character actor Willie Garson and Busch have a wonderful time overplaying a... Read More

History and theater create a suspenseful mix when a Scottish meteorologist is summoned to the headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force on the eve of the massive D-Day invasion of Normandy in June 1944. James Stagg must convince General Dwight D. Eisenhower that they face two enemies—the Nazis and the fickle English weather. The dialogue is tense and convincing as British... Read More

It can take a moment to get accustomed to any full-cast audio performance--the varied voices interact at breakneck speed, and pacing that works on the stage sometimes gives a listener pause. In this audio performance, however, once the adjustment is made, the experience is rewarding. Here, Ibsen's play is in full dramatic effect, with Hedda raving and her husband jauntily... Read More

With a sense of history, heart, and, most importantly, humor, L.A. Theatre Works presents their superb audio adaptation of this 2017 Tony Award-winning play, which stands the thorny issue of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy on its head. It's 1993, and the peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization has once again ground to a halt. Along come (and this... Read More

E.M. Forster's 1908 romantic satire about Brits of the middling upper crust is famously sharp, funny, silly, and benevolent. L.A. Theatre Works' scripted adaptation honors all of the novel's best qualities, with a slight emphasis on the plot's silliness, which shrouds but does not obliterate Forster's social commentary. No matter how you listen--for madcap froth or to skewer... Read More

The recorded performance of this provocative play from the Cold War era shines with wit. Alfred Molina’s vocalizing of a worldly-wise and weary Russian is especially effective—you can hear Moscow in his voice. Steven Weber’s earnest American—from Wausau, Wisconsin—aptly performs the foil/friend. A duologue, the play shows the irony of the pair’s woodland strolls as they discuss... Read More

With admirable vocal naturalism and almost maddening nonchalance, Matthew Wolf, Will Brittain, and other members of an ensemble cast bring to life the true story of a series of obedience/conformity experiments performed upon students at Yale University in the early 1960s. The repeated phrase "Please continue" takes on an eerily sinister quality as the professor and graduate... Read More

An ensemble cast presents Sakata’s powerful play about real-life Gordon Hirabayashi’s courageous stand against the U.S. Government during WWII. After the Japanese-American was arrested for staying out after curfew, he took his case to the Supreme Court, where his conviction was upheld. It took an incredible 40 years before his conviction was overturned. L.A. Theatre Works’... Read More

In this darkly comic 1939 Broadway classic, film and television veterans Joanne Whalley, Heidi Dippold, and Molly C. Quinn take center stage--an opportunity actresses didn't often find in mid-twentieth-century American theater. It's 1900 in the heart of Dixie, and two brothers are plotting to build a cotton mill with $75,000 "borrowed" from the family. Their sister, played with... Read More

With poignant grace, Keiko Agena, June Angela, and Suzy Nakamura lead a stellar cast, playing three Japanese-American sisters who find hope, heartache, and hard-won humor when they return to their family farm in California after four long years locked away in a Japanese internment camp during WWII. They had planned to pick up where they left off, but their father and mother are... Read More

Listeners follow a documentary-style play as the tragedy of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill unfolds. On April 20, 2010, British Petroleum's flagship drilling rig exploded, collapsed, and spread millions of gallons of crude oil into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Louisiana. Earlier, tension over safety, the limits of technology, and company politics had... Read More

It’s the sounds that bring the memories flooding back. The ubiquitous Latin rhythms of the “I Love Lucy” theme song. The staccato dialogue and fine sound design that mimic the feel of the early 1950s. And, especially, the marvelous performances of Oscar Nuñez and Sarah Drew, who capture every nuance of Desi and Lucy’s voices. It’s late 1949, and radio and film star Lucille Ball... Read More

The Alliance Theatre of Atlanta has created a dramatic version of Trethewey's 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, and it is a marvelous presentation of the poetry. January LaVoy is The Poet, reading the works that Trethewey wrote for and about her mother, and Thomas Neal Antwon Ghant is The Native Guard, representing the men who traded service in the Union army for freedom... Read More

Race, religion, and culture--maybe these aren't the safest topics for a dinner party, but they all come bubbling up to the surface in this edgy, emotional, and fast-paced drama about a mixed-race professional couple who suddenly find that their dreams may be at risk. Played by an ensemble of some of Hollywood's most in-demand character actors, Amir (Hari Dhillon) has left his... Read More

This audio production is a companion piece to the L.A. Theatre Works/BBC 1992 adaption of MY TEACHER IS AN ALIEN. Duncan Dougal, played by an energetic and appropriately squeaky-voiced Arye Gross, picks up where sixth-grade alien fighter Susan Simmons left off. Duncan may not sound like the most studious middle schooler, but he knows something's up when he finds a weird... Read More

Lisa Bonet delivers a whirlwind interpretation of this timeless horror story for children. Adapted for a BBC co-production with L.A. Theatre Works in 1992, the tale of suspicions about a substitute teacher is action-packed. Bonet's portrayal of sixth grader Susan is exactly as breathless and flip as any tween would be when worrying about the messy details of friends, the school... Read More

Up-and-coming British actors Kimberly Nixon and Ifan Meredith take the lead roles in what first appears to be a nineteenth-century melodrama about the meeting of a bright, ambitious young woman with limited means and an upper-crust young gentleman who saves the day. However, beneath the surface of the story, Victorian novelist Mary Anne Evans, better known as George Eliot, had... Read More

I was waiting for the scene when Elliott whips Paula's panties off the shower rod where they are drying. Would it be as funny and poignant as it was in the 1977 movie? I'm here to say that it rocked. Neil Simon's screenplay about a flighty dancer/actress and her level-headed daughter who are forced to share a tiny New York City apartment with an off-off-off Broadway actor still... Read More

Bringing together such hot-button contemporary issues as racial profiling, domestic violence, and alcoholism, film and voice talents John Cothran, Jr., and Ana Ortiz lead a fine ensemble cast in this L.A. Theatre Works production, recorded live at UCLA's James Bridges Theater. Still living in his Upper West Side rent-controlled apartment, retired NYPD cop Pops is basically... Read More

Set in Washington, DC, before the United States entered WWII, Lillian Hellman's incisive drama about national identity, personal freedom, and responsibility is fully realized by a talented, cohesive ensemble. After nearly 20 years, wealthy matriarch Fanny Farrelly welcomes the return of her daughter, Sarah, along with Sarah's German husband and children. The reunion is... Read More

The American Revolution was a confrontation about land and independence from economic oppression, but it was also the struggle of a young country to define a new set of lofty, hard-to- obtain ideals and ethics. In this thoughtful and thoroughly modern live performance, L.A. Theatre Works takes the listener on a late-eighteenth-century journey to an all-too-real place in which... Read More

This timely drama about the Kennedy administration's internal battle over the Cuban Missile Crisis proves to be a powerful production by L.A. Theatre Works. Author David Rambo crafts the play well for audio. In particular, he expertly juggles numerous fast-talking characters, keeping them identifiable with simple asides and other light-handed techniques that allow listeners to... Read More

This profound listening experience is a live recording of a January 2017 L.A. Theatre Works production, directed by Judyann Elder. Based on interviews with seven female activists from around the globe, this tour de force was created in 2006 with the support of Vital Voices Global Partnership. The voices have their own distinct accents, indicating a range of cultural heritage,... Read More

This faithful audio adaptation of Paul Shaffer's Tony- and Academy Award-winning masterpiece immediately takes the listener to the heart of the story--the emotions. Whether it is Mozart's (James Callis) dizzying self-confidence, weighed down by his fear of losing his father's approval, or Constanze's (Jocelyn Towne) fear of losing her husband, or court composer Antonio... Read More

The always provocative and often politically polarizing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was infatuated with the exact meaning of words and the precision of language. What better grist for an audio play? Reprising his original stage role, the talented Edward Gero virtually becomes the jurist, who was celebrated for his razor-sharp wit, impressive intellect, and... Read More

Chancing upon love and mischief in the fabled Forest of Arden, Lynn Collins and James Waterston--as the irresistible Rosalind and Orlando--romp along with the rest of the LATW ensemble in this spirited version of one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies. Stage and film veteran Stacy Keach takes a nice turn as the gruff and perceptive philosopher Jaques, who performs some of... Read More

"I've been to the mountaintop," Martin Luther King, Jr., proclaimed in his final speech in Memphis on April 3, 1968. The next day he was assassinated. What took place in the wee hours in-between is the grist for this tough, mesmerizing, and lyrical one-act play featuring two rising stars in American stage and film--Larry Powell and Aja Naomi King. As the mysterious motel maid... Read More

Deftly weaving nineteenth-century mannerisms and pace with contemporary theater's rhythms and naturalism, a fine collection of Hollywood actors presents this story of an aristocratic university student who returns home to grapple with three generations of family. Although Irish playwright Brian Friel and Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev were born more than a century apart, their... Read More

Laughter and applause fill this theatrical look at American history from the perspective of a Mexican who is cramming for his citizenship test. Policeman Juan José, who fled on foot to the U.S. to escape corruption and drug wars, is haunted by Teddy Roosevelt, Sacajawea, Bob Dylan, Jackie Robinson, Violet Pettus (an African-American nurse during the 1928 flu pandemic), Emmett... Read More

This full-cast production creates a compelling audio experience exploring gender identity and sexuality. When an accident mutilates one of a pair of twin baby boys, his parents consult a doctor who convinces them to raise their son as a daughter. Bobby Steggert gives the standout performance in the role of the titular boy as both a child trying to understand life and an adult... Read More

L.A Theatre Works gives a briskly energetic performance of Rostand's bittersweet romance about the heroic but unlovely poet and swordsman Cyrano and his hopeless love for the beautiful Roxane. The cast handles Burgess's rhyming version adroitly, without making listeners uncomfortably aware of the verse structure--though this adaptation of Burgess's adaptation seems curtailed... Read More

In this 1975 OBIE-winning gem by one of America’s most influential writers, actors Rich Hutchman (“Madmen”) and Josh Stamberg (“Parenthood”) and newcomer Maurice Williams own the stage as a comic/tragic trio of criminal-mastermind wannabes intent on stealing a rare Buffalo Nickel. Hutchman and Stamberg especially revel in finding the everyday poetry in the quick and rhythmic... Read More

Playwright Christina Calvit, director Marsha Mason, and English actress Emily Bergl all dig deep to heighten and contemporize one of the most beloved and influential novels in the English language. How can listeners not be familiar with the love story between the orphaned, bright, and individualistic Jane Eyre and the proud, enigmatic Mr. Rochester? Where this adaptation and... Read More

L.A. Theatre Works brings the making of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF to life (pun intended) in commemoration of the musical's 50th anniversary. Adam Grupper narrates seamlessly and steadily. The story starts with the germ of an idea planted in author Sholem Aleichem's stories about Tevya and his children and continues with anecdotes of the musical's first touring performances, its... Read More

Opening with the tone and energy of a 1940s newsreel, the narrator sets the stage: WWII is over, and the first trials of high-ranking Nazi officials have concluded, with 12 men sentenced to hang and seven others sentenced to life imprisonment. But what to do with the 177 generals, diplomats, doctors, and lawyers who helped carry out the Nazis' crimes against humanity? With a... Read More

At first, one simply enjoys the small-town Southern voices of Truvy's Beauty Shop--the humor, the asides, and the gossip. But soon listeners realize that they're completely wrapped up in the lives of these characters--the beautician, the widow, and the young woman with her whole life ahead of her. LA Theatre Works has tapped into some of the best female character actors working... Read More

Anne Archer heads the cast of this recorded performance featuring excerpts from food writer M.F.K. Fisher's works. Archer illuminates both the sensuousness and the humor of Fisher's observations on food and people, while the supporting cast provides balance and contrast. Because this is a stage production, listeners can expect to hear sound effects and the audience's laughter,... Read More

A man is involved in a devastating automobile accident. Memory loss and surgery are involved. He's making progress, but he can't remember anything more recent than three years ago. He's stuck in time. British acting standouts Jared Harris ("Fringe") and Sophie Winkleman (THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA), along with Irish newcomer Siobhán Hewlett, are off to the races with Scottish... Read More

“Gravy, these past 10 years. Alive, sober, working, loving.” By 1988, American short story writer and poet Raymond Carver had beaten back many of his demons, including alcoholism. He was happy and engaged, but he also knew he was dying of lung cancer. With every fiber of his considerable acting talents, John Mahoney (“Frasier”) delightfully embodies the voice and iconic style... Read More

In a voice laden with parental concern, Shirley Knight portrays a mother who is searching for her college-age daughter in the aftermath of a violent campus demonstration. No answers are forthcoming from her younger daughter, who is portrayed by Kaitlin Hopkins (Knight's and playwright John Hopkins's real-life daughter), and the authorities aren't talking. As the charming but... Read More

"The art of losing isn't hard to master," Elizabeth Bishop wrote in her poem "One Art," most likely thinking, in part, of her lifelong friend, poet Robert Lowell. Both poets won numerous awards for their works, and both went on to define American verse in the 1950s and '60s. In this deft and intimate examination of their thirty-year relationship, film stalwarts JoBeth Williams... Read More

The Civil War is finally over. A Confederate soldier returns to Richmond only to find his family’s mansion bullet ridden and just two of the house’s former slaves accounted for. A marvelous duo of newcomers, Mark Jude Sullivan and Aaron Jennings, and television veteran Charlie Robinson (“Hart of Dixie”) give their all to this award-winning drama as they connect with the themes... Read More

A happy, intelligent, artistic African-American girl from upstate New York heads to the Big Apple to make it to the big time in the late 1970s. What could've been easier? In this wonderfully energetic and warmly humorous one-woman show, Charlayne Woodard takes us on a tour of the Lower East Side, doing perfect impressions of her worried mother, her upper-middle-class white... Read More

An “intelligence-slave” was a derogatory term used by the Nazis during WWII to describe concentration camp prisoners who might be “of some use.” In this taut and suspenseful telling of the real-life story of Curt Herzstark, actor Josh Stamberg conveys all the conflicting emotions of a gifted, sensitive scientist who is allowed to pursue his mathematical studies in a lab located... Read More

A mathematical genius and astronomer who wrote in Latin and spoke six languages, Nicolaus Copernicus was a true Renaissance man. However, there was one thing he knew to be true that his faith would not allow him say: The earth orbits the sun. Portraying the Polish-Catholic Copernicus and the German-Lutheran Rheticus, a young astronomer sent to debate the old man, capable... Read More

TV veterans Shuko Akune ("Scandal") and Robert Ito ("Quincy, M.E.") lead a superb group of Asian-American actors in this sharp, poetic, devastating examination of the culture clash that a young, divorced Japanese woman experiences when she remarries and moves from Hiroshima to California. Akune is especially good at discovering the vocal freshness and wry humor in young Keiko's... Read More

One of the many ways L.A. Theatre Works enhances the audiobook world is to restage the wonderful and witty early works of the 1925 Nobel Prize-winning playwright George Bernard Shaw (SAINT JOAN, PYGMALION). Susan Sullivan (of the TV series “Castle”) and the British actor Christopher Neame lead a fine cast in this 1897 comedy of errors in which an heiress and her family return... Read More

What could be more appropriate for audiobook listeners than a story focused on the ability to hear? A deaf man who was brought up in a dysfunctional hearing family falls in love with a hearing woman raised by deaf parents. They discover that she's slowly losing her hearing and will soon be deaf herself. Narrators Russell Harvard and Susan Pourfar reprise their stage roles in... Read More

In the early days of the American Revolution, Dick Dudgeon--played with easy wit and sly charm by Derek Smith--returns home to New Hampshire to find his family quarreling over his father's fortune and leaning towards supporting the British in the war. The Devil's Disciple declares himself a Patriot and then finds that may mean making a great sacrifice, much to the surprise of... Read More

Welcome to the richly textured, dreamlike world of a Welsh fishing village named Llareggub--"Buggerall" spelled backwards. Its denizens include the postman and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Willy Nilly; the rabbit catcher, Mr. Waldo; and Captain Cat, who dreams of old voyages and past loves. Originally commissioned for BBC Radio, this last piece by Dylan Thomas before his death in... Read More

Animal, plant, or mineral? A lone molecule is brought before a very, very high court in a trial to decide its identity and purpose, while the molecule wants to decide for itself. L.A. Theatre Works harkens back to the best in 1940s radio drama with this quick and witty live stage production of Norman Corwin's delightful fantasy, directed by the 90-year-old author himself.... Read More

With droll understatement and easy, sly humor, Jenny Bacon and Jerry Saslow shine in this freewheeling comic one-act as a sister and brother who suddenly drop everything to travel to Europe. They’re in search of a cure for the sister’s terminal illness, ATD (Acquired Toilet Disease), which she contracted while teaching elementary school. This Obie Award winner was recorded live... Read More

Character actors Lou Ferguson and Francis Guinan create a riveting dark atmosphere as they portray a black night watchman and a retired Afrikaner soldier who have a chance meeting at a Johannesburg amusement park on a lonely New Year's Eve. Recorded live at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the L.A. Theatre Works production secures the rapt silence of the audience as the... Read More

The English seem to have a special way of talking with God. In David Hare's highly acclaimed play, four men--an inner-city rector, a curate, a bishop, and a lowly cleric--question their personal faith and resolve as they run up against the established hierarchy in this 1990 post-Thatcher-era examination of the Church of England. The perfectly voiced British actors Martin... Read More

The members of the male-only Explorers Club have faced many adventures, but none as challenging as admitting their first female member. Their manners prove about as appropriate as their skills at exploring as they offend their new member, Phyllida, as well as become ensconced in a confrontation with the British military and a possible invasion of a native tribe in Africa. This... Read More

Opening with the sounds of a crisp blues guitar and a car on a lonely gravel road, L.A. Theatre Works performs the off-Broadway adaptation of this classic 1960s story. A black California homicide detective is passing through a backwater Alabama town that just happens to have had a murder. The performances deliver all the tension, humor, and grit of the original novel and film.... Read More

L.A. Theatre Works delivers a lively and funny full-cast adaptation of Doyle’s best-known Sherlock Holmes tale. Of course, Watson is the main character, and Geoffrey Arend gives him a gentlemanly and wry air that carries the story. Seamus Dever’s mercurial Holmes and James Marsters’s fish-out-of-water Henry Baskerville play off Watson’s steadiness, which generates humor but... Read More

When the patriarch of a rural Oklahoma clan goes missing, his three adult daughters and their families gather round to support their mother, who is addicted to prescription painkillers. In doing so, they dredge up all kinds of mischief from the past and present. Drawing from the original 2008 Tony Award-winning cast--including Deanna Dunagan (Best Leading Actress), Jeff Perry... Read More

Cast members find every nuance of emotion as they dramatize passion, innocence, obligation, and madness in this Wilde production. Kate Steele gives a tour-de-force performance as the beautiful and sensual Salomé, who demands the head of John the Baptist as payment for her dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils for her cruel stepfather, King Herod. The production features a... Read More

With a smoldering intensity, Ron Rifkin entirely inhabits his award-winning role as the troubled, guilt-ridden Holocaust survivor Isaac Geldhart. After his wife has passed away, in the twilight of his successful career as a small-press book publisher, Geldhart is confronted by his three adult children, voiced with easy naturalism and cutting humor by Gretchen Cleevely, Mitchell... Read More

This full-cast performance features a crazed, secretive professor, a big-game hunter, a journalist with something to prove, and a femme fatale. Who else would you send to the darkest reaches of South America to prove once and for all that dinosaurs still exist? In this happy homage and laugh-out-loud send-up of classic 1930s radio adventure series, the audio details are... Read More

In this elaborate combination of mystery, courtroom drama, searing social satire, and character study, Keith Carradine and B.J. Ward are exceptional at voicing the emotional layers of a successful couple, Professor Ian McCullough and his wife, Glynnis. Although they're the pillars of a prestigious academic institute and their small town's social scene, they find themselves set... Read More

A Kinder, Gentler Post Office, Anti-Christ Insurance, and a Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Lounge Act--these are just a few of the skits from the best of the best. From 1991 to 1995 L.A. Theatre Works teamed up with Chicago's Theatre On The Air to record a number of ultra-satirical live performances by the famed Second City improvisational comedy troupe. Second City has often been... Read More

All-night Woodworking, Potential Foul Language Warnings, and Career Paths Better Left Not Taken--more brilliant comic sketches from an early 1990s Second City class that included the voice performances of Steve Carell, Amy Sedaris, Miriam Tolan, Samantha Bennett, and Stephen Colbert. Besides these comedic talents that read like a who's who of cable and late-night television... Read More

In a full-cast performance of this diverting story of pathos and humor, it's Christmas Eve 1934 on a Louisiana bayou, and the perennial Depression-era favorite "We're in the Money" is playing on the radio. That only makes sense. Reed Hooker doesn't have a dime, and he owes $300. Cassidy Smith, 15 years old and pregnant, doesn't have a dime, and Reed won't marry her. And Reed's... Read More

This noir classic is voiced with the just right amount of innocence, arrogance, and aplomb by the perfectly cast Kelsey Grammer. In 1947, American writer Holly Martin arrives in the war-ravaged city of Vienna expecting to meet an old friend but soon finds himself acting as an amateur detective in a murder investigation. What happened to Harry Lime? Was he hit by a car, or was... Read More

What if iconic African-American leaders Paul Robeson, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and Joe Louis met with Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey in the spring of 1947 to debate the announcement of Jackie Robinson being named the first black man to play Major League Baseball? The meeting never happened, but after listening to this wonderful, thought-provoking examination... Read More

With standouts Calista Flockhart and T.R. Knight, this full-cast performance transforms a dark drama marked by unfulfilled and mislaid passions into a hypnotic look at the lives of deeply flawed and painfully recognizable characters. Kosta loves Nina. Nina loves Trigorin. Trigorin is happily seduced by Nina's youth and adoration. And then there's Irina, mother of Kosta, lover... Read More

L.A. Theatre Works' "radio theater" production of Ibsen's classic play about environmental contamination, science, dissent, and hypocrisy offers a well-rounded audio theater experience. Very little in Ibsen's original work requires theatrical action, and, when it does, the LATW cast--including Richard Kind, Rosalind Ayres, Gregory Harrison, and Josh Stamberg--and the production... Read More

The exceptional Martin Jarvis projects sad intensity as an aloof yet emotionally wounded classics teacher who is being forced into retirement after 18 years at a (not so) posh English boarding school. His young wife, played with calculating verve by Kate Steele, has once again cheated on him. The haughty headmaster, a perfectly cast Ian Ogilvy, wants him out a day early. Only... Read More

It all starts when a long forgotten letter is found in the attic. From 1938 to 1940, 10,000 European Jewish children were relocated to Great Britain to live with adoptive families. Only the children were allowed to leave. Their parents had no choice but to stay in Europe and endure WWII and the Holocaust. Emmy Award winner Jane Kaczmarek ("Malcolm in the Middle") leads a fine... Read More

In this intimate and compelling drama, Victor and Esther Franz stand in the attic of Victor’s late father’s brownstone apartment building in the heart of New York City. The award-winning Richard Dreyfuss and Amy Irving bring such a familiarity and naturalism to these roles the listener can sense the stillness and the dust in the attic and feel the characters sifting through a... Read More

Television and Broadway standouts Marsha Mason, Bruce Davison, Dennis Boutsikaris, and Amy Pietz join forces to play ten characters in four skits in this perennial Neil Simon favorite. The action and laughs may all take place in various rooms of a fancy Beverly Hills hotel but the accents and attitude are all very much East Coast. There's wonderful moment in the opening sketch... Read More

Spitting out insults and barbs and using words that cut like knives, British actor Simon Templeman takes to the theater and consumes the pivotal role of Jimmy Porter in this live production of John Osborne's 1956 critically acclaimed and groundbreaking examination of the emotional isolation of post-WWII England. As Jimmy's wife, Alison, Moira Quirk's level, nuanced upper-class... Read More

Her strict, penny-wise father was a first-generation Chinese immigrant. Her distracted globe-trotting mother was of German descent. Together, as all parents seem to do, they drove their teenaged daughter crazy. In this lively and smartly observed one-woman show recorded before a live audience, writer, performance artist, actress, and radio commentator Sandra Tsing Loh spares no... Read More

"The cause of all this is love." What a wonderful way to begin this delightful comedy of romance, mistaken identity, and manners. First performed in London in 1775, this work is the theatrical link between Shakespeare and the modern-era works of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. In this energetic production, the entire cast, including British television standouts Lloyd Owen... Read More

If Oscar Wilde had gone on to write in the 1970s, his dialogue might have sounded a lot like Sir Alan Ayckbourn's, with a similar focus on sexual mores and social satire as a way to take a peek into the human heart. In this truly fine ensemble performance the action begins in a dining room with three couples during a family retreat. The incomparable Martin Jarvis (who has an... Read More

This second installment of the NORMAN CONQUESTS trilogy proves without a doubt that Ayckbourn wrote these three loosely connected one-act plays to stand alone and/or be listened to in any order. LIVING TOGETHER is a listening delight all on its own as wonderful British character actors Kenneth Danziger and Christopher Neame as Norman's brother-in-law, Reg, and the dense... Read More

What makes the NORMAN CONQUESTS trilogy so listenable and so entertaining throughout is that all six actors never lose track of their characters. This isn’t a broad comedy with broad comic types. Every line sounds as if it were meant to be said, no matter how silly, and there are some wonderfully silly lines. The action in this third installment takes place in the garden... Read More

In Graham Greene's masterful 1953 examination of the mysteries and quirks of love, family, and faith, a seemingly normal romantic couple, voiced with easy naturalism and subtle intensity by Julian Sands and Kristen Potter, return to the woman's gothic girlhood home in London. There they find an elderly, infirm uncle and two maiden aunts who have a number of secrets to keep.... Read More

Capturing a youthful 1940s-sounding innocence and using the pace and timing of classic comedy, Josh Radnor HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER leads a crack ensemble cast marching through basic training in the heart of Dixie during WWII in this second part of Neil Simon's uproarious autobiographical trilogy (caught between BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS and BROADWAY BOUND). Radnor is exceptional at... Read More

Rarely does a stage play combine science fiction, social dystopia, and laugh-out-loud comedy so seamlessly (or ever, really). The versatile Jared Harris (who has played Henry VIII and John Lennon in his career) plays Jerome, a reclusive electronic music composer who lives in a dicey section of town in a future "sometime quite soon" and has inherited, Nan, an android, from a... Read More

In one of Neil Simon's most intimate and personal works, the superb David Dukes and Sharon Gless (CAGNEY & LACEY) find subtlety, sadness, and bright humor in the roles of a recent widower and a recent divorcée who strike up a fresh and easy relationship despite first being introduced to each other over an awkward phone call. The vocal chemistry between Dukes and Gless is... Read More

In this dark character study, the first sounds the listener hears are faint music, then sirens, then the echoing frightened voices of detainees in a damp Nazi holding cell in Paris, 1942. They're the voices of men in trouble who are wondering how they'll survive and who is to blame. The despairing tones of an electrician (Arye Gross), a painter (Jon Matthews), a doctor (Raphael... Read More

This topical L.A. Theatre Works presentation of the stage play about the effects of concussions suffered by football players captures a dual challenge: How do you study the impact that hits have on players, and can you prevent them? Veteran actor Ernie Hudson shines as the volatile, opinionated father of a woman whose football-playing husband has recently died. Scott Wolf... Read More

Life is finally getting back on track for Jackie after his stint in prison. He's got his love, he's got a job, and he's got some friends, but he can't quite seem to stay away from his addictions and his temper. Featuring the original Broadway cast, this live-recorded production is an amusing and emotionally engaging story about trying to step back from where life has led us.... Read More

In this irreverent and warmly silly ode to America’s number one G-man, longtime comic collaborators Harry Shearer (THIS IS SPINAL TAP, THE SIMPSONS) and Tom Leopold (SEINFELD, CHEERS) gathered up a veritable who’s who of American comic voice talent—from Dan Castellaneta to Christopher Guest and Annette O’Toole. Together they deliver a rousing send-up of the modern American... Read More

When the first sound effects punctuate the silence, listeners know they have joined a live audience to experience this L.A. Theatre Works staged reading. Ken, a young assistant to Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko, is starting his first day in Rothko's New York studio. Jonathan Groff skillfully projects Ken's hesitancy as he tries to suss out his new job, and his... Read More

This wonderful full-cast rendering of Mamet’s 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play loses little in the staged recording. The gathering of vocal luminaries brings passion, poise, and panache to the narrative in a memorable audio performance. The subtle but completely appropriate sound effects are exciting and superbly amplify the angst and drama. There are seven active character... Read More

It’s 1979, and it’s been 20 years since the Cuban Revolution, when the Marquez family fled their beloved island for a new start in the U.S. As three generations gather to celebrate the wedding of Lizette, the first daughter born in their new home in California, no simmering family dispute or personal slight is left unturned. Equal parts soap opera, comedy, and valuable history... Read More

If you’ve never seen the author’s plays, then listening to them might be the next best thing. This collection includes all of Miller’s greatest hits: DEATH OF A SALESMAN, THE CRUCIBLE, ALL MY SONS, and more. What’s better is that they’re performed by excellent actors such as Richard Dreyfus, Stacy Keach, Julie Harris, Jane Kaczmarek, and a distinguished cast of supporting... Read More

L.A. Theatre Works' dramatization of this late-eighteenth-century play remains strikingly relevant today with its satirical digs at sexism, class consciousness, and upper-crust wealth. James Marsters and Joanne Whalley lead the cast in an uproarious comedy of manners that is reminiscent of Shakespearean follies of mistaken identity, all the while championing womanly guile and... Read More

Prebble’s play recounts the rise and fall of the nation’s energy giant, communications conglomerate, and pulp and paper company. A full-cast performance is punctuated by sound effects, music, and live audience response. Enron grows during the go-go '90s into a gigantic corporation, boot-strapping itself forward through the creative financing of Andrew Fastow. Actors Gregory... Read More

For his intensely emotional play, screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (J. EDGAR) draws on actual transcripts of the 2010 trial that examined the unconstitutionality of California’s notorious Proposition 8, which eliminated the rights of same-sex couples to marry. At turns comical and deeply upsetting, the play is beautifully cast—from Brad Pitt’s subtle Chief Judge Walker to George... Read More

The last half-hour of this fine production of Ibsen’s 1879 domestic tragedy is completely riveting. Nora (Calista Flockhart) explains to her shocked and confused husband (Tim DeKay) why she must leave her family. The sound effect of her final door slam (heard all over Europe, theater lore maintains) is rendered in this audio as something like a pistol shot. What is just as... Read More

This American-accented HAMLET is a churning, turbulent production with many fine moments resulting from its fast pace. This energy may inevitably lead to a few missed opportunities for quiet and meditation (or for the listener to have a respite), but the overall effect is satisfying. The greatest range is shown by Emily Swallow as Ophelia. Stacy Keach is also... Read More

It's impossible to listen to the L.A. Theatre Works production of THE GRADUATE and not envision the 1967 movie starring Dustin Hoffman. And that's not a bad thing, especially when the audio version features the whiskey-voiced Kathleen Turner stepping into the role of the original cougar, Mrs. Robinson. If anyone can make listeners forget Anne Bancroft, it's Turner. With a nod... Read More

Avery Bly, a stiff, sanctimonious, judgmental traffic reporter, is forced to change as her life comes crashing down in the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. The play, recorded in 1995, could be considered a period piece but simply seems dated (resurrected, perhaps, because of Steve Carell’s involvement). Many lines are funny, though the humor is edgy, even dark. The cast carries... Read More

Stacy Keach portrays the quintessential traveling salesman, Willy Loman, who has endured the pressures of years on the road to support his family and is now coming to the realization that some of his most precious dreams will never be achieved. As his family relationships unravel, the cast, performing before a live audience, delivers the highs and lows of dysfunction,... Read More

This dramatized version of DRACULA rushes the story’s beginning to concentrate on the vampire’s period in England, where those he’s blighted, with the aid of Dr. Van Helsing, take up battle against him. After the initial haste, the adaptation grows more and more effective. Early on, the audience laughs at perceived hokeyness—the story is old and well known—but the laughter dies... Read More

In one of Shakespeare’s shortest plays, a Scots noble, inspired by witches, murders to become king and then loses himself in brutality. James Marsters and Joanne Whalley, as Macbeth and his Lady, are both quite good, if rarely exciting or remarkable. Whalley hits that mark more often. There are, by turns, some flatness and overacting in the lesser roles. There’s too much forced... Read More

SIDE MAN is an elegy for a dysfunctional family and the end of live jazz as a musical force. Jazz trumpeter Gene, who is distant from everything but music, and his volatile wife, Terry, live through decades of poverty and turmoil, with son Clifford, the narrator, as go-between and family adult. The play has powerful moments as well as humorous lines among its wrenching... Read More

A man and a woman share a compartment on a European train. He’s an embittered, aging author; she’s a longtime fan of his work who recalls past sorrows and is afraid to read the maestro’s latest book in his presence. The play mostly consists of internal monologues. David Suchet and Harriet Walter both have fine voices and are accomplished at varying their tone and pace to keep... Read More

Fletcher’s classic radio play focuses on a self-centered bedridden woman who accidentally overhears a murder plot on what seems to be crossed telephone lines. Susan Sullivan does a fine job of portraying a brittle, spoiled woman yet keeping her sympathetic enough for the listener to share her frustration when no one will investigate, and to worry as the murderers’ plan becomes... Read More

The full-cast performance of THREE SISTERS is a delightful and immediately rewarding experience. The listener vicariously enjoys the stage production along with the audience in the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, savoring sound effects that are enlightening and never overpowering. The performers contribute to the strong interpretation, achieving an ideal pace and... Read More

A full cast of top L.A. talent brings to life the plays of George Bernard Shaw in this eight-part collection. Sound effects and music are minimal; instead, the fast-paced dialogue and wry wit of Shaw take center stage. Highlights include Shirley Knight as a mother making a case for prostitution in MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION; a guest appearance by Richard Dreyfuss in THE DEVIL'S... Read More

The first sounds one hears in this smart, brash, slightly twisted coming-of-age comedy are the wonderfully rinky-dink thunder and cheesy organ music of “The Saturday Night Horror Movie,” hosted by Dr. Cerberus, a local TV show that Franklin Robertson finds is the only sanity in his crazy world. Franklin, played with aplomb by Simon Helberg, is trying to navigate his adolescence... Read More

These portions of the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings are dramatic, though not quite a drama; this production remains a reading of selected testimony, interspersed with bits of contemporary commentary. The acting is good. Edward Asner plays a generic senator who is sometimes on one side, sometimes the other, a dramatic device that mostly works. He excels at... Read More

Molière’s classic comedies, in Richard Wilbur’s rhyming verse translations, interpreted by a pro like Brian Bedford, should be an unadulterated pleasure—and indeed, the acting is to a high standard, the verse both elegant and easy to listen to. But a failure to list characters beforehand, as done in both plays and playbills, is problematic, especially in “Cuckold.” We need such... Read More

LA Theatre Works presents an immensely powerful production of Hansberry's 1959 groundbreaking play. The Youngers, an African-American family, struggle with their conflicting dreams and the realities of life in mid-twentieth-century Chicago. Confronting the prejudice of the white neighborhood where they want to move, the family pushes to break these barriers. Judyann Elder gives... Read More

In this landmark tragedy of 1969, a struggling black family in Harlem is rudely awakened to the cost of their materialistic aspirations and value system. Fed up with laboring to support her father and two grown brothers, Adele shames them into action—stealing from neighborhood shops and bootlegging homemade hooch out of the father’s barbershop. L.A. Theatre Works’ audio... Read More

Through first-person accounts, newspaper stories, and trial records, we hear how the Marquis of Queensbury publicly revealed his son’s homosexual liaison with Wilde, after which the author unsuccessfully sued him for libel, setting off the chain of events that resulted in Wilde’s imprisonment, self-exile, and early death. This L.A. Theatre Works production boasts an exciting... Read More

In addition to having won numerous awards for his plays, Neil Simon was voted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, honored at the Kennedy Center, and received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. This collection features 10 of Simon’s best works, each performed by an all-star cast. Titles include THE ODD COUPLE, a story of impossibly mismatched roommates; BRIGHTON BEACH... Read More

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley has written a hard-hitting story of two women, each a pioneer in her own way, on the High Plains of Wyoming in the 1860s. JoBeth Williams and Amy Madigan create Macon and Bess, two mail order brides who become friends while each endures a life she did not necessarily want. The story covers 25 years of their tragic adventures and... Read More

A slender but entertaining play fictionalizes the Piltdown Man hoax, the supposed “missing link” of human evolution that, 40 years after its discovery, was revealed to be a fake. Scenes from 1914, the year of the discovery, alternate with scenes of 1953, the year of the debunking. The cast and direction are superb, ably concentrating on character and human conflicts rather than... Read More

This 1954 drama won two Academy Awards—Best Actress (Grace Kelly) and Best Screenplay (George Seaton). An alcoholic actor, here portrayed by Stacy Keach, is making a comeback in a new play. All through rehearsals he is kept from falling apart by his long-suffering “country girl” wife (Mare Winningham), who has become hard and fierce from her years of struggling with him. The... Read More

To say that THIS TOWN—by celebrated author, political analyst, and former White House presidential advisor Sidney Blumenthal—is hilarious would be an understatement. This joint L.A. Theatre Works production is one highly entertaining political satire, perfect for audio presentation. The inspired cast, led by actors Richard Kind, Gates McFadden, and John Randolph, deliver... Read More

Franz Liszt was a child prodigy who became the greatest keyboard maestro of his time and a prolific composer. This audio presentation, drawn from his vivid letters and sprinkled with selections from his most emotional piano music, highlights his relationships with the mother of his three children, Marie d'Agoult, and the peculiar Princess Carolyne von Sayn Wittgenstein. The... Read More

Classic stage actor Brian Bedford, a Molière specialist, anchors this famous comedy with a vivid, credible Tartuffe, a scheming religious hypocrite, by turns oily, whiny, prurient, and ferocious. The other performers, while not as inspired, are solidly proficient and do especially well at subtly underscoring the laugh lines. A list of the characters, especially beforehand, is... Read More

“Virtue is what I prize!” cries Arnolphe, a man who desperately seeks a wife who will never go astray. It’s lucky for him that he’s kept Agnes, his intended, in a convent for the first 17 years of her life. Ridiculous expectations, one-way intentions, and more than a few coincidences abound. Leave it to a play first performed in Paris in 1662 to cheerfully lampoon modern love,... Read More

In this engaging 1994 L.A. Theatre Works live performance, Jason Alexander and Mary Gross are perfectly cast as new arrivals to what appears to be purgatory, which just happens to be located in a bathhouse on New York City’s Lower East Side. A wonderfully grumpy Ed Asner and an ultra-hip, omnipotent janitor, played by the equally hip Ruben Sierra, are there in the hissing steam... Read More

Wilde's famous and hilarious send-up of Victorian courtship is beautifully realized by L.A. Theatre Works' talented cast. The dialogue is quick and snappy—exactly as it should be. Listeners will still be giggling at one joke as the next sails by. James Marsters plays the clever devil-may-care Jack (sometimes Earnest) with energy and wit, and Matthew Wolf's Algernon (also... Read More

Dorfman’s play gives us a woman who recognizes, in a chance acquaintance of her husband, a man who tortured her during a fascist period in her country’s past, and she takes the opportunity to seek justice. The acting is basically strong, though John Kapelos’s performance is a bit stagy. But the play itself doesn’t transition well to audio. Crucial actions take place without... Read More

Alan Ayckbourn’s occasionally humorous but overall painful play gives us two rather disturbed British suburban couples who meet over the sale of a used car and strike up an uncertain friendship. As time passes, their lives unravel further. Kenneth Danziger, who has the meatiest role as a clueless, relentlessly chipper son and husband, is the best of a strong cast. The acting is... Read More

A winter storm has waylaid a busload of passengers at a small café somewhere in the middle of Kansas. Everybody is waiting for morning—but what this 1955 Broadway hit is really about is three women who are waiting for their lives to begin. Without a doubt, Lynnie Raybuck, Megan Anderson, and Rachel Miner are up to the vocal challenges of depicting the humor, hope, and... Read More

Reza’s award-winning play serves up crisp dialogue and pointed observations as three old friends trade barbs, philosophies, and allegiances—all while staring at a $100,000 white painting rendered on a white canvas. All three actors—Bob Balaban, Brian Cox, and Jeff Perry—have performed this work onstage. They bring to the audio production their fine-tuned comic timing and... Read More

Wiley Slaughter and Shepherd Hunter—a superbly deadpan Walter Matthau—have just completed one of the CIA’s most covert and inane operations, which allegedly included producing Hollywood films for foreign dictators. Now they sit before a select joint House and Senate subcommittee, Senator Archer Bowman presiding—gleefully played by Ed Asner—ready to spill the beans. Every A-list... Read More

L.A. Theatre Works has again hit the jackpot with this delightful audio presentation of Alan Ayckbourn's celebrated trilogy. THE NORMAN CONQUESTS is not one play but three comical pieces depicting the same six characters in one house over one crazy weekend. The presentation is well paced and appropriately energetic. The cast, led by Rosalind Ayres and Martin Jarvis, also... Read More

In this triumphant L.A. Theatre Works production, a high school teacher may or may not have solicited gay sex with a minor on the Internet. Rising Hollywood talents Andrea Bowen, Gideon Glick, and Bobby Steggert are hilariously radiant as the three high school students who may or may not know something about it. Recorded before a lively and appreciative audience, Stephen... Read More

Autism, adolescence, and anthropology blend into a complex and heady mix in this masterful L.A. Theatre Works presentation of Damien Atkins’s one-act play. When a divorced academic is suddenly given guardianship of Lucy, her estranged, autistic 13-year-old daughter, after an absence of 10 years, she’s forced to see the world in an entirely different light. The superb cast,... Read More

Wordsmith Tom Stoppard's semiautobiographical romantic comedy wowed audiences on the West End and Broadway. This superbly performed audio version, recorded before an appreciative studio audience, does the same. Henry, a playwright known for his witty and cynical oeuvre, is in real life a romantic—an insecure one at that. The infidelities of Annie, the actress he loves, and her... Read More

The patron of a troupe of seventeenth-century French actors foists on them a conceited, silly playwright and performer—to the outrage of their own writer, an intellectual and artist. Hirson's rhyming verse is sometimes strained or veers toward doggerel but can be clever, especially in the almost-contrapuntal use of many voices in unison or in rapid succession. Such sections are... Read More

Part romance, part mystery, and part philosophical exploration, this play takes place in one location and two centuries. In a British country manor during the early nineteenth century, Thomasina, a precocious teenager, flirts with her tutor while making stunning scientific discoveries. Examining the period in alternating scenes are three modern-day researchers. One seeks to... Read More

Listeners who experience this startling, powerful play as presented by L.A. Theatre Works and performed by actors Gregory Itzin, Jenny O'Hara, and a tremendous supporting cast will be shaken to the core. Playwright Julie Marie Myatt has woven a compelling story of an American expatriate and a British nun who work to rescue and rehabilitate Cambodian children from the nightmare... Read More

L.A. Theatre Works' new production brings the drama from Oscar Wilde's famous novel onto the stage. After sitting for a portrait, Dorian Gray, a young man of extraordinary beauty, becomes hopelessly self-absorbed. His vanity leads him to a life of hedonism and to his ultimate demise. Based on the theatrical adaptation by Paul Edwards, this interpretation unleashes all the... Read More

L.A. Theatre Works is known for producing stage plays as spectacular audio theater, and SONIA FLEW is no exception. In a dazzling two hours, the story covers the anguish of a mother whose only son enlists in the military following 9/11, the mother's own encounter with patriotism and revolution when she fled pre-Castro Cuba, and her inevitable but heartrending reconciliation... Read More

L.A. Theatre Works again scores solidly with this stellar audio production of a wonderful play by Lillian Hellman. THE AUTUMN GARDEN boasts famed actress Julie Harris, who leads a diverse cast that includes Gates McFadden, Glenne Headley, Mary Steenburgen, Eric Stoltz, and David Selby. The play is set at a Southern boardinghouse, where old friends gather to rediscover personal... Read More

As the title indicates, this is less a worshipful recitation of the Bard's best bits than a medley intended to amuse and entertain those already familiar with the plays. Pop musical bridges between many scenes comment wittily—or lamely—on the preceding piece. While the frame is lighthearted, the readings are generally serious. The acting ranges from serviceable to moving, with... Read More

The last play in Simon's semiautobiographical Brighton Beach Trilogy, about aspiring writer "Eugene Jerome," starts Eugene toward marriage and a career in writing comedy as his nuclear family undergoes various forms of fission around him. There are no weak links in the performance ensemble, only strong and stronger, with JoBeth Williams the standout for her often-affecting,... Read More

This 1922 satire of the conservative, conformist, striving bourgeois is read with voices for each character by a large roster of narrators. The impressive cast is headed by Ed Asner, a splendid Babbitt as he strikes just the right notes of bluster and pathetic confusion. The spirited narration is varied in its delivery; a passage might have one reader or be traded off... Read More

L.A. Theatre Works’ first-rate audio presentation brings to life the historic debates between rising legislator Abraham Lincoln (David Strathairn) and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas (Paul Giamatti) during the Illinois Senate race of 1858, as seen through the eyes of Senator Douglas’s wife, Adele (Lily Rabe). The vocal performances of Giamatti and Strathairn are gripping as... Read More

With a photographer's eye for honest detail and a musician's ear for the era's language and dialogue, John Steinbeck's Dustbowl epic of displacement, heartache, and hope became both a touchstone and lightning rod in American literature as soon as it was published in 1939. The novel continues to resonate and L.A. Theatre Works's full-cast performance of Frank Galati's Tony... Read More

L.A. Theatre Works’ presentation of Guare's Obie Award-winning comedy is first-rate. It takes place in the early 1960s in New York City on the day the pope is coming to town. The characters and the action run the gamut from desperate nuns, a political bombing, a GI headed for Vietnam, and a woman who strikes a bargain between sex and great cooking to a zookeeper who dreams of... Read More

The refined nature of the story at the start of this production is a far cry from the tale of greed and revenge it becomes at the end. This LATW audio presentation is over fifteen years old and shows its age with the constant restating of the title in the oddest places, along with the use of too many harsh musical chords. However, the story of a dentist and his wife in 1899 San... Read More

This Shakespearian history portrays the coming-of-age of young Hal, who matures into the gallant Henry V. While Raymond Fox expertly portrays Prince Hal's wild spirit, his voice transforms from jovial to serious as the prince rises to the occasion of his kingly duties. Nicholas Rudall's performance as Hal's friend, John Falstaff, who continually tempts him away from his... Read More

Dakin Matthews has directed a production that has subtlety and energy. He finds thoughtful laughter in both the sharp epigrams ("The more destructive war becomes, the more fascinating we find it") and the personalities of Shaw's 1905 comedy of ideas. Again and again, a careful pause and a stressed phrase elicit an appreciative response from the live audience and make this... Read More

Inspired by the life of physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, Arthur Giron's wide-ranging play takes on an epic sweep. Its scope covers most of Feynman's life, but the many characters and the complex sound design never sacrifice clarity. The play shows us snapshots of Feynman's youth, his loves and friendships, his involvement with the Manhattan Project, his expertise... Read More

Beneath the surface cool of Diamond's play about affluent African-Americans on Martha's Vineyard lies a durable dramatic formula: a plot based on a secret that causes telling reversals. Two sons bring their girlfriends to the family home for a weekend, and the mix of race and class-consciousness lets loose submerged anger and secrets. Michole Briana White is wonderful as... Read More

History as melodrama. This exciting production, recorded before a live audience, dramatizes the WASHINGTON POST's struggle with the Nixon administration over the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Much of the dialogue is lifted straight from the historical record. Whether or not this is accurate history, it certainly makes excellent theater, reminiscent of the agitprop... Read More

This somewhat overheated drama gives us a young scientist pursuing breakthrough cancer research who is pressured into dishonesty by high expectations and the lure of big rewards. The play is predictable, but also uncomfortable, even disagreeable. There’s no one to root for. Still, it's at times absorbing. William Shumway, as the researcher, is sturdy, if at times awkward. The... Read More

All the rhythms and immediacy of a live stage production come through in this intense, intelligent, and fast-paced drama. A young Latino finds himself on death row at Riker's Island after a prank accidentally leads to homicide. Joe Quintero is outstanding as he portrays the anger and confusion of Angel Cruz, a man whose only human contact is with a guard (David Zayas), an... Read More

The German poet/playwright Bertolt Brecht worked on at least three versions of this play—one in the wake of Hitler, one (in English!) in the wake of Hiroshima, and one in the wake of McCarthyism. It is here presented in a fourth, much condensed, version by British playwright David Hare. Galileo’s conflict with and ultimate capitulation to the Catholic Church is performed... Read More

A large cast performing a two-hundred-year-old play based on Tudor history may not sound like a promising premise for audio drama, but the L.A. Theatre Works production of MARY STUART is a real winner: dramatic, subtle, thought-provoking, and emotionally rich. Peter Oswald's new translation of the play into forceful, fresh English invites the listener to savor the political... Read More

To write a one-woman show focusing on the tragedy of 9/11 that is filled with vivid, sexy, life-affirming observations; penetrating humor; and powerful emotions would be quite a challenge. The multitalented, multivoiced Adriana Sevan is up to the task. Using music, sound effects, and her own Latin-American and New York City roots, Sevan tells the heart-wrenching story of... Read More

A middle-aged doctor's wife who's read all the hip books and seen all the trendy plays is experiencing a mid-life crisis when a childhood friend shows up at her door. The references in this novel are all of New York City. The accents are very New York, and the hypochondriac mother who lives down the hall is quintessential New York. But the laughs are universal, and the acting... Read More

Hannah is a widowed Episcopal minister. Brandt is the young literary assistant she hires to help her translate a long-lost gospel. Thomas is her prodigal gay son, who spends his life trying to distance himself from his mother and anyone who might love him. These three characters form the complex and humorous triangle at the heart of this play about faith and family. This... Read More

There’s no doubt that Molière, a stellar playwright and social commentator, is as relevant today as he was in the seventeenth century, when this, his last play, was written. This L.A. Theatre Works production is delivered with all the gusto that Molière's satire on the medical profession deserves. This production is first-rate in every way. The performances by the actors are... Read More

Recording for Chicago Theater on the Air, L.A. Theatre Works produced this classic by Molière with positive results. THE MISANTHROPE, epitomized by the character of Alceste, is the study of a man high and noble in nature who is alienated from the world by insincerity and hypocrisy. The dramatization presents the intrigues amid the salons of seventeenth-century France at its... Read More

In Miller’s very first play, life gives a young man just what he needs and wants—a wife and property, a thriving motor repair business, a son. But it all drives him distracted as he waits for the misfortune he perceives to be inevitable. Those around him, some of them tragically luckless, react in ways supportive and not. The play is a somewhat uneasy mix of comedy and drama,... Read More

FIRED AGAIN is a rowdy foray into the world of the "canned, canceled, downsized, and dismissed‚" and, as the sequel to FIRED, is not to be missed. This L.A. Theatre Works audio presentation features author and actress Annabelle Gurwitch and her show business buddies telling stories of who, what, when, where, why, and how they each got fired. The production is a series of... Read More

This enjoyable, somewhat Capra-esque, play about integrity and pertinacity in the television industry was recorded before a studio audience. In the 1920s, a rural tomboy invents television. In the 1950s, her illegitimate daughter strives to have her mother's untold story dramatized on TV, fighting pressure from her ambitious lover/collaborator and philistine boss. The earnest,... Read More

This reviewer could understand very little of this one-man show, recorded before an audience. It seems to be a stream-of-consciousness meditation inspired by the Watts Towers, a tall pair of abstract constructions built improbably in a Los Angeles slum by an Italian immigrant over a 33-year period. The eloquent author-narrator displays considerable performing skill, cultural... Read More

The first act of this drama about the famed twentieth-century architect sounds amateurish. Everyone blusters, using artificially loud voices no matter the setting as they strain to be "dramatic." Robert Foxworth (Wright) is as bad as anyone; his character in this act is unrelievedly irritating. The second and third acts improve, with some good acting, especially by Amy... Read More

A superlative live performance of an original one-man show, this LA Theatre Works production is a must-listen. Starting with Black Panther Huey Newton’s persona, mannerisms, wit, and style, Smith and his team weave in avant-garde sound montages of historic news footage, music, and sound elements to great effect. This is a gripping, moving performance that breaks a lot of rules... Read More