Gloria at Atwater Village Theatre

Gloria

Atwater Village Theatre
3269 Casitas Ave Atwater Village

A razor-sharp, darkly comic drama about ambition, office warfare and pecking orders. In this explosive Pulitzer Prize finalist by MacArthur "genius" Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, the only thing that matters is style, status and selling out to the highest bidder.

Thru - Oct 21, 2018

Price: $20-$34

Show Type: Dark Comedy

Box Office: 323-644-1929

www.ensemblestudiotheatrela.org

Gloria Reviews

Average Rating based on 9 reviews

Highly Recommended
Recommended
Somewhat Recommended
Not Recommended

Los Angeles Times - Highly Recommended

"...It would betray the value of the shock for me to give away what happens in "Gloria," Jacobs-Jenkins' stunning workplace comedy set initially in the New York offices of a magazine adjusting to the straits of the digital era. But the play, which is receiving a potent Echo Theater Company production at Atwater Village Theatre, is never quite what you think it is. As soon as you settle into a rhythm, the ground shifts and at one point practically dissolves into a sinkhole."

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- Charles McNulty

Broadway World - Recommended

"...The Echo Theater Company's west coast premiere of playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Pulitzer Prize-finalist GLORIA receives a sturdy mounting with a very capable cast handling the witty, words-heavy monologues."

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- Gil Kaan

Stage and Cinema - Highly Recommended

"...Whether you profess Gloria to be either a purposefully provocative play that pillories parasites or a premeditated and putrid paradise for pessimists isn't the point. It's thought-provoking, gut-churning, blood-pounding theater, a rare commodity these days. Give me director Chris Field's extraordinarily well-cast nail-biter over easy escapism any day."

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- Tony Frankel

Stage Scene LA - Highly Recommended

"...The office banter amongst the millennials who toil for a New Yorker-style magazine in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's Gloria may be catty, querulous, gossipy, back-stabbing, and hilarious as all get-out, but the 33-year-old playwright has far more than edgy cable sitcom humor on his mind in his 2015 off-Broadway hit, a ripped-from-today's-headlines gut-puncher of an Echo Theater Company West Coast Premiere."

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- Steven Stanley

On Stage Los Angeles - Highly Recommended

"...Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins's Gloria directed by Echo Theatre Company's artistic director Chris Fields brings to life the playwright's reported early days in New York coming up with dialogue and characters that sizzle."

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Culture Spot LA - Highly Recommended

"...Chris Fields, who directed the recent "What Happened When" with the Echo Theater Company (the play reopens with a new cast Sept. 27), has brought us another must see. The tragedy of "Gloria" takes us by surprise, but the playwright helps us deal with what we've witnessed. We can relate - and we start to rethink our place in other people's life stories."

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- Julie Riggott

Stage Raw - Highly Recommended

"...Under Chris Fields's direction, the ensemble works in well-oiled sync; the pace stays taut, except for lulls in the second act due in part to one too many extended monologues. The set (Amanda Knehans), sound (Christopher Moscatielo) and lighting (Azra King Abadi) are all unelaborate but effective. Designer Diane K. Graebner costumes the female characters with style. The play opens, per the playwright, with strains of Bach's Mass in B-minor, which reverberate throughout- a deliciously ironic contrast to the characters' petty concerns and ignoble machinations."

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- Deborah Klugman

Peoples World - Recommended

"...Written by the Brooklyn-based 2016 MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant recipient Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, now 33, Gloria was a Pulitzer Prize finalist after it debuted Off-Broadway at New York City's Vineyard Theatre in May 2015. His plays Appropriate and An Octoroon received the 2014 OBIE Award for Best New American Play, and the New York Times wrote that he "has established himself as one of the country's most original and unsettling dramatists.""

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- Eric A Gordon

Los Angeles Post-Examiner - Recommended

"...If you are the kind of theatre patron who primarily wants to watch great choreography presented with spectacular music and overwhelming happiness Gloriais not your show. But if you enjoy having your mind stretched and your thoughts challenged then Gloria will deliver for you."

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- Ron Irwin