Tarell Alvin McCraney is clearly a theatrical heir of playwright August Wilson, and Mr. Wilson served as a mentor during his graduate playwriting education at Yale. Mr. McCraney’s work, like that of his mentor, is a product of big ideas and bold theatricality while at the same time honing to the cultural traditions of the African American community.

As a child I liked singing that old revival song “Blest Be the Ties that Bind,” but with adulthood came the realization that binding ties may bring about the opposite of blessing. Stephen Adly Guirgis’ 2008 play “The Little Flower of East Orange,” which San Diego’s adventurous ion theatre company opened Saturday (Nov. 17) in Hillcrest, is a cornucopia of tortured family relationships blighted by substance abuse, alcoholic co-dependency, life-long grudges, and chronic manipulation. But I cannot believe that Guirgis would have written this autobiographical play if he had not seen blessing underneath the scarred exteriors of this broken family.…

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is not some zappy Japanese anime game for the cell phone. Instead, it’s a very moving account of a young woman’s battle with cancer. Really. She just happens to be Asian. Named Yoshimi. And “pink robots” is the name her doctor gives to the rogue cells, which are suddenly devastating her body. The music and the title come from a 2002 album by the group Flaming Lips, which apparently was vaguely thinking anime. But the stage production now at the La Jolla Playhouse is something else, billed as “music and lyrics by the Flaming Lips”…