MESA MIDDLE SCHOOL

by Michael Quintos - May 05, 2024

Eleanor Burgess’ brilliant, thoughtful, and often bitingly funny GALILEE, 34—currently having its impressive world premiere production at South Coast Repertory through May 12, 2024—is a humorously insightful, beautifully-performed new play that offers an unreliably revisionist examination of suppose...

by Evan Henerson - May 03, 2024

MONSTERS OF THE AMERICAN CINEMA, a whip smart and heartfelt play by Christian St. Croix produced in its L.A. premiere by Rogue Machine Theatre, argues that in the present, monsters and human beings aren’t easily distinguishable from each other.  Monsters can take human form and vice versa. I guess t...

by Harker Jones - May 01, 2024

The problem with NORA is that in the longer, three-act running time of “A Doll’s House,” Nora’s world and its inhabitants would be fleshed out so that they had depth that is not evident in this adaptation....

by Melissa Heckscher - April 28, 2024

The Palos Verdes Performing Arts' production of A Chorus Line is everything community theater should be: It makes you realize you don’t need a big Broadway house to get a Broadway experience....

by Michael Quintos - April 26, 2024

A brand-new, reimagined regional iteration of the Tony-winning 2005 musical JERSEY BOYS now at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts is exceeding all expectations. Featuring a superb ensemble cast performing The Four Seasons' greatest hits, this spectacular, high-energy, crowd-pleasing produ...

by Amanda Callas - April 25, 2024

Twelfth Night is a glorious example of how to do Shakespeare right.  This production is full-bodied, fresh, cheeky, lighthearted, inventive, imaginative, and flat-out hilarious....

by Michael Quintos - April 23, 2024

Based on Craig Lucas' 1988 play and 1992 film adaptation of the same name, PRELUDE TO A KISS - THE MUSICAL is an admirable first attempt of a new musical that is, clearly, still a work-in-progress. In its current state, this genuinely charming but disjointed musical could use a sharp refocus and som...

by Michael Quintos - April 22, 2024

Adapted from the 1988 Tim Burton cult classic, BEETLEJUICE - THE MUSICAL is an over-the-top, chaotic, and wildly unhinged reimagining that amps up the kooky-ness of its source material a thousand-fold. Mostly funny and entertaining despite its tonal shifts and forced outlandishness, the show elicits...

by Evan Henerson - April 19, 2024

KING HEDLEY II is the eighth and quite possibly bleakest play of August Wilson’s Century Cycle. Pasadena’s A Noise Within is committed to producing the entire cycle, and ANW’s production, under the direction of frequent Wilson helmsman Gregg T. Daniel, wrestles with it valiantly....

by Amanda Callas - April 19, 2024

Stalin’s Master Class is enthralling, darkly funny, awkward, and thought-provoking about the eternal tension of politics vs art, censorship vs thought, modern art vs people’s tastes, groupthink vs ingenuity, and popularity vs quality. ...