Evan Henerson is a longtime arts and features writer who lives in Southern California. He is the former theater critic for the Los Angeles Daily News and has written for such publications as American Theatre, Playbill Online, Stage Directions and Backstage.
With its award-winning book by Steven Levenson and score by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the touring version of DEAR EVAN HANSEN offers the same gut punches along with assurances that life for the Hansens, the Murphys and the millions of nameless, faceless lonely souls out there on the internet may y
Director Mike Donahue’s production on the Geffen’s Cates stage is so intelligent, well-crafted and downright fun that A WICKED SOUL IN CHERRY HILL seems destined to have a future beyond Westwood.
The work of director Guillermo Cienfuegos, Alex Neher and Justin Preston is brave, honest and frequently stomach-churning, the kind of character study that should frighten the hell out of anybody (particularly parents).
As directed by Tim Dang for the Sierra Madre Playhouse, KING OF THE YEES is a comedy and a quest, a Caroll-ian plunge through Chinatown led by a sure-handed guide who is seeking some penetrating answers.
Despite some instances of inventive staging and plenty of technical blares and flashes, John Gould Rubin’s production is as wrongheaded as it is irritating to sit through.
Los Angeles’s East West Players has a long and vibrant history with the musicals of Stephen Sondheim, making it hardly a news flash that the company would both take a – er – shot at the composer’s controversial 1990 work, ASSASSINS, and end up bringing it off so splendidly.
If a playgoer knows anything about Shakespeare and/or musicals, then for sheer inventiveness, sweetness and curtain-to-curtain smiles, SOMETHING ROTTEN! has you covered.