Jonas Schwartz-Owen

Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations hit Broadway in 2019, earning 11 Tony nominations and one win for Sergio Trujillo’s choreography. Though it was cut short by COVID in March 2020, the show returned in May 2021 and ran until January 2022. It now lives on through its national tour, reaching 24 U.S. cities. The current tour is notable for being supervised by the original director, Des McAnuff, and Trujillo. I spoke with Bryce Valle, the tour's dance captain and the lead actor portraying Paul Williams of The Temptations.

The current tour of the hit musical The Book Of Mormon solidly preserves everything that makes the show an audience pleaser. A talented cast delights Ventura audiences at Broadway In Thousand Oaks.

Lear deBessonet’s rollicking production of Once Upon A Mattress brings festive glee to the Southland.

South Coast Repertory presents the Broadway musical Million Dollar Quartet at the Mission San Juan Capistrano under the stars as part of its new Outside SCR program, and the quality production recalls the good, old days of Summer Stock. SCR has collected a talented cast and put on an enchanting evening.

There have been jukebox musicals for decades, but never has a jukebox been so overstuffed that the 45s came spiraling out of the cabinet, spinning off the stage to decapitate the audience. This Tony-winning musical extravaganza is completely ridiculous and utterly intoxicating. It pounds you into submission, and before you know it, you're having a marvelous time.

Lucas Hnath is an ambitious playwright. He turned his mother's harrowing recollections of being abducted in the '90s into a riveting, intimate one-woman tale, Dana H, where the actress lip-syncs to the recording that his mother had made. Despite such legends as Harold Prince, Betty Comden and Adolph Green flopping with a sequel to Ibsen's A Doll's House, he soldiered on with A Doll's House, Part 2, creating a funny and absorbing examination of 19th Century gender wars. Now, he examines the life of Walt Disney in A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney. And though Hnath appears to have a focused vision, this time his deliberate touch distances the character from the audience and leaves this reviewer nonplussed.

The buzz on the internet about Sutton Foster playing Marian the Librarian in the latest Music Man revival was polarizing to say the least, but NO ONE can claim that Sutton Foster wasn't born to play Reno Sweeney in the classic Cole Porter musical farce, Anything Goes. Foster won a Tony playing the role on Broadway in 2011, and in 2021, returned to the role at the Barbican Theatre in London, belting out standards like the title number, 'I Get A Kick Out Of You', and the famous list song, 'You're The Top'. Trafalgar Entertainment and Stage2view filmed the cast during the London run and will now air the presentation in American movie theaters for two nights.

Three men stand on a stage for over three hours, trekking through 150 years of history in The Lehman Trilogy and it's the most invigorating evening imaginable. Directed by Sam Mendes and written by Stefano Massini—and adapted by National Theatre dramaturg Ben Power -- the play is a remarkable journey of three immigrant brothers from Bavaria, who travel to America to start a small business that evolves into the money-making machine known as Lehman Bros.

SpiegelWorld gives Vegas audiences a chance to laugh again. An Interview with creator Ross Mollison and performer Petra Massey

During the opening number, the Troubadour Theatre Company, affectionately known to all as the Troubies, comment how thrilled the troupe, and the audience by extension, is to have returned to live theatre. The audience responded with glorious applause, and both the occasion and the Troubies deserve that adulation. The Troubies, who have rocked Los Angeles for the last 25 years, are one of the most creative teams in the city. Their imagination and gumption has entertained with parodies of classical works infused with a musical motif such as Alice In One-Hit Wonderland, Much ADoobie Brothers About Nothing, and A Charlie James Brown Christmas. Their latest, Lizastrata, based on both the Greek Aristophanes comedy Lysistrata and the songs made popular by Liza Minnelli, could have been a dazzler, but with a gossamer plot, too many recycled jokes, and a venue ill-equipped to allow the cast to sing with heft, the latest production is uninspired.

Good grief! You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown Is Live But Sadly Not Alive. A combination of miscasting, poor direction, and a play that runs out of steam, this early production in the reemergence of live theater is a disappointment.

Anna LaMadrid’s one-person comedy The Oxy Complex explores humanity reaching its breaking point after 500 days with zero human touch.

Playwright Dan O'Brien made a splash in LA theatre back in 2017 when The House In Scarsdale: A Memoir For The Stage received multiple Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Nominations. Now, O'Brien has published four of the essays under the title, A Story That Happens, as a primer for burgeoning playwrights.

The Geffen is hosting a game night and it's a goofy, geeky, glorious distraction from the gloom and doom of 2020. Created and led by puzzle enthusiast David Kwong, this latest version of the Geffen Stayhouse series, Inside The Box, is a perfect way to connect with others in these isolating times.

And now, the Supermodel of the World, RuPaul Charles has transferred her fierce Drag Queens to the Flamingo Hotel to recreate her award-winning reality show RuPaul's Drag Race where the audience gets to be the judge.

After three successful runs in Los Angeles in 2012, 2014, and 2017 at the Pantages, that smut-mouthed, but endearing musical comedy The Book Of Mormon has squatted downtown at the Ahmanson, and third time around, it has lost none of its luster, or its smut.

The Welk Resort Theatre, located at the Welk Resort in San Diego, launches the Pulitzer Prize/Tony-winning A Chorus Line as part of its 39th Season. Director/Choreographer Hector Guerrero makes his debut on the Welk Resort stage with this beloved musical created by Michael Bennett in 1975 with music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Ed Kleban, and a book by James Kirkwood Jr and Nicholas Dante. Guerrero spoke about his evolution as a dancer, choreographer, director as well as how this musical speaks to him.

Ballet, opera and musical theater director Daniel Pelzig helms the musical version of Irving Berlin's Holiday Inn, playing at Musical Theatre West. This is Pelzig's fourth production with MTW, after My Fair Lady in 2015, Mary Poppins in 2017 and The Little Mermaid earlier this year.

The musical Bandstand, which is now part of the American Theater Guild tour across the country, thrives when Andy Blankenbuehler's Tony-winning choreography is front and center. Restaged for this production by Marc Heitzman, who was Dance Captain in the Broadway production, the dances display vitality that makes audiences want to stand up and join in. The book and score do not hold up their end of the bargain, and in this production, Bandstand is further saddled with lackluster performances that should have been re-enlivened by tour director Gina Rattan.