BWW Review: The Phantom Stages A Comeback in LOVE NEVER DIES at Segerstrom Center
There are many, very obvious spectacular things that stand out while watching LOVE NEVER DIES, Andrew Lloyd Webber's infamously, uh, troubled 2010 musical follow-up to his long-running global hit THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, now continuing its two-week engagement at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Co...
BWW Review: Appealing New Production of SOUTH PACIFIC Sails Into La Mirada Theater
Armed with a grand, sweeping songbook from Rodgers and Hammerstein, and a romantic, progressive-for-its-time book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan, it is difficult not to be continually enchanted by SOUTH PACIFIC, the groundbreaking 1949 stage musical based on James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winni...
BWW Review: Haunting World Premiere Play LITTLE BLACK SHADOWS Sees the Light at South Coast Repertory
What our schoolbooks lack in historical accuracy, art can sometimes pick up the slack by being a reliable, more enthusiastic source to fill in those gaps. This becomes abundantly clear immediately upon experiencing the haunting yet beautifully-dramatized world premiere play LITTLE BLACK SHADOWS, Kem...
BWW Review: Nathan Gunn Aims High with FLYING SOLO at the Laguna Playhouse
One of America's most accomplished and in-demand Baritones today, Nathan Gunn has one of those deeply lush singing voices that can pierce your heart just as it can effortlessly command the room's attention. He does exactly both with his impressive world premiere one-man show FLYING SOLO which contin...
BWW Review: Musical Theatre West Surprises with the Delightful NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT
Once in a while, you come across a stage show that, on paper, may not have had the buzz that other high-profile shows may have had initially, but then you see it … and it just completely surprises you in the best possible way. That pretty much sums up my recent experience with the oh-so delightful...
BWW Review: South Coast Repertory Stages World Premiere of SHREW!
How do you "fix" the misogyny of Shakespeare's now antiquated THE TAMING OF THE SHREW? For playwright Amy Freed, it means injecting it with a noticeable dose of equality empowerment, and then shifting its characters' traits and motivations as if written from a female's perspective. That is the premi...
BWW Review: 10 Reasons Why THE BOOK OF MORMON Tour at Segerstrom Arts Is Still a Hella Funny, Hella Good Show
One thing is for certain about THE BOOK OF MORMON: this memorable, whip-smart, and downright gut-busting Broadway musical is still one of the funniest---if not the funniest---musical ever to exist in the 21st Century. The tour's return trip to Orange County's Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa ...
BWW Review: Powerful New Play CAMBODIAN ROCK BAND Makes World Premiere at South Coast Repertory
The tragic events surrounding the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime in mid-70's Cambodia serves as the overarching backdrop that links the past and the (near) present in Lauren Yee's stunning new play CAMBODIAN ROCK BAND---which continues its World Premiere production at Orange County's Tony Award-winn...
Review: JACKIE UNVEILED by Saffron Burrows as One of America's Most Private Public Figures
Directed by Jenny Sullivan in the smaller Lovelace Studio Theater at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts so that no matter where you are seated, Burrows will repeatedly pull you into the very private life of this American icon on two of the most traumatic evenings of her life. Act I ...
BWW Review: Catch The Moon - One Handed Catch! West Side Story In Concert Reached For The Stars And Soared At The McCallum
Leonard Bernstein would have been 100 years old this year, on August 25th to be precise, and there are literally thousands of commemorative events around the globe including performances of symphonies, operas and ballets, lectures, exhibits, and film and music festivals. Last Friday I attended the ...
Review: ALLEGIANCE Musically Celebrates the Power of the Human Spirit
George Takei is known for his founding role as Mr. Sulu in the acclaimed television series Star Trek and as an influential social media icon. But long before that fame, Takei was born in Boyle Heights and spent his childhood in the Rohwer Incarceration Camp in Arkansas and later at Tule Lake in Nor...
BWW Review: Melanie Griffith Headlines Stage Adaptation of THE GRADUATE at the Laguna Playhouse
Golden Globe winner Melanie Griffith can now be seen on stage playing pop culture's most famous cougar, Mrs. Robinson---the infamous 'mom of a certain age' who uses her predatory sexuality to seduce a recent college graduate into entering a torrid affair---in a new production of THE GRADUATE, which ...
BWW Review: Segerstrom Center Welcomes the Gorgeous Lincoln Center Theater Production of THE KING AND I
Featuring outstanding performances from a cast led by Laura Michelle Kelly and Jose Llana, the beautiful and exquisite national tour production of Lincoln Center Theater's Tony Award-winning revival of the 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein classic THE KING AND I leaves audiences utterly spellbound by its...
BWW Review: Del Shores Introduces SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF A PLAY Inspired by Real-Life Encounters with Quirky People
Celebration Theatre is a very small venue known for putting on very big musicals and doing them very well. But I have to tell you, seeing Del Shores claim the stage as his own was really a treat as he transformed himself into not only his mother but several other friends and relatives from his chil...
Segerstrom Center Presents HAMILTUNES: AN AMERICAN SING-ALONG, Hosted by Seth Rudetsky
Segerstrom Center for the Arts invites fans and fanatics of Broadway's mega hit Hamilton to gather on the Julianne and George Argyros Plaza and let their collective voices ring out during HAMILTUNES : AN AMERICAN SING - ALONG. Everyone is a star in this fun community sing - along on Saturday, March ...
Review: MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET Shares an Incredible Recording Session in Rock and Roll History
It ended too soon is all I can say. I could have kept dancing for hours to the music being celebrated from the stage in MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET, now being presented by 3-D Theatricals in Redondo Beach and Cerritos. For those like me who have always been a fan of wild child Jerry Lee Lewis and the se...
BWW Review: OC's Chance Theater presents Touching Musical VIOLET
A quieter, more down-to-earth musical-but done so with a bellowing musical prowess thanks to book writer and lyricist Brian Crawley and composer Jeanine Tesori-VIOLET explores the multiple layers of feelings associated with being and living life as an 'other' within an environment that promotes (and...
BWW Review: KINKY BOOTS Tour Struts Into Segerstrom Center for the Arts
For the most part, the brief Orange County return of the Tony Award-winning musical smash KINKY BOOTS---which continues its quick week-long stop at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa through February 11---pretty much preserves its hard-to-escape fabulousness. Its current incarnation as a n...
BWW Review: Tony-winning Superstar Kristin Chenoweth Triumphantly Returns to OC's Segerstrom Center
Luckily for some of us who don't have the luxury or the time to simply catch every show that Tony Award-winning musical superstar Kristin Chenoweth does in New York City, she is a prolific touring artist, opting often to bring her sweet and sassy singing self to audiences around the world via enjoya...
BWW Review: SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE Stage Adaptation Romances at South Coast Repertory
Witty, enchanting, and joyously self-referential, the original film version of SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE fantasizes a story involving a young, virile William Shakespeare in his prime, who quells a bout of writer's block by secretly romancing an engaged lady named Viola---which apparently becomes the inspi...
BWW Review: THE HOT LIST! What's Hot on Stage Now
So many productions are happening all over the city. Here's what made the Hot List: Bugaboo & the Silent One, The Hothouse, Cabaret, Pirates of Penzance, Shakespeare in Love, Disney's Aladdin. Go see a show!...
BWW Review: THE CAR PLAYS Makes Its Highly-Anticipated Return Trip to Segerstrom Center
Still one of the most the most unique and thrilling live theatrical offerings you will ever experience, THE CAR PLAYS has once again parked themselves at the Julianne and George Argyros Plaza at Segerstrom Center for the Arts for another highly-anticipated round of claustrophobic, stopped-in-traffic...
BWW Review: Flashy New Production of CABARET High-Kicks Into La Mirada Theatre
Despite my well-earned affection for the Tony-winning 1998 Roundabout Theatre Company production of the classic Kander and Ebb Broadway classic CABARET, I still found myself vigorously entertained by McCoy Rigby Entertainment's flashy and buoyant new 2018 regional production of this theatrical stapl...
BWW Review: Powerhouse Vocals Celebrate 100 Years of Leonard Bernstein at Segerstrom Center
Filled with one amazing powerhouse vocal performance after another, ONE HAND, ONE HEART: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF BERNSTEIN is a musical theater lover's treat of a concert, celebrating the legacy of one of music's most influential musicians and composers of the last century, Leonard Bernstein. Featuring...
BWW Review: Laguna Playhouse Stages Gripping Pulitzer Prize winning I AM MY OWN WIFE
Featuring a remarkable, awards-worthy, tour-de-force performance by actor John Tufts that will easily win you over no matter what your personal tastes or beliefs or politics may be, this admirable new regional production of Doug Wright's Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning play I AM MY OWN WIFE---beauti...
Videos
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C.S. Lewis On Stage: Further Up & Further In Irvine Barclay Theatre (7/09-7/10) |
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Hershey Felder: The Piano & Me South Coast Repertory (6/10-6/21) |
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Gorillaz Oakland Arena (10/28-10/28) |
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UB40 Fred Kavli Theatre (10/25-10/25) |
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The Book of Mormon (Non-Equity) Segerstrom Center for the Arts (12/29-1/03) |
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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Segerstrom Center for the Arts (7/05-7/25) |
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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Segerstrom Center for the Arts (7/11-7/25) |
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Jekyll & Hyde the Musical Rose Center Theater (6/12-6/28) |
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Ah Ha! Bluebird Park (6/06-6/06) PHOTOS VIDEOS |
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The Sound of Music Segerstrom Center for the Arts (6/02-6/14) |
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