LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

On Sunday August 26, singer/actress Ilene Graff brought her heavenly show First You Dream to Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal to a packed house of ardent fans and celebrated LA friends....

Is he or isn't he? That is the question of utmost importance in Michael Hollinger's GHOST-WRITER, especially since the "he" to whom the question refers is acclaimed novelist Franklin Woolsey (Leland Crooke) who happens to be dead....

Shakespeare Orange County closes out its summer season with a sparkling production of Shakespeare's MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING that time travels its characters to Messina, Italy in the 1920's. There amid the sultry Mediterranean breeze, Jazz Age music, and stylish flapper frocks, Cupid and his henchmen ...

If you've noticed an increase in seismic activity in the LA basin lately, the epicenter can be clearly be traced to the main stage at the Mark Taper Forum, where the powerful production of John Logan's "Red" opened August 12th to thunderous applause and an instantaneous standing ovation....

With a fine cast and outstanding direction from Andrew Barnicle, Blame It On Beckett makes hilarious waves at the Colony through September 2....

Now on the Falcon stage with a vibrant cast and skillful direction from BT McNicholl, The Gronholm Method wins over its audience not with its message, but rather with its grand theatricality....

Coeurage Theatre Company's ASSASSINS is dark, funny, and often unsettling, but it hits its mark in surreal solidarity by meeting the demands of the provocative material head-on....

Actor/singer Cortes Alexander debuted his delightful Swell Party at Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal on Monday August 13. What a uniquely fun evening of anecdote and song! Alexander worked with Liza Minnelli in Liza at the Palace, but she met him years before when his group The Tonics had a regula...

Many plays with an art theme have been written over the past decades, chief among them Yasmina Reza's Art, which shows the positive and negative effects of art on everyday life, but in John Logan's Red, it is the artist (Mark Rothko) himself who holds court, and the audience shares his space with hi...

70s pop icon Helen Reddy made a much anticipated return to singing with two concerts, one at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano Friday August 10 and then Saturday August 11 at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills. I covered the event on Saturday at the Canyon Club, and depsite hours of traffic conges...

Gritty reality is mixed with just enough voodoo/black magic and unique cultural humor to make for a very absorbing and enjoyable evening of theatre as presented by the Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble (LDTE) at the Lost Studio....

Mary Poppins, which opened at the Ahmanson on August 10 and runs through September 2, proves to be the perfect film to turn into a show. Flashy, whimsical, and packed with songs like "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," "Feed the Birds, "A Spoonful of Sugar" and "Let's Go Fly A Kite" that had Ameri...

While overly melodramatic and a bit cliched, MEMPHIS--the winner of the 2010 Tony Award for Best Musical now performing at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood through August 12--is, overall, a rousing, electrically-charged show that rightfully triumphs because of its slick production values and its in...

Who was one of the most prolific singers of romantic pop in the 60s/70s/80s? And who created the little gems she sang? If you answered Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach, you win today's prize. Well, ...on Sunday, August 5 Bruce Kimmel's Kritzerland paid tribute to the musical genius that is Burt Bac...

An uncanny incarnation! A perfect replica! Such have been the reviews worldwide for Sunny Thompson in her remarkable performance as Marilyn Monroe in Greg Thompson's Marilyn Forever Blonde, which played the El Portal Mainstage last weekend to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Monroe's death. The...

OMG! You mean, like, Elle Woods isn't from the San Fernando Valley, but from Malibu? Wow! And- she not only attended college locally but got into Harvard Law School? May seem a bit far-fetched or too hard to swallow, but it doesn't matter, because once you've seen Elle in action, she's irresistible:...

Once again making the audacious gamble to re-work one of musical theater's most sacred properties, the little award-winning theater company with big visions, the Chance Theater, is currently staging an admirable, revamped version of the Laurents/Bernstein/Sondheim classic WEST SIDE STORY for a just-...

Now on its national tour, Memphis docks at the Pantages for two weeks only through August 12, and the production is thrilling from top to bottom with a great book, great score, sensational direction and choreography and a truly fantastic cast of triple threat actors, singers and dancers. Memphis is ...

The New Electric Ballroom is wonderfully theatrical, creating a kind of sensual experience of pain/pleasure one is unlikely to forget - ever....

For the third summer in a row Theatre 40 is turning back time to present a delightfully eerie murder mystery thriller: first, it was Agatha Christie's Black Coffee, then last summer The Spider's Web, and now, from the early twenties, Mary Roberts Rinehart's and Avery Hopwood's The Bat. The current p...

Another truly masterful turn - this time as Liza Minnelli - is what Peter Mac presents in his newest tribute show Liza in Concert. Sharing the weekend bill - Thursdays & Fridays through August, with mama Judy Garland on Saturdays and Sundays, Liza has deliciously choice things to say about ex-hubbie...

As presented in its current iteration, the current national tour of LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, for the most part, remains a genuinely entertaining enterprise--a cheeky farce filled with super silly situations, wildly outrageous characters, a witty book by Harvey Fierstein, and a memorable Jerry Herman scor...

3-D Theatricals accomplishes its purpose effortlessly with AVENUE Q. Full of bright, bouncy songs and lyrics that make you do a double take, they prove you can get away with almost anything...as long is it's said by a puppet....

Ridiculously silly in all the right ways and featuring a comically gifted, star-studded principal cast--headed up by Richard Kind, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Rebecca Romijn, Dane Cook, Gary Beach, and Roger Bart--that delivers the goods with infectious gusto, this large-scale revival on this outdoor aren...

To the uninitiated, Zombie Joe's BLOOD OF MACBETH may look like merely a mad, manic assault on the senses, but there's a method to director Josh T. Ryan's madness. His version of the Scottish play (co-written with producer Zombie Joe) purposely shreds Shakespeare's tale into a ferocious - and often ...