LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

Les Miserables/music by Claude-Michel Schonberg; lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer/original French text by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel/directed by Brian Kite/La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts/through June 22...

Dorian's Descent/World Premiere Musical/DOMA/book by Marco Gomez, Michael Gray, Chris Raymond/music by Chris Raymond; lyrics by Marco Gomez and Chris Raymond/choreographed by Tania Possick/directed by Marco Gomez/through July 20...

On Sunday June 1 Joan Ryan brought her 2013 BWW award-winning show to the Catalina Jazz Club. The show was recently retitled On the Edge. The evening was a benefit for the Trevor Project and brought a special guest star to the stage Will and Grace's Eric McCormack....

The 46th Kritzerland show on Sunday, June 1 featured one of the most influential female lyricists of all time, the great Dorothy Fields. In a time when Tin Pan Alley was almost exclusively a male-dominated club, Dorothy Fields rose to the top, first writing hit after hit with Jimmy McHugh, and later...

With performances through June 21 in Los Angeles, the two-act story ballet LA SYLPHIDE will be paired with George Balanchine's romantic SERENADE at four of Los Angeles Ballet's home venues: UCLA's Royce Hall, The Alex Theatre in Glendale, Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, and Valley Performing A...

MUCKRAKERS is a searing examination of modern journalism in an age when nothing seems to be worth keeping private anymore. In the play, the two characters caught up in the political espionage drama are Mira, a young female activist who brings Stephen, a famous and slightly older British political jo...

The San Pedro Theatre Club presents CABARET, a musical based on a book written by Christopher Isherwood, with music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The production is directed by Drew Fitzsimmons and Victoria Miller, who also choreographed, with music directed by Leslie Sharp. The intimate 78-...

When I first saw the film of Educating Rita in the early 80s I was captivated by Julie Walters. It made the Brit actress an international star. Now at Theatre 40 Willy Russell's play Educating Rita receives a handsome staging with another captivating beauty Murielle Zuker. It's a two-character play ...

Despite some glitches in lighting and sound, which obviously irritated her, and some throat problems due to a cold, Neile Adams proved a great trouper once more as she adhered to the old adage ' the show must go on' and wholeheartedly essayed The Lives of Me at the Monroe Theatre of the El Portal Sa...

AGAINST THE WALL was started as a workshop back in 1986, based on playwright Charlie Mount's experiences performing in the basements and on the stages of New York's comedy clubs as a stand-up and magician, working alongside other newcomers like Jon Stewart, Chris Rock, and Ray Romano. Presented as p...

Not Man Apart Physical Theatre Ensemble opens its 2014 season with a Los Angeles premiere of AJAX IN IRAQ by award-winning playwright Ellen Mclaughlin, directed and choreographed by NMA artistic director John Farmanesh-Bocca. The play intertwines the important and timely issue of sexual abuse agains...

Back in the 50s, the era that was innocence personified, Broadway musicals were written to entertain first. Of course, Stephen Sondheim and other more serious composers were beginning to change the face of the American musical with the goal to enlighten, but shows like Li'l Abner, with book by Norma...

Highly theatrical in style, HOLDING THE MAN runs the gamut from absurdism to magical realism (including unique puppets designed by Alex "Jurgen" Ferguson) to naturalism to farce to deep drama. It is a celebration of love that speaks across generations, sexual preference and culture. It will grab yo...

Love and Pizza…and Shakespeare! That's what authors Kim Askew and Amy Helmes have cooked up Chicago-style in ANYONE BUT YOU, book three of their popular Twisted Lit series for young adults. Each of the stand-alone books takes a classic Shakespearean story and spins it into a modern tale that is fr...

What do the 1950s have in common with 1912? Ages of innocence, both. When Meredith Willson wrote his story with Franklin Lacey about a con artist bamboozling an Iowa town in 1912, which formed the substance of his musical The Music Man (1957), the effect became like that of N. Richard Nash's The Rai...

It's always nice to revisit a show and see a 100% improvement. Such is the case with the rewritten spoof A Big Gay North Hollywood Wedding at Crown City Theatre, which opened May 15 for an extended run, at least throughout the summer. The first time around - 2009 - (review below) I noticed a lot of ...

On Sunday May 18 at Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal phenomenal Broadway singer Terri White brought down the house with her all new cabaret show Two Score with musical direction by the incomparable Bryan Miller. The slightly under one hour set marked the second appearance, by popular demand, of th...

DiPrieto's play is affectionately written and deftly sketches the growing attraction between two lonely seniors, Ralph and Carol, providing some nicely observed character comedy. Perry Shields' deft direction keeps the action moving at a fast clip, with all four actors perfectly cast. Ralph's cute f...

After being on the road for almost two years now, the hilarious Tony Award-winning Broadway musical hit THE BOOK OF MORMON has finally made its way inside the OC... And, man, it's about frikkin' time. All that hype and hyperbole about just how amazing this show is isn't an exaggeration; every accola...

Beneath the genteel suburban surface in A DELICATE BALANCE, the real questions raised are existential, abstract, and dangerous - from the unknown fear that taunts their neighbors to the response they receive from Agnes and Tobias, a couple who has been living in separate bedrooms for years in their ...

Think Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Move the action ahead a century or so, adding Asian Americans and Mexican-Americans to the Anglo-Saxon mix and you come out with a very contemporary perspective of a small American town in Kimber Lee's different words for the same thing, beautifully staged by direct...

Unorganized Crime/by Kenny D'Aquila/directed by David Fofi/Elephant Theatre/through May 31...

The Ghost of Gershwin/A New Old-Fashioned Musical/book by Doug Haverty/music by Wayland Pickard/lyrics by Wayland Pickard & Laura Manning/directed by Jules Aaron/Group rep at Lonny Chapman Theatre, NoHo/through June 22...

Though the term is rarely used today, there was an era when ending up an old maid was the worst possible scenario for a woman. Hard times and modest dreams made finding a husband a requirement for happiness, especially during the Depression when people lived off the land, family meant all, and survi...

It's ALIVE!!! A hilarious, high energy Broadway musical based on the Oscar-nominated smash hit 1974 film, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN is the wickedly inspired re-imagining of the Mary Shelley classic from the comic genius of Mel Brooks. A Tony award-winner in 2008, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN is just what the doctor ...