LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

The Producers/book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan/music and lyrics by Mel Brooks/choreography (recreated from the original) by Linda Love Simmons/original direction recreated by David Lamoureux/3-D Theatricals @/Redondo Performing Arts Center/through March 2...

Debra Ehrhardt's solo show JAMAICA FAREWELL has returned to the Santa Monica Playhouse after successful runs all over the world. It is based on a mostly true story about her journey to the U.S. from Jamaica in the turbulent 1970s of the Manley era, when a careless step along the way could cost her m...

With the Winter Olympics upon us, and recent attempts to reign in NSA spying, the time is ripe for a musical comedy with a Russian accent. And that's what OBAMA SPY DRAMA, the new show from City in a Swamp Productions, provides in abundance. Along with musical parodies, the satire is filled with spy...

THE BEST OF BROADWAY concert selections include rousing renditions of Broadway show tunes, accompanied by the Center Stage Opera orchestra, led spectacularly by guest conductor Ryan Rowles. All of the soloists have rich, full voices, with standout performances by those who acted the songs rather th...

What does it mean to have faith in God? What makes a family? These two questions fuel conflicting passions in the Los Angeles premiere of Matthew Lopez's THE WHIPPING MAN, directed with a deep understanding of the Jewish faith by Howard Teichman, Artistic Director of West Coast Jewish Theatre....

If 'all the youth of England are on fire,' as the first speech of HENRY V's Act II declares, then all the Porters of Hellsgate have carried the torch forward with guns blazing. Without a doubt, this is the Porters' finest stage work to date and a testament to the kind of theatre magic that can be cr...

Noel Coward's film Brief Encounter (1945) based on his 1936 play Still Life, is perhaps one of the finest movies ever made about illicit romance. Now the Kneehigh production from London, which played Broadway in 2010 to great acclaim, an event quite unlike any you will ever see, is being mounted at ...

Inner Circle Theatre Company explores the essence of love in its debut production, R+J EQUAL LOVE, directed by Casey Kringlen and adapted by Kringlen and Liz Nolan. In two acts, each slightly less than an hour, they tell the love story of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet twice, with two women in the t...

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...

Like a beautiful painting Adam Guettel's The Light in the Piazza is a true work of art. With discordant music not unlike that of Stephen Sondheim, written for a small chamber orchestra, feelings of love - from all kinds of people -fuel passionately. Without the right actresses to play the American m...

Talk about quirkiness and how it can be used to its best advantage in a musical! The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is terribly funny in a smart, slick, offbeat manner with prize worthy characterizations of lively eclectic people.It may be a tad long like the actual spelling out of words (th...

If you have never seen THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK onstage, do not miss your chance to see it at the small black box Cupcake Theater in Hollywood, directed with a skilful hand and emotional insight by Sabrina Lloyd, starring Sigi Gradwohl as Anne Frank. Lloyd and Gradwohl present Anne's two-year ordeal...

Dubbed 'Valentine's Day with Matthew Morrison,' the three-night engagement of the OC native's entertaining, high-energy take on swinging, big-band jazz standards and classic Broadway showtunes continues through Saturday, February 15 at the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa. Behol...

It's been awhile since I can honestly say I was emotionally overwhelmed by a night of theater. There are so many thoughts wandering in and out of my mind that I hardly know where to begin except to say that religion, politics and theater collide superlatively under the imaginative and quick-paced d...

Called by many the perfect musical, My Fair Lady based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion has perhaps the wittiest and showiest debate between the sexes. Shaw despised marriage and loved to magnify human frailty, both female and male. And with Lerner and Loewe to create the book, music and lyrics, t...

After a stellar off-Broadway run in 2012, and a Tony-award winning Broadway production in 2013, the Los Angeles premiere of Christopher Durang's "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike", opened Sunday night at the Mark Taper Forum, and it was well worth the wait to see....

Christopher Durang loves to take a somewhat placid environment and turn it upside down, inside out. What doesn't happen matters just has much if not more than what does and the characters let out their feelings at the slightest provocation. Sound like it's right out of Anton Chekhov? When Sonia give...

Comedienne Gilda Radner became one of the most idolized comic figures of the 70s as well as a popular tragic heroine of the 80s as she lost her battle with Ovarian cancer. Possessing an edgy brilliance that defied description, she lived passionately for every moment and won the hearts of millions. W...

The play examines the nature of honesty, and its use of a play within a play is one of many levels on which the author teases the audience with the difference between semblance and reality, both in love and on the stage. Couples change partners easily and partners confront each other when the eviden...

Truly one of the most elegant, though underrated musicals of the new century, THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA---now on stage in a lovely new production at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through February 23---follows the uneasy journey that a loving, though over-protective mother must embark on when her...

With so many theatrical offerings and special events in the desert during "high season" it is easy for a smaller production, without the benefit of a hefty marketing budget, to get a little overlooked. This seems to be the case with a little gem of a musical playing at The Desert Rose Playhouse, and...

The Hamilton Music Academy is blessed with one of the few remaining full auditoriums within Los Angeles City Schools, complete with wings that allow large set pieces to be moved on and off the stage. John Paul Luckenbach's set pieces appear to be easily and quickly moved by cast members, incorporati...

Love and pharmaceuticals make for a strange cocktail in Kate Fodor's piercing new comedy Rx. Containing equally strong doses of satire and insight, Fodor's play strikingly portrays our over-medicated society, which has a pill to alleviate every uncomfortable emotion. A winning combination of comedy ...

If life really is about not taking anything too seriously, as Mel Brooks would have us believe, then do yourself a favor and see 3DT's production of The Producers. It may be politically incorrect but it's the funniest version of this musical I've ever seen and it will push you to have a good time in...

To borrow a tagline from the long-running reality TV series 'The Real World,' the wickedly amusing GOD OF CARNAGE shows exactly 'what happens when people stop being polite... and start getting real.' Well, at least, 'real' in a comically over-the-top way, that is. This outrageous farce---directed by...