LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

In 1984 when Northern English coal miners went on strike in defiance of Margaret Thatcher's announcement to dissolve the unions, there was little hope for the future. Prospects were dim for kids like Billy Elliot who would be expected to enter the family business like his dad and his dad before him ...

Parody must have bite to grab hold of an audience. Since its inception, the Forbidden Broadway series has had the incisors of a shark and the claws of a lion, and theatre folk just clammer to have their gods and divas dished and devoured....

In THE PRINCE OF ATLANTIS, Steven Drukman's funny new play set in the heavy-accented neighborhood of Nonantum, Massachusetts, the characters all seem to believe that the key to good relations with others and living a good life (or at least a nicer-than-average one) is to make things appear better th...

Not unlike Neil Simon with his zippy one-liners coming at you fast and furious, Matthew Leavitt has fashioned a very uptempo ultra-modern comedy about relationships in The Boomerang Effect that manages to slip in a substantial message or two whilst tickling the funny bone. Now onstage at the Odyssey...

Despite its predictability The Man with the Pointed Toes is an endearingly frothy romantic comedy a lot like the ones that Doris Day used to make in the 60s with James Garner or Rock Hudson. That's because Lynn and Helen Root, two prolific Broadway and Hollywood screen writers from the golden age a...

Broadway had one of its greatest commercial hits and the longest running comedy-thriller with Ira Levin's Deathtrap in 1978, and it was later filmed in 1982 with Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve. Like Sleuth before it, Deathtrap makes a game out of murder with plot twists too numerable to mentio...

Be assured that Hello! My Baby is by no means a musical revue, but an original book musical by Cheri Steinkellner, incorporating fine old standards from The Great American Songbook written in the early 1900s when the action of the play takes place on both the Upper and Lower East Sides of New York. ...

Hershey Felder has proven himself a virtuoso musician at the piano over the last fifteen years portraying Chopin, Beethoven, Bernstein and Gershwin, among others, and now with his original composition Lincoln for symphony orchestra and actor, he proves just how well he can sing and tell a story...wi...

The Tony Award winning Best Musical IN THE HEIGHTS, which celebrates life in a Washington Heights barrio, breezed in and out of the beautiful McCallum Theatre for three sold-out performances last weekend and did not disappoint - mostly....

Last night the McCallum Theatre played host to a double bill of music and comedy that, at first glance, seemed like a very odd pairing --- a duo with nothing in common - Tony winner and multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominated stage and television actor Hal Linden and comedian David Brenner, who is ...

They've done it again, by George, or should I say, by Will! They've topped themselves once more! The Troubies emerge super victorious with their presentation of Shakespeare's perhaps first ever play Two Gentlemen of Verona to the tunes of the rock band Chicago, renamed - you guessed it - Two Gentlem...

The musical Oliver!, like Annie, presents challenges galore for a small theatre, first of all because of its very large cast, a good portion of whom are children. Unless they are top of the line performers who have had at least some experience singing and dancing, the show could scream dismal failur...

Last night I walked into the beautiful McCallum Theatre with tremendous anticipation of a stirring and insightful evening --- the opportunity to have a "Conversation With Larry King". You would think that a man who has spent the past several decades talking with the most fascinating and important pe...

When Frank Wedekind wrote Spring Awakening in the late 1800's, he could hardly have imagined that a little over a century later his play would be transformed into a Tony Award-winning rock musical by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater....

Last weekend's 75 mile per hour winds may have left the roof of The McCallum Theatre intact, but the electrifying production of BLAST! just might do the trick! The sheer energy of this Tony-Award (2001 Tony Award For "Best Special Theatrical Event) and Emmy-Award (2001 Emmy Award For "Best Choreogra...

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Based on a concept album by the punk rock band Green Day, American Idiot, like Rent before it, revolutionizes musicals as it is one of a chosen few to combine genuine rock music with a narrative. It is big, bold and uninhibited in structure and style, and with next to no dialogue whatsoever, is able...

Funnylady MaryPat Donovan has been playing Sister for almost 20 years in her Late Nite Catechism, and it has spawned five sequels. The latest entitled Sister's Easter Catechism is full of silly, gossipy, laugh-out-loud anecdotes, mixing in popular secular issues with religion via totally clean humo...

On Sunday evening March 18 petite, lovely Reba Buhrmade her long awaited cabaret debut at Sterling's Upstairs at Vitello's with Will He Like Me? A Loves Story. Miss Buhr was one of the top five runners up of LA's Next Great Stage Star 2011 and is currently the host of Disney 365 on the Disney Channe...

From start to finish, "blast" consists of creative, high energy routines that make every number equally mind-blowing. After an amazing opening act that boasts impressive choreography, the multi-tasking continues. I've always wondered how actors manage to burst into song after a long dance number, an...

From the moment Blanche Neige begins - a pregnant, dying queen dragging herself across the floor and giving life to another in her own final moments - you know what lies ahead will challenge your preconceptions about the way Snow White's tale should be told. Yet as Angelin Preljocaj's ballet advance...

'People who smile at nothing are capable of anything', claims rigidly proper Charlotte Bartlett (Karen Ziemba), cousin and ward/chaperone to Lucy Honeychurch (Ephie Aardema) in the world premiere musical whose book is taken from the novel by E. M. Forster and the 1985 Merchant/Ivory film A Room with...

On Friday March 9 and Saturday March 10, three legendary Broadway talents 'put on a show' for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre called Doin' It For Love...and what a fabulous show it was! Under the musical direction of David Geist, the three greats - L...

On Friday March 9 and Sunday March 11, debonair Broadway tenor Brian Stokes Mitchell graced the stage of the Broad in Santa Monica for an intimate concert of standard tunes and Broadway favorites. Called by some critics the last Broadway leading man, Mitchell, or Stokes, as he prefers to be called, ...

Thoroughly engaging and endearing from the moment he steps on stage, Jake Ehrenreich brings his critically acclaimed A JEW GROWS IN BROOKLYN to the beautiful Annenberg Theater for a limited engagement through March 25 and my advice - RUN, DON'T WALK! This is a "must see" theatrical event....