LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

From Ain't Misbehavin' and Big, prolific team Maltby & Shire produce a Tony nominated Baby - in which three couples at various stages of life find themselves expecting a child. Sound simple? Well, in Baby 's revised, West Coast premiere, it's pretty damn complicated as life's unexpected changes do n...

Quintessential_South_Pacific_Docks_At_Ahmanson_20010101 Who said film, not stage, was the director's medium? The Lincoln Center Theater Production of South Pacific is an example of just how one ingenious director's vision makes a great show even greater. The message of heartbreaking love across r...

The behind-the-scenes, utterly competitive process of being cast in a show is the subject of A CHORUS LINE, one of Broadway's biggest commercial musical hits ever. The current national tour, based on the successful 2006 Broadway revival, is now playing for a strictly two-week limited return engageme...

David Rambo's The Ice-Breaker is getting its Los Angeles premiere in a handsome production at Theatre 40. Although flawed, the play has enough going for it to capture audience acclaim. Set in Arizona in present time, The Ice-Breaker has an appealing romantic quality like old-fashioned plays, in whic...

Janet Krupin, the winner of LA's Next Great Stage Star 2010 performed her first cabaret Rhapsody in New on Saturday May 15 @ Sterling's Upstairs @ Vitello's....

Unusual and provocative best describe Sarah Ruhl's Pulitzer-Prize nominated The Clean House receiving its LA Premiere at the Odyssey. Under Stefan Kruck's consistently circular staging, the play elicits laughter through tears and is bound to be a hit with theatre lovers, especially with those who ha...

Hitchcock is known as the Master of Suspense. This creative team have taken a suspenseful Hitchcock film (1935) and gone a giant step further to fashion a thoroughly entertaining, high comedy cinematic suspense yarn for the stage....

Where's the nightmare? Not nearly as dark as it needs to be or musically enticing enough, Nightmare Alley at the Geffen, by its very nature should be diabolically thrilling like a Kander and Ebb musical but it doesn't cut the mustard, even with its exceptional cast including James Barbour, Larry Ced...

It is difficult not to be engaged in a well-written comedy with Jewish humor. Take Woody Allen's many plays or, for example, Jewtopia, which was such a gigantic hit a few years ago. Jewish people are not afraid to admit who they are and are the first to poke fun at their own family traditions and re...

In Lenny's Back, a vibrant one-person play about the late controversial comic Lenny Bruce, Sam Bobrick and wife Julie Stein penned an unpredictably exhilarating look at a man that for many fans was the king of comedy. In Bobrick's latest comedy The Psychic, he does not choose anyone famous; on the c...

Singer Mary Wilson is the guest star with the current Palm Springs Follies show Let the Good Times Roll through May 16. At 66 this lady is beautiful and has as much dynamic energy as she did when she performed with The Supremes in the 60s , so she fits right into the Follies. All these folks look an...

Most actresses who play legendary stars have to beware of too much affectation and mimicry. Cissy Conner knows well, as she is no stranger to portraying legends. Her performance as Marlene Dietrich a few years back was nothing short of stellar and brought her an Ovation nomination as Best Actress. N...

What a glorious little show so full of possibilities! Performed by eight men, delivering monologues made famous by Meryl Streep from many of her iconic films, there is something for everyone in this piece: comedy, drama, laughter, tears - and even audience participation. Yes, there are two quiz game...

Alexandra Billings, my pick for Best Female Cabaret Artist of 2009, celebrated her birthday at Sterling's Upstairs @ Vitello's on Sunday March 28. This unpredictably outrageous comedienne/actress/singer, who can belt out a tune with the greatest of the great, never ceases to amaze me....

Thankfully director David Lee is giving us a presentation of Forum @ Reprise based on the 1972 Broadway revival. Why? Because it includes 2 delightful songs not in the original 1962 New York production: 'Farewell' and 'Echo Song'. These 2 numbers add that extra special touch to Lee's dynamically dir...

On Sunday March 14 Tamra Lamese Dozier, Dana Shaw, Sheila Ferrari and Melissa Smilow presented their show Sex, Love & Whine @ Sterling's Upstairs @ Vitello's to a packed house, but half hour to curtain... all was not in their favor. During dinner, the lights went off on the entire block of Tujunga ...

Two character plays either work effectively or not at all. There's no in between. It takes a tight rapport between the actors to create a believable scenario. Chad Borden and Robert J. Townsend have such a chemistry that works divinely in The Story of My Life, a musical drama that is sweetly poetic ...

Slick, sleek, glitzy best describe the brand new tour production of the 1981 runaway hit Dreamgirls. Making use of the latest technology, the sometimes glaringly bright show is in your face from the top and never eases its pace for a split second. Why the excess? Today's audiences demand it....

The Spanish verb dispensar means to absolve or pardon; dispenso means I absolve or I pardon. It may be that Tony Tanner's slant on the Don Juan legend is just that: he forgives the man for living his life the way he did, and for that reason chose the name Dispenso for his character. Maybe. Don Juan ...

I loved the four gals playing the Broads - all talented - but the show needs a major overhaul. Too many jokes are tired old cliches - and singing about side effects from medications? Audiences do not find that entertaining as many experience these very problems on a daily basis. No one was laughing ...

Frank D. Gilroy's Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Subject Was Roses depicts a dysfunctional family circa 1946 whose son returns from WWII... a man. The strained day-to-day relationship between the mother and father changes for the better with his return, but only briefly, as buried feelings surface ...

Hearing Margot Mason's (Annette Bening) brash opening words on the phone to her publisher 'F*** You!', people will either automatically turn on or turn off to Joanna Murray-Smith's The Female of the Species about the misadventures of a fictional best-selling feminist writer plagued by writer's block...

Arthur Miller's talky play The Price does not quite stand up to his masterpieces All My Sons or Death of a Salesman. Focusing in on the disagreement between two brothers who come together for the first time in 16 years to sell off their father's antiques, it has its moments of tenderness and deep fe...

When I first reviewed Bark! The Musical at the Coast Playhouse in 2004 for reviewplays, I said it was a musical 'worth yip, yip, yipeaying about. Woof, woof, woof for joy!' Well, now it's on a much bigger stage in Redondo Beach, and because of a fantastic cast and creative team this very intimate li...

Hard to believe, but Sweeney Todd first bowed on Broadway in late 1979 and I was in New York to witness the brilliant achievement of Sondheim, Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou and the entire creative team. MTW is presenting the masterwork for the first time and to celebrate its 30th anniversary. They ...