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BWW Reviews: Amazing composer Michele Brourman Wows Audience at Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal
On Sunday April 22 composer Michele Brourman (left), joined by gifted singer Pat Whiteman (right), presented a quite extraordinary evening of mostly original musical material at Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal. Brourman is best known for cabaret standards such as 'My Favorite Year', with lyrics b...
BWW Reviews: Geffen Presents a Riveting GOOD PEOPLE
As in Wonder of the World and Rabbit Hole, previous works of David Lindsay-Abaire, the playwright is not afraid to go to extremes to make a point. World is exceedingly comedic, Hole far more serious, but both have characters who find their way via a path less tread. Such is also the case with his dr...
BWW Reviews: Welk Resort Theatre in Escondido Offers Enjoyable Stepping Out
Stepping Out by British TV writer Richard Harris is not a musical, although it was turned into one in 2010. It's a play with music and is set in Northern England in 1984, the same time period and place as Billy Elliot. It's the tale of eight women and one man who take a weekly local tap class in the...
BWW Reviews: PHANTOM’S LEADING LADIES Unmask Harmonies At The Annenberg Theater
Phantom's Leading Ladies, a trio of Broadway veterans who have all performed the role of 'Christine Daae' from The Phantom of the Opera brought an eclectic evening of music and mostly glorious three-part harmonies to The Annenberg Theater on April 14. The women that comprise The Phantom's Leading La...
BWW Reviews: Pantages Hosts a Triumphant BILLY ELLIOT
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 ...
BWW Reviews: MTW Racks Up Another Hit with Forbidden Broadway: Volume 2
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....
BWW Reviews: SCR Stages Funny Debut Play THE PRINCE OF ATLANTIS
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...
BWW Reviews: THE BOOMERANG EFFECT Crackles at the Odyssey
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...
BWW Reviews: GCT's Man with the Pointed Toes is a Winner
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...
BWW Reviews: New DEATHTRAP is a Must See at the Gay and Lesbian Center of LA
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...
BWW Reviews: Rubicon's HELLO! MY BABY Scores Big Time
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. ...
BWW Reviews: Hershey Felder's Lincoln is a Class Act at Pasadena Playhouse
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...
BWW Reviews: IN THE HEIGHTS Mostly Soars At The McCallum Theatre
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....
BWW Reviews: Hal Linden And David Brenner Bring Class and Comedy To The McCallum Theatre
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 ...
BWW Reviews: Troubies Score Once More at the Falcon
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...
BWW Reviews: Kentwood Players Offer Excellent OLIVER!
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...
A CONVERSATION WITH LARRY KING Less Than Stimulating at The McCallum Theatre
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...
BWW Reviews: Over the Moon's SPRING AWAKENING Will Still Resonate Despite Lack of Depth
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....
BWW Reviews: BLAST! Blows The Roof Off The McCallum Theatre
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...
BWW Reviews: AMERICAN IDIOT Hits the Ahmanson
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...
BWW Reviews: Laguna Playhouse Celebrates an Early Easter with Sister's Hilarious CATECHISM Sequel
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...
BWW Reviews: Disney Channel's Reba Buhr a Hit at Sterling's Upstairs at Vitello's
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...
BWW Reviews: BLAST Blasts Audiences Away, Comes to Modesto, SoCal
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...
BWW Reviews: Ballet Preljocaj Presents Stunning BLANCHE NEIGE in U.S. Tour
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...
Videos
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The Most Happy Fella North Coast Repertory Theatre (6/03-6/28) |
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Melt : The Play The Marilyn Theatre at the Lee Strasberg Institute (6/11-6/13) |
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Millennials Are Killing Musicals Colony Theatre (4/30-5/17) |
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Tristan and Yseult Electric Company Theatre (6/02-6/24) |
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For Want of a Horse Atwater Village Theatre (4/17-5/25) |
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An Evening with Garrison Keillor Smothers Theatre (5/21-5/21) |
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Paris + Juliet The Broadwater Studio (6/05-6/28) |
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Ball Boy Los Angeles LGBT Center, Davidson / Valentini Theatre (6/09-6/27) |
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Three Days Grace, I Prevail & The Funeral Portrait SAP Center (11/18-11/18) |
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OTR: A New Play OTR: A New Play (11/23-11/27) |
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