LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

I have visited Laguna Beach for several consecutive summers, enjoying the vibrant arts scene by spending a full day wandering through THE SAWDUST FESTIVAL, THE LAGUNA ART A-FAIR, FESTIVAL OF ARTS and PAGEANT OF THE MASTERS, with all sites, including the Laguna Playhouse, within walking distance of e...

However, director Mattsson, who helmed the Morgan's sold-out hit production of Mary Poppins last season, certainly should have known about the theater's sound system problems and addressed them in advance of the opening. For as entertaining as this big rock musical should have been, unfortunately it...

Winner of the 2019 Encore! Producers' Award, Rewind is a Musical Tale about Love, Redemption and the Magic of Second Chances.   A powerful producer derails a young girl's promising music career and she spends the next 50 years waiting tables.  When the producer skydives out of a plane, he is m...

Theatre Royale has been touring Southern California presenting a Broadway-quality production of Disney's NEWSIES starting at the Pechanga Resort Casino in Temecula, CA on June 22 and ending in Fresno with two performances on July 13, 2019 at 2pm and 8pm. I can tell you after seeing the show at the S...

Presented by Celebration, The Los Angeles Intimate Theatre Premiere of "The Producers" opened Friday, June 28, 2019 at the Lex Theatre in Hollywood to a sold-out crowd and garnered a deserved standing ovation at curtain. It's RuPaul meets Mel Brooks in this delicious rendition of a show that's be...

RIVERDALE Scribe Explores The Fruits Of The Poisonous Trees in GOOD BOYS....

As performed by the 'pretty and witty' Melanie Johnson, who manages to deliver writerdirector Ryan J-W Smith's iambic pentameter monologue as if it was the most natural way for her to speak, I learned how this girl from the wrong side of the tracks, born as common as they come, made her way into cou...

Luminario Ballet of Los Angeles is a very unique and valuable, strong and powerful Dance Company. They offered up two fantastic evenings of Dance, Song, Music and a Q&A, last weekend at Club Fais Do Do, and this past weekend at the Skirball Center, in conjunction with a Fashion Exhibit of Rudy Gern...

DEATH OF A SALESMAN, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Arthur Miller, is the American Hamlet for actors of a certain age. Its protagonist is a complex, frighteningly bare role, that provides an acting challenge relished by the greats. Rob Morrow, best known for Robert Redford's QUIZ SHOW and the qu...

In 1936, producer David O. Selznick began a 2-year search to find an unknown to play Scarlett O'Hara in his soon-to-be film masterpiece Gone with the Wind. At this year's Hollywood Fringe Festival, Kick Boom Theater Company is re-telling the (mostly true) story in its inaugural production of the inn...

From the moment Jenelle Lynn Randall appeared at the top of the Studio C staircase, there was magic in the air as she descended with great style and bravado to share the life, music, and oversized personality of Eartha Kitt. As the writer, creator and executive producer of the Fringe 2019 show, it's...

The U.S. premiere of ANNE, A NEW PLAY receives a sturdy mounting by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, under the strong directing reins of Eve Brandstein. The uniformly talented ensemble present most translucently the re-imagined Anne Frank's Diary of A Young Girl, in the words of playwrights Jessica Durl...

Fresh off showcasing at the prestigious ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop, acclaimed composer Michael Gordon Shapiro's captivating, award-winning musical THE BULLY PROBLEM is thrilling Fringe audiences with its sweet, poignant, and action-packed musical about bullying, standing up for yourself…and ro...

Lynne Jassem, a tiny, diminutive but feisty woman, tells and taps out the story of her life as a child performer, overly-smothered and pushed relentlessly by a stage-mom, who was once a Rockette, that led her into much turmoil in her following years.  She re-enacts her childhood dance classes, port...

INDECENT now onstage at Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson Theatre in a co-production with Huntington Theatre Company, magnificently directed by Rebecca Taichman, is as close to a Broadway-quality production as you will ever see in the City of Angels, with incredibly entertaining, stylized movement perfo...

Presented through July 8 at part of the Whitefire Theatre Musical Mondays, the updated and unrated SHAME OF THRONES: The Musical, directed by Rachel Stein, produced by Steven Christopher Parker, Steven Brandon, Erin Stegeman, and Ace Marrero is a riotous romp through not only the beginning of the se...

Being a child is tough enough, but add an act of racism to your young life while living in a small town and one grows up rather quickly....

Certainly, all of us can think of mistakes we made which caused unseen, or perhaps even planned, problems for our friends and/or family members. And as we age, it seems that when we recognize the need to make amends to set things right in our own lives, we need to do that before it's too late. But ...

Theatre Palisades is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Broadway opening of Ken Ludwig's LEND ME A TENOR, presenting the hilarious comedy which won three Tony Awards and four Drama Desk Awards. An angry wife, a presumed death, crazy costumes designed by June Lissandrello, secret sex romps, load...

The World Premiere of Lucas Hnath's DANA H. at the Kirk Douglas Theatre recounts the real-life story of the playwright's own mother, adapted from interviews with Dana Higginbotham which were conducted by Steve Cosson. Directed by Les Waters, the entire play is told in voiceovers from the real-life i...

Everything seems perfect at first for the famous actress Myra Marlowe (Diana Angelina) who has leased a fully-furnished "country living" style house so she can settle down to write her autobiography. But it's not so ideal for her long-time agent Tom Lamont (David Datz) who wants nothing more than to...

Despite its general pleasant nature, many cute moments, and a plethora of genuine talent on stage, this stage musical adaptation of CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY---Roald Dahl's beloved 1964 children's novel about a sweet, affable kid who wins a meet-and-greet (and more!) with an eccentric Candy ...

Coeurage Theatre Company's West Coast premiere of Roy Williams' SUCKER PUNCH consistently hits its target under the uber-tensioned, fast-paced direction of Michael A. Shepperd. Embodied by an all-around talented cast, all involved in channeling William's solid script to the stage should raise their...

Numi Opera began its inaugural season with Alexander Zemlinsky's almost forgotten Der Zwerg (The Dwarf), a piece once condemned by the Nazi Third Reich. In Los Angeles, the dark and cavernous ground floor of the Theatre at Ace Hotel was more than half full for the matinee performance on Sunday, June...

there is an excellent staging of Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, directed by Jack Heller as a visiting production at the Odyssey Theatre, presented by Dance On Productions in association with Linda Toliver and Gary Guidinger, that will allow you to forget how ...