LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

Remember the joy of being a kid and spending hours upon hours acting out stories using whatever you could find? When two sticks stood in for a swordfight to save the day or a towel became the mantle of a king? That's what it feels like watching PigPen Theatre Co. in THE OLD MAN AND THE OLD MOON at T...

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When you live anywhere that isn't the Westside, going to Santa Monica is a chore; but it was worth the drive Friday night to see City Garage Theatre's production of THE BOURGEOIS GENTLEMAN....

A beautiful snapshot into the variety that ballet provides....

Boston Court Pasadena's artistic director Michael Michetti assuredly directs his pitch-perfect cast in DEEE-livering the whip-smart words of David Hare's THE JUDAS KISS in a smooth, non-stop, totally involving pace. Chameleon Rob Nagle has once again transformed himself into another fully-fleshed ou...

On March 3, 2019, Pacific Opera Project (POP) presented its more-than-a-little-bit-zany version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's THE MAGIC FLUTE (DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE) at Los Angeles's El Portal Theatre. POP Director and Designer Josh Shaw and Baritone E. Scott Levin premiered a new English version of Emanu...

On March 2,2019, Los Angeles Opera presented Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's THE CLEMENCY OF TITUS (LA CLEMENZA DI TITO) in a production by Thaddeus Strassberger. Having directed and designed the colorful and monumental sets as well, Strassberger has achieved a major opus. Some scenes were played on the f...

Without a doubt, Andrew Lloyd Webber's hit musical CATS is of an era. Based on one of Lloyd Webber's favorite books as a child, T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, it was a perfect vehicle for the tastes of theatre lovers in the eighties, the decade of excess. The large-scale producti...

Menander Productions and Jamie Pierce have gathered a talented cast and crew to populate their world premiere of playwright Gina Torrecilla's ATTACK OF THE SECOND BANANAS, now at the Zephyr Theatre. Ryan Bergmann sharply directs his six-person ensemble in a slick, quick pace of much laughs and hilar...

Discussions proliferate about immigration reform, whether it be the building of a wall to protect our border or deporting those who enter our country illegally to milk the system for everything they can get for free thanks to American taxpayer dollars. But while our focus seems to be on our Southern...

Kevin Williamson is known as a movement artist, and he and his company, performing three performances as part of the 'Dance At The Odyssey 2019' dance festival on February 8th, 9th and 10th, has most certainly experimented extensively with the many shapes and forms of movement. Each of the three pie...

I had several reasons for wanting to see the West Coast Premiere of Jireh Breon Holder's TOO HEAVY FOR MY POCKET, produced by Scott Golden for Sacred Fools Theater Company, brilliantly directed by the talented Michael A. Shepperd, Artistic Director of Los Angeles' award-winning Celebration Theatre. ...

The Actors' Gang is presenting ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST by Dario Fo, directed at an incredibly fast and mind-boggling pace by Will Thomas McFadden, on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, through March 9th. Fo's works are characterized by criticisms of organized crime, political corrup...

Never has the relationship between Iago and Roderigo in Shakespeare's OTHELLO stolen the show like it does in the current A Noise Within production, directed by Jessica Kubzansky. With an outwardly nonchalant Michael Manuel as the revenge seeking villain, and Jeremy Rabb, an actor who knows comedy l...

Many have, of course, heard of the infamous Lizzie Borden, a young woman, who was charged with---but later acquitted of---the brutal axe murders of her father and stepmother in 1892. Strong curiosity and speculation remain til this day about the tragic events that took place more than a century ago,...

Playwright Ian McRae's THE JOY WHEEL kicks offs with one of the most effective opening, introductory scenes I've seen in a while. Jason Alexander smoothly and sure-handedly directs his two top-notch actors, Dann Florek and Gina Hecht as husband and wife Frank and Stella Conlin, as they vividly descr...

How do you scale down an epic musical like RAGTIME for a smaller stage and a different time? When it opened at the Shubert Theatre in Century City in 1997, the cast numbered nearly fifty, the same as it would for its Broadway debut later that year. The stage was enormous and the production filled ev...

New Adventure's Production of the tale of Cinderella has never been more salacious or delicious. The dancing is superb, as well as the artistry involved in every facet of the production. With the updated scenario created, Cindy's world is smack dab in the middle of World War II. Directed and Choreog...

The need for human connection runs deep in WITNESS UGANDA, a musical by Griffin Matthews and Matt Gould based on Matthews' real-life experiences in Uganda. At its center is the idea that we are all part of a global family - one world, one heart - connected by an invisible thread that never lets go....

Musical Theatre Guild was founded 21 years ago by a dedicated group of professional musical artists who were interested in exploring and preserving works from the musical theater repertoire that were either forgotten, neglected or unfairly dismissed. Working under a special Actors' Equity Concert S...

In this contemporary musical version of the famous (and infamous) 1978 movie adapted from the 1974 Stephen King novel, Carrie: The Musical follows a young woman with telekinetic powers. An outcast at school, where she is bullied viciously for her differences, Carrie (played by the very capable Tiann...

Currently a welcome, much-lauded presence in each city it visits, the top-notch first national tour of the multi-award-winning 2017 Broadway musical COME FROM AWAY---currently enchanting audiences at OC's Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa through February 17---is just the kind of timely s...

East West Players solidly world premieres playwright Anna Moench's MAN OF GOD , a witty, biting account of four teenage Korean girls on a prayer mission to Thailand under the guidance of their male pastor. What starts off as a mish-mash of teenage bickering and clashing personalities smoothly morphs...

Luckily for us, after a 10-year hiatus raising her adopted daughter Mulan ("Yes, that was her given name in China," she shared with embarrassment) with her Eastern European Jewish husband in suburban Chicago, the Irish Catholic comic recently moved back to Los Angeles to resume her career as a write...

It is obvious that the dancers in each company, The JA Collective, and The TL Collective are well trained and full of creativity. It takes countless hours of rehearsal to be that tight & in sync....