LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

The west coast premiere of playwright Mfoniso Udofia's HER PORTMANTEAU receives a most reverential mounting at Boston Court Pasadena. Omoze Idehenre energetically supplies the needed jolt of energy and enthusiasm as Adiaha, Abasiama's loving daughter with the desire to please her mother's every whim...

Many baby boomers whose parents married quickly and inexpensively after World War II will identify with the premise in A CATERED AFFAIR, taking place in the Bronx in 1953. At the beginning of the play, we meet young lovers Janey Hurley (bubbly blonde Alison Boettcher) and Ralph Halloran (handsome Ch...

That joyful noise you hear coming from the Hollywood Pantages Theatre this month is the thrilling sound of female empowerment, and it is reverberating like thunder from the heavens in the dynamically robust national tour of THE COLOR PURPLE. Director John Doyle's Tony Award-winning reinvention of...

What made the Hot List? Check out these productions for a look at the vast creativity of theatre makers in action in Los Angeles: FOREVER BOUND at Atwater Village Theatre, PLUNGE: Part 1 of The Ballad of Bimini Baths Trilogy at Son of Semele, SOFT POWER downtown at the Ahmanson, VIOLET at Actors C...

The world premiere of playwright Michelle Kholos Brooks' HOSTAGE receives an absolutely stunning mounting by the Skylight Theatre Company. Tracie Lockwood gives a tour de force performance as Barbara, normally an inconspicuous, yet outspoken, mother like most in the Oak Creek, Wisconsin neighborhood...

This summer's LIVE IN CONCERT film choice Beauty & the Beast brought together a wonderful mix of theatre, television and film talents to sing live along with the live orchestra deftly led by musical director Michael Kosarin as the animated 1991 film Beauty & the Beast played on the accompanying big ...

On May 25, 2018, Los Angeles Opera presented a concert version of Matthew Aucoin's third opera, CROSSING. This work was first seen in Boston in June of 2015. Its story deals with Walt Whitman's stint as a volunteer at a Civil War military hospital near Washington DC. In 1862,...

Despite being birthed in the early 1990's, THE SISTERS ROSENSWEIG-the late Pulitzer Prize-winning Wendy Wasserstein's acerbically witty and vibrantly poignant play about a trio of fascinating, strong-willed Jewish-American sisters-has a remarkably timeless, relatable quality, evidenced by South Coas...

WIESENTHAL tells the powerful true story of Simon Wiesenthal, often called the "Jewish James Bond," a Holocaust survivor who, after cheating death at the hands of Hitler's S.S., spent his life bringing to justice the most notorious war criminals in human history. This provocative solo performance, w...

Puppets and monsters and freaks, oh my. Shoreside has an abundance of them in WOOD BOY DOG FISH and they don't play well together at all. This fictional seaside town, home to the terrifying Dogfish Adventure Ride, is a miserable place. Populated with morally repugnant characters and a darkness that ...

Mae West was definitely a woman who played by her own rules in all aspects of her life. She dismissed barriers, boundaries, fears, judgements and prejudices and always believed women needed to be in charge of their own lives. Her play SEX was both outrageous and pornographic in 1926, full of playf...

In our town full of struggling actors and others from all aspects of show business, it's no wonder so many solo shows about the Industry make their way into local theaters. And any of us who have endured that backstage moment when overwhelming fear makes us forget every single line we were about to...

Presented by The Brand Associates, and Curated by Jamie Nichols with much care, these performances are all totally different from one another with each dance company or artist using different elements of the Arts, combined with several forms of Dance, molding their piece using the surroundings to in...

MR. PIM PASSES BY debuted on the stage in 1919, written by A.A. Milne (1882-1956) Although he will be known forever for his children's literature as the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne also wrote numerous plays and screenplays, books of poetry, and seven novels. This comedy for grown-ups tells a ...

A gaunt Leon Russom conjures up more pathos than normal as the aged Prospero in the Porters of Hellsgate's production of THE TEMPEST. Whether it is due to the fact that the actor has been battling pneumonia, which took him out of the show opening weekend mid-performance, or that his interpretation o...

Sharing scenes and memories with her younger self during the entire musical is 25-year old Violet, portrayed with both great innocence and insightful common sense by Claire Adams, whom we meet as she is setting off on a journey of hope and discovery aboard a Greyhound bus bound for Tulsa, Oklahoma (...

For three years, I have obsessed over the Original Broadway Cast Album of Lin-Manuel Miranda's ingeniously constructed, powerfully-rendered musical masterpiece HAMILTON, mostly because it just wasn't possible for me to see the show at its home at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York. Fast forward...

Bold and brassy? Yes. Loud and raucous? At times! But... Jackie Hoffman is terribly, terribly talented and self-deprecating. Let's add juicy and mirthful! In her one-woman show Memoircita!, which played three performances at LGBT's Renberg Theatre this past weekend, Hoffman doled out more dish th...

DIE, MOMMIE, DIE! is a campy noir classic that follows the devious actions of fading Hollywood star Angela Arden, played to the hilt by Drew Droege in drag. Think of Gloria Swanson in "Sunset Boulevard" and throw in a bit of Joan Crawford's attitude and you get the idea of who Angela Arden is. And l...

The world premiere of playwright Steve Apostolina's FOREVER BOUND artfully produces scores of suspenseful 'will he/won't he' moments performed by the talented cast of four. What starts out as a day in the life of a depressed book scout about to be evicted takes welcomed twists and turns to its very ...

On May 12, 2018, Los Angeles Opera presented a searing rendition of RIGOLETTO, Giuseppe Verdi's dark tale of curses and murder. Recently, General Director Placido Domingo said of this work, 'I can think of no opera that better demonstrates the power of deeply emotional music melded with incredibly g...

Kate Pazakis, executive producer of the UNAUTHORIZED MUSICAL PARODY OF series, continues to top herself and her uber-talented team of artists in their latest creation THE UNAUTHORIZED MUSICAL PARODY OF CLUELESS. Director Jimmy Smagula ever-so-smartly runs his triple-threat cast of eight through a ra...

Perhaps the best way to start writing about Elizabeth Gregory Wilder's play PROVENANCE is to share its definition, as it pertains to the history of ownership of a valued object or work of art or literature, not the capital of Rhode Island. Now being performed at Little Fish Theatre in San Pedro's Ar...

In the years before computers and cell phones to assist Bernard with scheduling, he uses a datebook and the world globe sitting on his desk to keep track of where each of the three stewardesses he plans to marry will be travelling, and has managed to keep 'one up, one down and one pending.' But Bern...

What made the Hot List? BLUES IN THE NIGHT at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, ICE at 24th STreet Theatre, LOST IN THE LIGHT by CRE Outrach at The Blue Door in Culver City, SCHOOL OF ROCK at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, THROUGH THE EYE OF A NEEDLE at The Road Theatre Company on L...