LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

This new and expanded edition of the 2015 FELIZ NAVIDIVA showcases the hilarious comic stylings and tight-knitted teamwork of Kay Sedia, with her fellow Chico's Angels, Frieda Laye and Chita Parol, as well as, sturdy support from their Boss Man. Director Kurt Koehler spoofs (with co-spoofer Kay Sedi...

Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella is sumptuous and fanciful and bursting with all of the ingredients necessary to make up the perfect family musical . The score is timeless and emotionally stirring. The costumes and scenic elements are candy for the eyes. The dancing ensemble is impeccable and t...

Look in your closet. How many pairs of jeans have the renowned Levi Strauss patch sewn above the back right pocket? I have quite a few pairs but neglected to wear a single one to the premiere of LEVI! A NEW MUSICAL. Although I was disappointed in myself for this missed opportunity, I was not disappo...

In a rarity that doesn't happen too often here in Southern California, a brand new national tour of a recent hit Broadway musical has arrived first in Orange County in advance of a much longer sit-down engagement in Los Angeles. And, boy, is this one a marvelous gift from the comedy gods! Behold, la...

Open Fist Theatre Company's revival of Ron West and Phil Swann's musical comedy DELEARIOUS has a lot going on. The production contains three storylines in three different time periods twisted together in a fast-paced, boisterous style that was an award-winning hit for the company in 2008. Nine years...

This Skylight Theatre Company's production of playwright Jon Brittain's west coast premiere of ROTTERDAM receives a stunning mounting with a pitch-perfect aligning of talents supporting and complementing each other. Michael A. Shepperd deftly directs his spot-on cast of four bringing to life Brittai...

On November 9, 2017, Los Angeles Opera presented Keeril Makan and Jay Scheib's opera PERSONA. Scheib based his libretto on the 1966 film of the same name by iconic Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman....

Riding the wave of renewed interest in August Wilson's 10 play, American Century Cycle, South Coast Repertory has one particular Wilson drama on their sonar at the moment: GEM OF THE OCEAN, the riveting, epic-sized 2003 drama now continuing at the Costa Mesa theater through November 11. An exquisite...

For a most wonderfully complete, immersive theatre/gallery experience; get yourself, and anyone you like, to Think Tank Gallery in Downtown L.A. to catch the Los Angeles premiere of Christopher Chen's Obie Award-winning CAUGHT. So easy to see why Chen won his 2016 Obie, with the substantial food for...

Peter Quilter's unfiltered, devastatingly intense play, END OF THE RAINBOW, recounts the final months leading up to the death of one of the world's most iconic, treasured stars, Judy Garland, in her lowest depths of despair as she attempts a 'comeback' on the London stage. Now back in Southern Calif...

The Robey Theatre Company has teamed up with East West Players to present an intriguing production of YOHEN directed by Ben Guillory. How generous an actor Danny Glover to cede the East West stage to June Angela's dominating performance of Sumi, the traditional, meek Japanese housewife finally comin...

LA BELLE ET LA B TE is a post World War II romantic fantasy film written and directed by Jean Cocteau. For the Los Angeles Opera version, Philip Glass replaced Georges Auric's original sound track with a complete opera score. On October 28, 2017, L. A. Opera presented the work, sung live and coordin...

The SRS Production Wing debuts its inaugural production with the fearless choice of playwright Sarah Treem's a feminine ending. Treem seamlessly and generously weaves music terminology into her descriptive expositions out of the mouth of her main character Amanda. Pilar Holland IS Amanda. The charis...

The world premiere of Robert Allan Ackerman's two-hander TOLSTOY IN SUFFOLK receives a strong mounting from Studio C Artists and Combined Artform. Ackerman's intricate, smart and very descriptive script depicts the meeting of theatre producer Greg and playwright Brendan at Brendan's remote cottage i...

I sat down inside the 55-seat Dorie Theater at the Complex and started bopping along to the music, Gin Blossom's Hey Jealousy. I admired the set: It was made up of furniture with warm maroons and browns. It felt homey and inviting. A few other people trickled in while New Radicals' You Get What Y...

CSULB's Powerful Production of MACHINAL Shines Light on a Woman's Struggle For Freedom in Cal Rep's 29th Season...

In Rachel Bonds' beautifully-acted and cleverly written new play CURVE OF DEPARTURE---now finishing up its too-brief World Premiere run at Orange County's South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through October 15---characters are confronted with unexpected events that forces them to make such choices f...

Horror houses are not my thing. Knott's Scary Farm, Reign of Terror, Universal's Halloween Horror Nights...you can keep them. But tell me a good ghost story and I'm in. Put me in the middle of an immersive theatrical ghost story as artistically beautiful and complex as it is otherworldly and I'm in ...

On Oct 14, 2017, Los Angeles Opera presented Giuseppe Verdi's third opera, NABUCCO in a new and extremely well detailed production by Thaddeus Strassberger....

If you like your entertainment sprinkled with a generous dose of politics, The Actors' Gang's world premiere of Jack Pinter's CAPTAIN GREEDY'S CARNIVAL will definitely be right up your alley. Set in the 1930s, during the heyday of traveling carnival sideshows, Pinter uses the carney swindling Captai...

In its admirable Orange County premiere production directed by Marya Mazor, Chance Theater presents an intimately-staged version of Nina Raine's thoughtful, award-winning 2010 play TRIBES, now playing through October 22, 2017. This comedic drama which centers around a young deaf man caught between h...

Playwright Julia Lederer's WITH LOVE AND A MAJOR ORGAN focuses on the novel conceit of utilizing the actual organ of the heart in all references to the heart as love - actually breaking your heart, physically stealing your heart, a weak heart as the product of two broken-hearted parents, a heart mad...

On October 7, 2017, Los Angeles Opera presented Georges Bizet's THE PEARL FISHERS starring sweet-voiced Mexican star tenor Javier Camarena as Nadir. Steel-voiced Mexican baritone Alfredo Daza, was Zurga, his rival for the hand of Leila, a beautiful priestess who had taken a vow of chastity....

The Groundlings never cease to rock your funny bones. Their current laugh-packed Friday & Saturday night show GROUNDLINGS OF THE CORN keeps the hilarity charging right at you. Groundlings' ever stalwart director Deanna Oliver's takes tight, confident directorial reins over her comically gifted ensem...

OUR TOWN is Wilder's most well-known work, a classic of the American theatre that presents the cyclical nature of life in three acts and a town called Grover's Corners, where birth, death, love, and marriage, are shown in their most mundane glory. The brilliant simplicity of the work cannot be overs...