LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

Promoted as a precursor to Edward Albee's WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, comparisons to Albee's masterpiece does August Strindberg's THE DANCE OF DEATH, here adapted by Conor McPherson, a disservice. Having seen Dame Diana Rigg and David Suchet battle it out as Martha and George in 1996 at the Alm...

In 1970, Maria Callas posed for Blackglama's iconic What Becomes a Legend Most ad campaign. The famous black and white Richard Avedon photographs shot against a simple gray background captured the glamour and allure of black mink featuring some of the most iconic faces in the world. It was indeed ...

The temptation to take a film classic and turn it into a Broadway musical is a road fraught with peril. How do you take something perfect and make it better? This was the question posed in 1972 when producer David Merrick decided to musicalize the uproarious 1959 farce Some Like It Hot. The result w...

In a new, incredibly enjoyable regional revival of the Tony Award-winning AIN'T MISBEHAVIN' - THE FATS WALLER MUSICAL SHOW, La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts is presenting one of the most rousing, rip-roaring iterations of this musical treat, under the informed direction of one of the show's...

Much props must be given to Camille Spirlin for her unflinching, unapologetic portrayal of the unsympathetic, totally evil main character of Kali, of which RUNAWAY HOME revolves around. Runaway teenager Kali has no hesitation in blackmailing a Latino storekeeper, scaring an elderly neighbor with the...

The Old Globe has opened a window and let in a beautiful breath of fresh air in its latest world premiere musical, BENNY AND JOON, by bookwriter Kirsten Guenther, composer Nolan Gasser, and lyricist Mindi Dickstein. Based on the 1993 MGM film starring Johnny Depp, Mary Stuart Masterson and Aidan Qui...

The west coast premiere of THE VIEW UPSTAIRS bursts with a high-energied hodge-podge of some great vocals, charming performances and wonderfully executed choreography. Playwright Max Vernon, through the eyes of a present-day electronically dependent fashion designer, retells the stories of victims...

Though the Tony Award-winning musical adaptation of writer/director John Carney's well-liked indie film ONCE is a musical that this reviewer has liked quite a bit from past productions, it took seeing South Coast Repertory's brand new regional production---now on stage in Costa Mesa through Septembe...

The world premiere of playwright Tom Jacobson's WALKING TO BUCHENWALD receives a sturdy outing from Open Fist with the ensemble's strong performances of his three-dimensional characters steered firm-handedly by Roderick Menzies....

While watching Crystal Sep lveda perform during the opening of Pacific Standard LA/LA's Condemned To Be Modern exhibit, I couldn't help but think of a quote by Frank Lloyd Wright: 'Space is the breath of art.' Poetic in its simplicity, it is an observation that is particularly eloquent when consider...

A cross between a murder mystery and a psychological drama told with a high-tech showmanship flair, the intriguing touring production of Simon Stephen's Tony Award-winning play THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME now in Costa Mesa at Orange County's Segerstrom Center for the Arts throu...

CARMEN, the title character in Georges Bizet's opera, is a young woman who wants the social freedoms nineteenth century men simply took for granted. Sung magnificently by Ana Maria Martinez, Carmen is suave and self-confident, but enroute to certain destruction. Currently, L A Opera is offering an ...

The neon blue Son of Semele sign casts faint light on to the outdoor lobby where the audience gathers until the house opened. As you walk inside the theatre, it is as if you were entering your high school's black box building. Thirty-five seats rest in front of the stage, and all but one were filled...

It's official. I have a new favorite thing, and it is called MUSE/IQUE. You would too if you'd been in the audience for GLOW/TOWN, the third in a 3-part series celebrating Motown and its roots Saturday night at Caltech. From the structure of the program to the sophistication of the environment, Arti...

The 1941 ARSENIC AND OLD LACE gets a dusting off from the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble providing a wonderfully expressive vehicle for the acting talents of Sheelagh Cullen and Jacque Lynn Colton as Abby and Martha Brewster, the seemingly harmless and most delightful murderers of their single unattached ...

Chico's Angels, the comedy drag troupe celebrating their 14th year performing in the bowels of Silver Lake's Casita Del Campo, delivers once again with their latest laugh-filled riot CHICO'S ANGELS 4: CHICAS ARE 4EVER. Think 70's TV classic Charlie's Angels re-envisioned as Latina drag queens at the...

If you're looking to get a definitive Janis Joplin biography/musical (in the vein of the Carole King musical BEAUTIFUL), then you may be disappointed with A NIGHT WITH JANIS JOPLIN, the short-lived 2013 Broadway musical. More akin to a tribute concert rather than actual musical theater, a new region...

TROUBLE IN MIND, the scathingly funny and thought-provoking backstage drama about interracial politics by pioneering African American playwright Alice Childress, is currently enjoying a brilliant revival at Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum in Malibu thanks to director Ellen Geer's vision of the grou...

Byron Lane has written a brilliant tour de force for Tom Lenk as Oscar-winner Tilda Swinton. As cleverly written by Lane, sharply directed by Tom DeTrinis, and played to perfection by Lenk; the heightened reality of Tilda Swinton graces the Celebration Theatre (landing from her home Jupiter) to rese...

With UMPO BRIDESMAIDS, executive producer Kate Pazakis continues her unbroken string of audience-pleasing musical parodies of pop culture flicks. Tony winner Marissa Jaret Winokur ably takes the directorial reins with Christopher Youngsman leading the triple-threat talents through a fast pace, high-...

ISC sets TWO GENTS in the 1950s, accompanied by a live band on stage playing an infectious rock 'n' roll score. Musical director Dave Beukers' arrangements are bright and sexy with a beat that's perfect for dancing (think Elvis Presley during his Sun Records days or Jerry Lee Lewis). It's a choice t...

Riveting, powerful and beautifully poignant at every step, FUN HOME—the Tony Award-winning musical based on Alison Bechdel's 2006 autobiographical graphic memoir—is one of those rare, great stage musicals that represents an astonishingly unique point-of-view that is somehow miraculously universa...

Playwright Chuck Faerber should be applauded for including the many current day issues that he squeezes into this 90-minute BALL YARDS, a collection of semi-related sketches, some succeeding more than others. This world premiere comedy directed by Richard Kuhlman tackles: anti-Semitism, the Ku Klux ...

Every theatre production comes with its share of backstage drama. One Hit Wonderland, the Broadway musical comedy depicted in Gary De Leon and Greg Lisi's indie film OPENING NIGHT is no exception. Sex, drugs, and crazy characters collide in this rousing tongue-in-cheek comedy full of splashy produc...

The Groundlings' latest laugh-packed Friday & Saturday night show GARBAGE PAIL GROUNDLINGS offers a bountiful buffet of tasty guffaws and hearty chortles in the course of fourteen hilarious treats served by seven comic impresarios. Deanna Oliver smartly directs her outrageously talented cast at a pa...