LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

There has been much revealed in legal proceedings relating to what actually constitutes consent when it comes to physical entanglements that somehow go incredibly wrong, thus resulting in a rape charge. Lives can be sidetracked and careers often destroyed upon a court or jurors ruling on who was at...

The last place you'd expect to find a ballerina is in the middle of the desert; in a bustling city center full of people to fill an audience, yes, but in Death Valley Junction population less than 20? No, in this cultural hot spot, art is found in the shifting sands and sunset-washed mountains where...

LETTERS TO EVE's creator Daniel Sugimoto has cast a stage-full of vocal knock-outs to more than ably assist in communicating his loving ode to his grandmother Midori, who was incarcerated in the American concentration camps during WWII. Sugimoto not only details interned life for the imprisoned Japa...

FIVE GUYS NAMED MOE is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its successful Broadway run in an out-and-out stellar revival at Ebony Repertory Theatre in Los Angeles. It's the summer party you don't want to miss!...

This piece works much better as something you would see drunk in a bar in the 90s...

In their current production of  NEXT TO NORMAL, the East West Players present a first-rate, extremely well-executed musical look at mental illness. Nancy Keystone smoothly directs this two-hour-plus performance at a steady, non-stop, heart-wrenching pace with barely enough time for the audience to ...

Before Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty teamed up for iconic works like Ragtime, Once on this Island, and their current Broadway hit Anastasia,they wrote a crazy little musical called LUCKY STIFF. It was their first collaboration and, though it never made it to Broadway, it won the pair a Richard Ro...

Golden West College brings to life a vibrant production of Hairspray for their Spring 2017 Musical....

The corn was high as an elephant's eye at the Alex Theatre in Glendale last Sunday as Musical Theater Guild presented a staged reading of Rodgers and Hammerstein's bucolic musical State Fair, the only musical R&H wrote specifically for the screen. State Fair wasn't adapted for the stage until 1996, ...

California State University, Fullerton closes off their Spring 2017 Season with a dark yet thrilling production of Andrew Lippa's WILD PARTY....

I entered the comforting lobby of the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks, received my press kit and took a seat near the window. The house opened in about 20 minutes, so I struck up a conversation with the man sitting a couple chairs away. He asked me where I was from. "South Florida," I told him. He...

Strikingly refined yet pleasingly grounded and altogether delightful, the gorgeous 2015 Broadway musical stage adaptation of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS---inspired by the Academy Award-winning 1951 movie musical of the same name---is a sweepingly lush, dance-centric production that combines the high-brow s...

King of the Road: The Roger Miller Story features brilliant performance by Jesse Johnson as the late country music star...

With House of Cards and Ides of March (based on this play) on playwright Beau Willimon's resume, you might come to see his FARRAGUT NORTH with rather high expectations. Jack Tynan's confession and termination scenes (with Geoffrey Lower as Paul, Stephen's boss) really pop and sizzle, with their tens...

Pasadena City College brought Lin-Manuel Miranda's IN THE HEIGHTS to Southern California in an exciting, vibrant, and mesmerizing production....

Not a single weak link in JTK Productions' powerful, pitch-perfect RABBIT HOLE, playwright David Lindsay-Abaire's 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama. The strong cast of five sleekly directed by Eric Hunicutt vividly illustrates Lindsay-Abaire's tale of a family coping with the accidental loss of thei...

SING HAPPY!, a delightful cabaret showcase of Ann LeSchander's vocal chops and comic talents backed by wonderful musicians who know when to take focus and when to lay back. Kudos to The Gardenia's sound system that allows each instrument to be heard so distinctly as individual instruments, then blen...

LEAR'S SHADOW, a new play by Shakespeare Ensemble Theater Artistic Director, Brian Elerding, is a sensitive exploration of theatre's transformative ability to heal, even under the most devastating of circumstances. Using passages from King Lear as a tool within a contemporary storyline, it takes a t...

BELLA GAIA - A Poetic Vision of Earth From Space is a multi-dimensional musical and visual concert experience created by Kenji Williams that emotionally reconnects us - to each other and to our planet - by offering an extraordinary view of earth as one people, one world....

Utilizing a sort of amusing, somewhat wacky plot that somehow works in a sustainably fresh, surprisingly plausible, and audaciously charming way, the world premiere production of playwright Michael Mitnick's thoroughly engaging new play THE SIEGEL---continuing at SCR in Costa Mesa through April 23--...

The Elephant Theatre Company's LONE STAR provides an interesting character study populated with three intriguing characters, the most being the younger brother Ray as embodied by Christopher Parker....

Elysium Conservatory Theatre has thrown everything but the kitchen sink into its latest production of Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET, the first in their brand new space in downtown San Pedro....

The first act of the Skylight Theatre Company's world premiere of LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD'S HOME FOR UNWED MOTHERS presents a riveting, fast-paced, well-acted tale of Dee, a teenage girl experiencing the joys of young love and the pains and consequences of unexpected pregnancy. Corryn Cummins totally...

The West Coast premiere of Complicite's THE ENCOUNTER amazes with its cutting-edge technology of 3-D audio. Co-creator/performer Simon McBurney commands the Wallis stage as he recalls National Geographic photographer Loren McIntyre's 1969 photographic expedition into the depths of the Amazon rainfor...

Perfection! A Noise Within produces a stunning, modernistic, most entertaining take on MAN OF LA MANCHA, the tale of Don Quixote and his man servant Sancho during the sixteenth century Spanish Inquisition. Co-Producing Artistic Director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott most skillfully directs her very talent...