LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

ROAR, standing for "Rock On American Resurrection," roared to life Thursday at its opening night at the Crown City Theatre Company in North Hollywood. In contrast to the intimate, quaint setting of a lobby no larger than my living room and a house whose maximum capacity has to be close to 100, ROAR ...

A charming though perplexing adaptation of the 2004 film, FINDING NEVERLAND jets into too many erratic directions at any given moment and doesn't gel completely as a whole. And for all its gorgeous, visual splendor, it is surprisingly lacking in honest-to-goodness stage magic. The touring version of...

It used to be true that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But not anymore. For the next five weeks, LA audiences will get a taste of Sin City right here in our own backyard, thanks to Spiegelworld's in-your-face adult-only production, ABSINTHE LA....

A solid acting ensemble fires up the Ruskin Group Theatre's world premiere of playwright Justin Yoffe's THE GUN. Dave Florek sure-handedly directs his talented cast at a brisk pace in this 60-minute one-act brimming with suspenseful taunt and tensioned urgency....

There's not a chance in hell that an audience member could fail to be engaged in Not Man Apart Physical Theatre Ensemble's latest new work, PARADISE LOST: RECLAIMING DESTINY. The company has found a tantalizing niche with its athletically rich dance, movement & sensory exploration of stories that li...

The award-winning playwright/drag legend/cabaret artiste Charles Busch displayed the reasons why he's such a creative force to be reckoned with as he had the Rockwell audience easily eating out of his outstretched hands in his THAT GIRL/THAT BOY cabaret show. Busch and his adoring fans most deservin...

The Whitefire Theatre's west coast premiere of playwright Ellen Melaver's MARTHA possesses all the creative elements, exquisitely combined, for a stunning one-woman show on modern dance revolutionary Martha Graham. The incredible Christina Carlisi totally embodies this movement innovator with her ve...

Cupcake Studio's production of Green Day's American Idiot oozes of freshness in Trump's America. There was never a dull moment in this high energy, headbanging, production. The power of this show rests in its pure energy, and the cast certainly delivered....

A committed group of six actors give depth and much emotions to a collection of correspondence between older mentors and younger mentees of the gay community. Psychotherapist Brian Gleason has cherry picked portions of Rainer Maria Rilke's book 'Letters to A Young Poet' and dramatized them to some f...

Genuinely one of the funniest musical comedies to ever grace Broadway, A GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER easily proves quite early on---and pretty much throughout its two uproarious acts---why it won the 2014 Tony Award for Best Musical. Filled with hilarious sight gags, wickedly witty banter, ...

Video games get the musical comedy treatment in CLAUDIO QUEST, a clever new musical now having its West Coast Premiere performances at Orange County's Chance Theater through February 26 in Anaheim. Those familiar with the 8-bit characters of games like Super Mario Bros. will be amused by the adventu...

Circle X Theatre Co.'s world premiere of playwright Susan Rubin's LIANA AND BEN presents one of the best technical productions I've seen in small LA theatres. Walking into the Atwater Village Theatre, more than a number of entering audience members do a double take at the optical illusion right in f...

Cal State Long Beach's spring season is off to a strong start, and their upcoming shows have a tough act to follow....

UMPO's continues its winning recipe for a raucous evening of laughs and musicality with its latest production THE UNAUTHORIZED MUSICAL PARODY OF MEAN GURLZ. Take one part cult film favorite. Separate out the funny situations accenting them with witty, new lines. Add hit pop songs, repurposed to adva...

If Dorothy in THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ had run away from home and found this traveling circus instead of Professor Marvel and his crystal ball, she might never have gotten swept up in a twister and landed in Munchkinland. Instead, she might have become part of a new family, the kind that travele...

East West Players' new Artistic Director Snehal Desai ambitiously tackles the US premiere of playwright Anupama Chandrasekhar's FREE OUTGOING as his directorial debut. FREE OUTGOING centers on a single mother and her two teenagers living in a very conservative Chennai, India. Strong performances fro...

Hands down, this incredibly absorbing stage adaptation of MOBY DICK is one of the most stunning and enthralling pieces of theater I have had the privilege of experiencing from a Southern California stage. Continuing through February 19 at Orange County's Tony Award-winning regional theater in Costa ...

946 offers two and a half hours of eye-candy and magic....

Pulling double duty as both playwright and star, Dan Castellaneta portrays Oscar Levant in his latest new work, FOR PIANO AND HARPO. Levant was a concert pianist, and contemporary of George Gershwin, whose genius gave him entree into the glittering worlds of classical music, Broadway, and Hollywood ...

In JACKSON-LAFITTE: A VAUDEVILLE, Four Clowns cleverly re-envisions a probable pre-war encounter leading up to the historical 1814 Battle of New Orleans as a vaudeville skit, possibly and unintentionally drawing parallels to today's political climate. Funt as General Andrew Jackson and Carroll as Ca...

The Groundlings' current laugh-packed Friday & Saturday night show WOLFGANG AMADEUS GROUNDLING had their sold-out house howling at their collective expertise in mining comedy gold from the most un-amusing of situations - divorce, alcoholism, being laid off, impotence, embarrassing parents. The talen...

The world premiere of PLASTICITY, a one-man show featuring Alex Lyras as an entire cast of characters, has the great fortune of a multi-talented performer in Lyras interpreting a very detailed script written by Lyras and Robert McCaskill. McCaskill ably directs his sole actor at a quick pace, with L...

MATILDA - THE MUSICAL, overall, is genuinely a fun time. It's a cheeky, kid-friendly (and, really, kid-catering) stage musical that has plenty for both kids and their parents to enjoy together. Featuring lively songs by Tim Michin and a witty, yet easily digestible book by Dennis Kelly, MATILDA - TH...

Jason Robert Brown's THE LAST FIVE YEARS is the kind of musical you often find produced in small theaters and black boxes. Written for a cast of two, it can be done very simply without much in the way of a set or props making it a popular choice for those with a limited budget or other technical con...

The Echo Theatre Company's world premiere of playwright Dominic Finocchiaro's THE FOUND DOG RIBBON DANCE succeeds in all its combined creative elements - clever, thought-provoking dialogue from Finocchiaro, emoted via a uniformly talented cast, and directed in a quick and smooth pace by Alana Dietze...