LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

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...

On Saturday, November 18, 2017, I attended the world premiere operatic, four-site adaptation of WAR OF THE WORLDS, adapted and directed by Yuval Sharon, with music by Annie Gosfield, co-produced by The Industry and NOW Art. The production was based on the original radio play by Howard Koch, which w...

For the last 25 years, Gerardo Alessandrini has paid homage to the Great American Musical in the best way he knows how, by skewering it relentlessly. It is an arena where nothing is off limits no diva, no composer, and no quirk of the genre, which is why his FORBIDDEN BROADWAY revues are as beloved ...

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...

I have always been a great fan of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings, so much so that I have traveled to the French countryside around the city of Arles to visit several locations featured in his paintings. While driving through the fields on a rainy afternoon, it was easy to imagine the famed painter si...

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...

No doubt, each of us has those out-of-kilter family members everyone makes fun of for their quirks and strange behaviors when the family gets together for the holidays. After all, don't we all laugh at movies, TV shows and plays designed to make fun of those types of people to make us realize we ar...

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...

When playwright Tania Wisbar was growing up as a girl in America, her mother shared little about her past in wartime Germany, other than Tania came from a very well-placed and highly respected film family. With her parents divorced, there was not much else Tania knew about her family history, at lea...

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...

With his unique combination of an Austrian father ( my name ) and Colombian mother ( my hair ) who raised him in Ecuador ( my accent ), as well as his incredibly animated face which he knows how to use to maximum dramatic effect during each and every trick, Siegfried is a true wonder to behold. Dur...

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...

NEW YORK WATER, a comedy written by Sam Bobrick and directed by Howard Teichman, is being produced by Bill Froggatt and Howard Teichman for West Coast Jewish Theatre at the Pico Playhouse in West LA through December 17, 2017. The title refers to the quality of New York tap water for drinking: It's u...

First produced in the mid-1980s, John Patrick Shanley's THE DREAMER EXAMINES HIS PILLOW holds interest as an early work by the multi-award-winning playwright who went on to win the Pulitzer for DOUBT and an Oscar for MOONSTRUCK. His early play offers musings about life, sex, death and relationships,...

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...

TURN ME LOOSE explores the influential life of 1960s comic genius Dick Gregory, the first Black stand-up to make white audiences laugh at the absurdity of bigotry. The play reveals how the power of activism enticed Gregory from one of the most successful show business careers of the postwar era into...

The plot unfolds during a public presentation during which The Librarian recounts an impressive amount of Lovely Evidences he accumulated during his worldwide search for answers about the person who returned a long-overdue book, truly a most whirlwind journey that occupied his every waking minute. ...

Thanks to the magnificent performance of handsome and muscular Adam Hollick, there is an overwhelming Spiritual Presence that shines within Joseph, a power that allows him to overcome every obstacle in his way. He rises above being separated from his loved ones, sold to nomads traveling through the...

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