LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

Don LaFontaine was one of the most prolific voice actors in the movie industry for more years than I can even remember, until his death in 2008. You may not know his name but you've certainly heard his deep bass voice and famous catch phrase, 'In a world…' in hundreds of movie trailers during his ...

Rubicon Theatre Company lands a winner with its latest musical comedy RETURN TO THE FORBIDDEN PLANET by Bob Carlton. The silly sci-fi confection is two hours of deliciously kitschy fun accompanied by a rock and roll score that blasts out more than twenty hits from the '50s and '60s and a dynamite c...

As a life-long fan of Edgar Allan Poe and site-specific theater, I jumped at the chance to attend NEVERMORE, a one-of-a-kind guided tour experience by Metro bus through the San Fernando Valley. Billed as a unique Halloween experience taking place only on Saturday, October 29 celebrating Edgar Allan...

24th Street Theatre takes on the Brothers Grimm in its latest world premiere Hansel & Gretel Bluegrass by Bryan Davidson, but forget the fairy tale you think you know. This is no sanitized version of the story. The original, written in 1812, was a cautionary tale, bleak in its portrayal of a time wh...

In the American Coast Theatre Company's West Coast premiere of LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE, playwright Warren John Doody has brilliantly adapted Dr. Elizabeth Dermody Leonard's verbatim transcripts of interviewed, incarcerated women into a brutal, unrelenting look at our current justice system. Susan K. B...

The Actors' Gang's Cynthia Ettinger ever so smoothly directs her very exceptional cast as they infuse life to six real-life, wrongly convicted death row survivors and the peripheral people besides them. Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen's script of THE EXONERATED vividly illustrates how these six people...

Groundlings' latest laugh-packed Friday & Saturday night show GROUNDINGS HOOK-UP APP  had their packed house in the palms of their hands laughing hard and reacting loudly to every possible twist, turn and diss. Jordan Black deftly directed his very talented cast of eight comedians extraordinaire at...

Executive Producer Kate Pazakis has done it again with her latest UMPO production THE UNAUTHORIZED MUSICAL PARODY OF HOCUS POCUS. Director Tye Blue effectively corrals his vocally gifted cast in gloriously performing re-purposed pop tunes in between delivering Pazakis and John Flynn's cleverly writt...

To kick-off its 9th season, DEZART PERFORMS will present Casa Valentina, a thoroughly entertaining Tony Award-nominated "dramedy" written by Harvey Fierstein, the multiple Tony Award-winning actor/playwright and American Theatre Hall of Famer. Fierstein's raucous dramedy, CASA VALENTINA, is a hugely...

Coming off the heels of another politically-charged play ALL THE WAY that they presented last month, Orange County's Tony Award-winning regional theater South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa is following up that searing drama with a staging of a brand new production of playwright Aaron Posner's DISTRI...

I love a good prequel, especially when a contemporary playwright decides to take on the back story of a hallowed play by the likes of William Shakespeare. I mean, come on. Daring to tread on that playing field takes some guts because you know before you begin that audiences are going to have high ex...

The prolific eight-time Academy Award-winning composer---perhaps best known for his decades of unforgettable work in several landmark Disney animated musicals---was on hand to unveil a world premiere concert entitled 'A WHOLE NEW WORLD WITH ALAN MENKEN' on September 30, 2016 at Orange County's Seger...

The Blank Theatre opens its 26th season with a new work written and directed by founding artistic director Daniel Henning that explores one of the most controversial events in U.S. history - the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. THE TRAGEDY OF JFK (as told by Wm. Shakespeare) is the result...

Even without eye-popping special effects, a gimmicky storyline, or those oft-used literary or cinematic source materials, some stage musicals just manage to entertain by sheer likability alone. A big warm hug of a show that's brimming with lots of surprisingly snappy wit and, arguably, some of the p...

For the Record is first and foremost an absolutely awesome show visually... and emotionally. The creative team of For the Record, namely Anderson Davis, Shane Scheel and music supervisor Jesse Vargas, began these amazing shows back in 2010 at Show at Barre on Vermont which turned into Rockwell Table...

This world premiere of playwright Ken Levine's GOING... GOING... GONE! has the benefit of a strong quartet of actors and sure-handed direction at a swift pace. Witty quips and snappy one-liners populate the rapid repartee of the baseball reporters in a sky-high reporters' box. If the purpose to dup...

When October hits and Halloween horror movies begin to flood late night TV, you can always count on at least one station somewhere airing Mel Brooks' 1974 classic comedy YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. But this year, the situation is a little different. With the recent passing of Gene Wilder, who stars in the t...

The essence of Latino Theatre Company's monumental production of A MEXICAN TRILOGY: An American Story is beautifully captured in the simple photograph above. In this starry night scene, a family poised on the edge of major change looks to the infinite sky with hope. Quietly, in these few moments of ...

Art-In-Relation (A.I.R.) is an innovative production company focusing on breathing new life into lesser-known plays and musical theater. I have seen their productions at other locations throughout the city, but unfortunately the facilities and cast talent in past productions has been less than stel...

Two years ago this teen musical was one of the best new works to come through Hollywood. Its young writers Julie Soto, Ryan Warren, and composer Will Finan had found a way to tell a story about teen suicide that was relatable to both youth and adults alike. It's a parent's worst nightmare; the thoug...

Right at the start of Robert Schenkkan's mesmerizing Tony Award-winning play ALL THE WAY---now playing in an outstanding new production at Orange County's South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through October 2---actor Hugo Armstrong is introduced in what would become one of the most powerful, fiery a...

Like all of August Wilson's plays, this one contains more dialogue than perhaps is needed, with the first act seemingly bogged down at times as you listen to four musicians (Damon Gupton as Cutler, Glynn Turman as Toledo, Keith David as Slow Dawg, Jason Dirden as Levee) stuck in a rehearsal room as ...

The very second that Tony Award-winning Broadway Legend Patti LuPone sings---heck, even when she walks out before she belts a single note---you know you're in the presence of someone that deserves the mountains of accolades she has continuously enjoyed through a very long, illustrious career on the ...

Those nostalgic for Three Stooges slapstick or old-time vaudeville will thoroughly enjoy playwright Mark Brown's AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS. The very committed cast of five enact 30+ different characters, sometimes within the same scene. Allison Bibicoff directs her talented cast in a relentless pa...

Troubadour Theatre Company's classless clowns of classical comedy go rogue in their latest adaptation at the Getty Villa. Taking generous liberties with the source material (Plautus's Mostellaria) they reinvent the over-2000-year-old play as HAUNTED HOUSE PARTY, A Roman Comedy in their own unique st...