LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

After Penny Fuller approached Barry Kleinbort to create a musical version of Hatcher's play for her to perform as a cabaret artist, 13 Things About Ed Carpolotti was originally developed at The Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center Cabaret and Performance Conference in Summer 2012 and had its New York premi...

Chromolume Theatre at the Attic has produced Tim Acito's very cleverly written  ZANNA, DON'T! with very mixed results. Major sound glitches opening night marred the ability to clearly hear all of Acito's very witty lyrics set in a fictional high school where gayness is the norm and heteros are shun...

Although Clifford Odets forgotten masterpiece 'Rocket to the Moon' first premiered back in 1938, many of the themes of the Depression-era drama feel totally in step today with our own financial and career woes. With its central character, Ben Stark, (Jesse Steccato) is a dentist stuck in an unhappy ...

In the program notes for the Los Angeles premiere of Benjamin Scheuer's one-man show "The Lion," he states that "a song is a powerful tool for connection. Words are how we think and music is how we feel, so songs allows us to think our feelings and feel our thoughts." As such, he masterfully shares...

Hollywood Boulevard's newest theatre troupe is one to keep an eye on....

Upon learning that part of Segerstrom Center for the Arts' holiday programming this season was to finally bring a national tour production of ELF - THE MUSICAL---the 2010 Broadway stage musical adaptation of the popular Will Ferrell holiday movie---to its stage, I was pretty ecstatic. For the most p...

In his autobiographical comedy, THE GOLDEN GLAZER, iconic TV writer-producer-turned-actor Sy Rosen uses his comedic talents to share a series of funny, at times poignant stories about the joys and horrors of getting older. Rosen covers everything from being out of work and lying about it, to rekindl...

???????A very fun, irreverent spoof on a Christmastime charity fundraiser, A HARMONY BOYS' CHRISTMAS: LIVE IN CONCERT!, features the harmonious quartet with their mellow four-piece, back-up band and supporting cast hilariously performing at their annual 'Force Feed The World' charity concert. Clever...

Much in the same vein as Arthur's Miller The Crucible, DEVIL'S SALT presents a tale about witchcraft in which a young woman is accused of consorting with the devil and forced to give her life just for being who she is, a modern-thinking woman before her time. Jovanka Bach's World Premiere drama, dir...

On Friday December 9 and Saturday December 10 Chris Isaacson Presents brought us the incomparable R&B recording artist Melba Moore with her CD release party for 'Forever Moore' at Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood. Moore is no stranger to Broadway audiences who remember her Tony-winning portrayal ...

LA Ballet returns the essential holiday tradition of THE NUTCRACKER ballet to hometown audiences during the month of December, including venues in Glendale, Hollywood, Westwood and Redondo Beach. This production is the perfect introduction to classic ballet for the whole family as there are many chi...

Set in a boxing gym where female boxing phenom Dee Crosby (Suli Holum) is preparing for a whole new fight, THE WHOLEHEARTED looks past the neatly-packaged Cinderella stories of sports coverage into the real world of a woman grappling with lost love and her abusive husband, Charlie, who is being rele...

Director John DiFusco, himself a Vietnam Veteran, opened the world premiere of Rebecca Stahl's EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN on Veteran's Day 11-11-16 at the Hollywood American Legion Post 43, produced by Karl Risinger and Liberty Theater. The play tells the interrelated tale of four generations of vets, ea...

When MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG opened on Broadway in 1981, no one anticipated that it would be a flop. With a score by Stephen Sondheim and direction by Hal Prince, it should have been the next success in a series of highly successful collaborations by the two kings of musical theatre, following such ga...

Eugene O'Neill is the only American playwright ever to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature and he is a four-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. Between 1920 and 1943, he completed 20 long plays, with several of them double and triple length. And unfortunately, the current Pacific Resident prod...

Humorist David Sedaris' Christmas classic THE SANTALAND DIARIES receives a successfully fun mounting by the Santa Monica Playhouse. Sedaris fills his one-man show with loads of different characters, which a charismatic Patrick Censoplano effortlessly handles. Censoplano seamlessly morphs and delinea...

Surely most theatre folks have seen productions of the fabulous musical THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE, winner of six Tony Awards including Best Musical, making the show the 2002 season's most awarded new show on Broadway, based on the original story and screenplay by Richard Morris for the 1967 Universal...

As a lifelong fan of Frank Sinatra thanks in part to my Mom being one of the bobbysoxers who fawned over him as I did for the Beatles, I was thrilled to jump at the chance to attend SINATRA 101 at the El Portal in Noho on November 26, 2016 at one of the 2 shows they did that date. Since 2011, Matt...

The world premiere of playwright John R. Lacey's GARDEL'S TANGO serves as a unabashed showcase for Anibal Silveyra, who's allowed complete free rein in his portrayal of real-life, turn-of-the-century, international film star Carlos Gardel. Silveyra easily commands centerstage in this cast of six wit...

Theatre Planners presents the world premiere of WAITING FOR GRACE, an award-winning comedy by Sharon Sharth, as a guest production at the Odyssey Theatre, directed by Lee Costello. Centering on a woman who wants to have it all, a great career, marriage and children with the perfect husband, but jus...

With so much social and political upheaval taking place right now in America, it seems to be the perfect time for IAMA Theatre Company to present the World Premiere of UNBOUND, written by D.G. Watson and directed by Jennifer Chambers at the Hudson Backstage Theatre in Hollywood. Taking place in the ...

The Los Angeles premiere of THRONES! THE MUSICAL PARODY receives a full-throttled, laugh-filled mounting from a very talented cast and its off-stage creatives. John Flynn nimbly directs his committed performers at a smooth, swift pace from laugh to laugh to even more laughs. The combined comic geniu...

Westwood's Geffen Playhouse is presenting the World Premiere of ICEBERGS written by Alena Smith and directed by Randall Arney through December 18. This biting new play is set in the Silver Lake community of Los Angeles, California, where the weather is always nice and the future looks bright…at l...

Everyone deserves to see a great production of THE SOUND OF MUSIC in their lifetime. For those who attended the Jack O'Brien production last night at The McCallum, who have never seen one before, they are still waiting. It is a gorgeous, lavish production. The sets and costumes are beyond incredible...

Now onstage at Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills, THE CONSUL, THE TRAMP AND AMERICA'S SWEETHEART tells a tale suggested by true events in the United Artist office of Mary Pickford that took place with Charlie Chaplin and Georg Gyssling, German Consul in Los Angeles and a Nazi party member, to discuss the ...