LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

On the eve of HAIRSPRAY LIVE!, North Hollywood Arts District's newest theatre exceeds expectations with their production of HAIRSPRAY....

The revival of playwright Stephen Sach's BAKERSFIELD MIST features two stunning performances from Jenny O'Hara & Nick Ullett. O'Hara whole-heartedly grabs her role of the manic, desperate Maude. Ullett imbues his Lionel with a haughty air of condescension upon entering Maude's trailer home. Ullett's...

Aficionados of jazz, blues, or just good music; RUN, don't walk, to experience the world premiere of playwright Carol Eglash-Kosoff's WHEN JAZZ HAD THE BLUES. A stunning combination of musical talents converge to sing, dance and emote the hell out of Eglash-Kosoff's story of jazz pianist/lyricist/ar...

With more than twenty-five plays, three screenplays and numerous books to his credit, American actor, screenwriter, playwright and female impersonator Charles Busch is known for his appearances on stage in his own camp style plays and in film and television. His offbeat comedy "The Tale of the Aller...

For the most part, brilliantly written classic plays make their locale the main character of the piece. Think of Tennessee Williams. All of his plays take place in the American South; poverty-stricken New Orleans sets the background for Streetcar among other plays. In Martin McDonagh's The Beauty...

RAGTIME: The Musical, currently being presented brilliantly by Actors' Repertory Theatre of Simi at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center through December 4, 2016, is set in the volatile melting pot of turn-of-the-century New York. Based on the classic E. L. Doctorow novel, featuring a Tony Award-wi...

The East West Players' West Coast premiere of playwright Leah Nanako Winkler's KENTUCKY stuns and enthralls with its highly dramatic, polarizing emotions emoted by its almost perfect cast. Winkler has written a most involving piece of theatre that walks a razor-thin tightrope between knee-slapping ...

On February 3, 1959, after performing together on the Winter Dance Party Tour, rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. 'The Big Bopper' Richardson were killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa. The three, together with pilot Roger Peterson who also perished, were attempti...

In a theatrical touchdown for the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, stage and screen star Darren Criss has agreed to reprise the notable title role he stepped into last year on Broadway: as Hedwig in the just-launched national tour of the rousing 2014 Tony Award-winning reboot of the glam rock musical ...

With the popularity of film screenings paired with live symphony orchestras at an all time high, I'm glad one of the many to get the treatment is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the first installment of the 8-film movie franchise adapted from JK Rowling's worldwide best-selling books. What an...

In DEATH OF A SALESMAN the Loman family found the unattainable American Dream to the source of depression. Here, the Thompson family finds the idea of the perfect family to be the cause of theirs....

LETTERS TO EVE has been a 7-year labor of love for Daniel Sugimoto, which he started writing for his grandmother, Midori Sugimoto, who grew up in an American Concentration Camp during WWII. Even through their incarceration, Japanese Americans continued on living, loving, and laughing, all life aspec...

VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE by Christopher Durang won the Tony and Drama Desk Awards for the Broadway production of this show. Having never seen the comedy before, I was thrilled to find out a production was taking place at the Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica and rushed to arrang...

Given the uproar in our society today, it's the perfect time to get to the Ruskin Group Theatre for the World Premiere of IT'S TIME written and performed by Paul Linke and directed with great insight into personal acceptance and growth by Edward Edwards. I walked out of the theater in tears, convinc...

Broadway actress/singer RENEE MARINO made her feature film debut in 2014 in Jersey Boys as Mary Delgado, Frankie Valli's tempestuous wife. She was seen in the role on Broadway by film director Clint Eastwood, and because of her magnanimous talent, was hand picked by him to repeat the role on fil...

For the second year in a row the Pink Lady Jackie Goldberg presented an attention-grabbing Senior Talent Competition. This year's show was very different, as it had two contests on two separate days, one on Saturday November 5 and the other on Sunday November 6 at the Wadsworth Theatre in West LA,...

The annual dysfunctional family Christmas gathering? Oy! This family lives in Minnesota. Double oy!! Issue at hand: not one of the family members is anywhere near to being happy. Mom (Belinda Howell) is in denial, keeping her breast cancer a secret, her doctor son Michael (Patrick Burke) has been my...

Lovingly skewering the not-so-subtle art of telenovelas, Karen Zacarías' winning play DESTINY OF DESIRE---now being performed at Orange County's South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through November 13---compresses an entire series' worth of over-the-top melodramatic goodness into a two-act play tha...

In the 1995 comedy SYLVIA by A.R. Gurney, married couple Greg (Steve Howard revisiting the role he played with Tanna in 2011) and Kate (appropriately named Beege Barkette) are empty-nesters in the big city. In the opening scene, Greg and Sylvia arrive home after meeting in the park where Sylvia, a ...

I had the absolute pleasure of seeing two things last night that I had never seen before. A production of Harvey Fierstein's CASA VALENTINA and a sold out, standing room only crowd at The Pearl McManus Theatre. Brava to Dezart Performs on both counts!! CASA VALENTINA is the premiere performance of...

The InterACT Theatre Company's production of playwright Jerry Sterner's OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY has an extended, very nice, exploratory prelude before the definitely-worth-waiting-for sizzling action dominates the stage with the equally matched, passionate Alexandra Wright and explosive Rob Shapiro as...

When it comes to the theatrical art of farce, Ken Ludwig's hilarious 1986 stage play LEND ME A TENOR certainly qualifies as a perfect example of the genre. Amusingly cheeky throughout, the 9-time Tony Award nominated comedy has been revived locally with a posh new production under the direction of A...

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 ...

HEDWIG is Exhibit A why the art of theatre won't be dying anytime soon....

The world premiere of Jon Robin Baitz's 'Vicuña,' directed by Robert Egan, recently opened at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, just in time to present an interesting take on this year's presidential election happening next week. After show discussion revealed Baitz writes daily updates to ...