LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

With the impressive resumes and awards the REUNION team of writers and director/choreographer possesses, one would expect a first-rate show with dazzling choreography, wonderful songs and an involving plot. The world premiere of REUNION greatly benefits from the sensational, though sadly underused, ...

Ron House's original El Grande de Coca Cola was a huge hit and ran for 3 years off-Broadway. It's about the five-member Hernandez family, an in.your.face incompetent troupe of Mexican cabaret performers who have spent many many years performing in run-down over.the.border clubs. Now House returns wi...

Dane Whitlock sharply directs his talented cast in his PRAIRIE-OKE! delivering a fast-paced, 100-minute, high-camp romp full of not-so-subtle double entendres via the not-so-pure underbelly of 'Little House on the Prairie' denizens....

One of the things Independent Shakespeare Co. does exceedingly well is communicate Shakespeare's text to audiences who may have little or no background with Shakespeare in a way that they can understand it. And since an audience member rarely comes back to see another production when they haven't ha...

Desert Theatreworks, in Palm Desert California, has mounted a top-notch production of STEEL MAGNOLIAS. The acting is Broadway-quality, and the sets and costuming are also superb....

Joseph Kesselring's dark comedy farce Arsenic and Old Lace dates back to 1941 and was made into one hilarious film starring Cary Grant and directed by Frank Capra in 1944. Nevertheless, the comedy is timeless, so it stills holds up quite deliciously in 2015. One never tires of murder especially wh...

The Celebration Theatre has picked a perfect production, the Los Angeles premiere of playwright Robert O'Hara's BOOTYCANDY, to inaugurate  their new home @ the Lex.  Entertaining, and with prominent reoccurring social themes of gay acceptance and upended racial stereotyping. ...

Fourth time's the charm for Musical Theatre West as the award-winning regional theater company opens its 63rd season with the 1956 Lerner and Loewe Broadway classic MY FAIR LADY. Retaining the effervescent wit and jubilant spirit of the original, MTW's irresistibly beguiling, top-notch local revival...

The west coast premiere of THE SPARROW successfully intrigues as a stylistic performance art piece with some stunning visuals utilizing backlite scrims, clever choreography and inventive staging, with some haunting original music by Gregory Nabours. Kudos to Kristin Browning Campbell's scenic desig...

18 years and billions of box office receipts later, Disney's Tony Award-winning global hit THE LION KING is still going strong both on Broadway and on various touring and sit-down productions across the world. The show's North American tour is currently finishing up its four-week return engagement a...

On Friday October 23 at the E-Spot Lounge upstairs at Vitello's, jazz, soul, R&B singer Aaron Akins delivered his striking Into the Cole show in honor of the music of legendary Nat King Cole. It is so rich to hear someone that can replicate with such class the smooth, distinctive, unforgettable ...

Called by many the perfect musical, My Fair Lady based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion has perhaps the wittiest and showiest debate between the sexes. Shaw despised marriage and loved to magnify human frailty, both female and male. And with Lerner and Loewe to create the book, music and lyric...

What if Satan was alive and decided to write his memoirs about GOD, THE EARLY YEARS? Just what would he have to tell us from his rather off-center point of view? And what would you like to ask him if you could? Emily O'Meara and Renegade Theatre are giving you a chance to do just that during the...

Ask musical actors/actresses for their choice of favorite Broadway musical of all time and they most often concur, West Side Story. Why? It has phenomenal music by Leonard Bernstein, with concise poetic lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a tight and gripping book by Arthur Laurents, and brilliant choreo...

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Appropriately enough, the supposedly haunted Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton is currently playing host to the happy spooks of 3-D Theatricals' regional production of THE ADDAMS FAMILY, which continues performances at this historic theater through October 25 before migrating south to the Redondo Beac...

Come an hour early to the El Portal Theatre and take a peak inside the lovely small Marilyn Monroe Theatre lobby, adjacent to the Mainstage and peruse the myriad of photos adorning the walls. They represent a delicious collection of candids of the iconic star. Then proceed on in to the Mainstage pla...

The West Coast premiere of Annie Baker's translation of Anton Chekhov's classic UNCLE VANYA receives a brilliant mounting from the Antaeus Theatre Company.  Robin Larsen directs her talented cast in a steady, flowing pace with just enough quiet moments to contrast the volatile, high emotional ones....

Groundlings' latest laugh-packed Friday & Saturday night show, GROUNDINGS STAKEOUT, keeps the audience in stitches in their ever new and original sketch ideas, providing each of the incredibly talented six-member cast their individual moments to shine....

s I was waiting for my theatre guest to arrive at the Pantages Tuesday night for the opening of ANNIE, a school bus pulled up. Within seconds, a gaggle of little girls spilled out onto the sidewalk shrieking in anticipation and taking pictures of the sparkly marquee on their smart phones. They were ...

Full of the Obie-winning playwright's amusingly observant and stirringly poignant portraits of ordinary people in extraordinary flux, Samuel D. Hunter's 2010 play A BRIGHT NEW BOISE is now being staged in a terrific production currently in performance at Orange County's Ovation-winning Chance Theate...

Carrie the Killer Musical Experience/book by Lawrence D. Cohen/based on the novel by Stephen King/music by Michael Gore & lyrics by Dean Pitchford/directed by Brady Schwind/choreographed by Lee Martino/Los Angeles Theatre/through November...

An incredibly talented cast populate the West Coast premiere of Gretchen Cryer's I'M STILL GETTING MY ACT TOGETHER (AND TAKING IT ON THE ROAD). This production actually includes the original 1978 I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It On the Road as the first act with the newly written second ...

In the world premiere of his WATCHING O.J., playwright David McMillan deftly balances both sides of the black and white/innocent vs. guilty/jubilant and angry reactions of a multi-racial neighborhood in their varied responses to the infamous O.J. Simpson verdict in 1995. A cross-section of races and...

On Monday October 5, zany comedienne/singer Diane Vincent brought her act: Diane and Lucy & Betty: A One Woman Show to an SRO room at Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal. The best way to describe Vincent is off.the.wall, wound up tightly like a coil that will spring loose at any second. Watch out...