LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

Cock Tales: Shame on Me! the new and very personal play from Debra Ehrhardt, the award-winning solo artist and writer of the internationally acclaimed Jamaica Farewell, is a remarkably honest tale about how her repressed and very religious childhood was challenged by her discovery of boys' bodies be...

1948's Summer and Smoke was rewritten in the 60s by Tennessee Williams and what resulted was a more clearly structured/themed play with the same central characters entitled The Eccentricities of a Nightingale. Music teacher Miss Alma (Ginna Carter), daughter of an Episcopal minister Reverend Win...

The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts presents the critically-acclaimed Hershey Felder as Leonard Bernstein in MAESTRO from August 10 - 28. Felder channels the great composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, drawing audiences deeply into the maestro's fascinating life filled with trag...

What makes the current production at the Ruskin Group Theatre in Santa Monica so special is its Tony Award winning director Lita Gaithers Owens cast Tony Award nominee Starletta DuPois as Lena "Mama" Younger. DuPois has a long history with A RAISIN IN THE SUN having first been cast as Beneatha, the...

Written by one of Poland's foremost contemporary playwrights, THE SUITCASE at first seems to be nothing more than a fluff piece with things such as balloons being popped and silly songs being sung. But it will surprise you when the story takes hold with the rather comical singing Narrator (Jeff Ala...

Culver City Public Theatre opened its 2016 summer season on Saturday, July 16, for 6 weekends of free theatre in Carlson Park, with two plays, 'Frog Tails' at noon, and 'As You Like It' at 2:00, every Saturday and Sunday through August 21. Carlson Park is the perfect seeing at transforming it into ...

The ladies of CHICKSPEARE are back for another summer of Elizabethan improv, this year indoors in their new home at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood. It's been two years since I saw them perform on their lovely outdoor patio in Hollywood and I wondered how the experience would compare. I'm h...

Director Ken Sawyer cemented his show's success when he cast Valerie Perri as the wily matchmaker and backed her up with a host of exceptional players....

As a former high school teacher who started an alternative program for students who had dropped out, I participated in counselling troubled teens in learning how to deal with challenging circumstances in their lives, be it with parents, siblings, friends, or the desire to find love and respect from ...

On Sunday July 31 Michael Sterling celebrated 10 years of his cabaret supper club now called Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal with a mega-delightful show headlining the music of his mentor Rosemary Clooney called Everything's Coming Up Rosie. On the bill were two exuberantly talented singers�...

In 1817, 'poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the phrase 'willing suspension of disbelief' and suggested that if a writer could infuse a 'human interest and a semblance of truth' into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgement concerning the implausibility of the ...

Climbing the corporate ladder has always been easy for some and difficult for others. In 1961, HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING explained the secrets of success included luck, charm, connections and a willingness to use those things to personal advantage. Fans of the TV show Mad Men...

I cannot think of a better way to spend a hot summer night than to watch a sizzling stage production of a Tennessee Williams film. Baby Doll, when it first arrived in 1956, was condemned by the Catholic Church for indecency, and because of its lewd poster-sized ad depicting Carroll Baker lying in ...

In the program notes, playwright Laurel M. Wetzork states one of her primary reasons for writing BLUEPRINT FOR PARADISE as, 'It's important that we don't make the same mistakes we've made in the past.' As well-intentioned of Ms. Wetzork to fictionalize the 1941 construction of a Nazi compound in th...

Engaging, well-paced, aurally pleasing, and exceedingly entertaining from start to finish, the Hollywood Bowl's A CHORUS LINE is an exceptional presentation of this iconic show which celebrates those hard-working, ultra-talented, under-paid men and women who willingly choose a volatile career in whi...

A surprisingly well-done, beautifully-paced production that feels like a truly fresh revival of something many of us have forever seared in our brains, this brand new, Jack O'Brien-helmed national tour of THE SOUND OF MUSIC---now on stage at Orange County's Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Me...

One thing you may be sure of in attending a Jeanne Page concert: you will have a good time. The lady is a dynamic singer, giving it everything she's got and really enjoys doing it. She has such fun...

Evenings of short one-acts are the rage at Equity-waiver theatres! In the black box theatre upstairs at Group rep you you are invited to come see Nine Winning One-Acts, plays that stretch a mere ten-fifteen minutes in length. The mini plays were chosen from over 160 entries from across the United S...

Production teams at Theatre 40 expertly present mid-20th Century British comedy better than almost any other theater in town. So it was no surprise to find out the group decided to present the riotous BREATH OF SPRING by Peter Coke to open their 51st season, directed by Bruce Gray and produced by D...

Everyone knows how tough it is to get along with family members after an elderly relative passes away when more than one person covets a family heirloom not mentioned in the will. Such is the case between two cousins in BAD JEWS, written by Joshua Harmon and directed by Sabrina Lloyd, which was pre...

This past week I saw two different musicals that have taken their inspiration from classic Jane Austen novels and, while completely different in size and scale, both have considerable merits. The first is in San Diego where Paul Gordon's to-die-for new musical SENSE AND SENSIBILITY is gracing the st...

Prospect Theatre's inaugural production, Bradley Bredeweg's ingenious rock musical  ROMEO & JULIET: LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD, VOLUME 2, simply WOWS with its cast of triple-threat performers singing the hell out of cleverly-chosen pop songs while many times dancing up a storm. Creator Bredeweg tightly ...

Christopher Durang's comedy in which he tosses Chekhovian themes and characters into a blender is not a great play, whether one is familiar with Chekhov or not, but it is typical Durang....

The west coast premiere of playwright David Greenspan's GO BACK TO WHERE YOU ARE has the pleasing benefit of having a strong cast, witty lines and a cleanly gorgeous set. Director Bart DeLorenzo firmly guides his seven-person ensemble in non-chronological, fourth-wall breaking vignettes set in the L...

Perhaps Kander and Ebb's best musical, apart from Chicago, Cabaret has it all: a fine book, deliciously diverse characters, dynamite music and a subtext that will not quit. The subtext being: either compromise or get out if you value your life, the latter, to be sure, the wiser. This is Berlin, c...