LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

The now classic musical A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum is silliness personified from its zany characters and inane plot contrivances to its corny yet witty dialogue. It is clever farce set to music. Mistaken identities, zippity fast exits and entrances...it has no rhyme or reason but...

Sweeney Todd first bowed on Broadway in late 1979. Fortunately, I was in New York to witness the brilliant achievement of Hugh Wheeler and Stephen Sondheim, Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou and the entire creative team. Kelrik Productions is presenting the masterwork for the first time, hardly an easy...

Kudos to George Villas for mastering Neil LaBute's extremely word-heavy monologues-the opening 20 minutes and the what-seemed-much-longer closing one. But Villas' Smith's long involved diatribes might be easier digested presented by a pivotal character more sympathetic and grounded....

Heartrending tales of tragedy weaved together by the common denominator of a gun (hence, Bang Bang) will rip your heartstrings and possibly cause a flow of tears. Ably directed by Mark Bringelson at an even, fast clip; his talented cast succeeds in presenting actual human faces to the oft-times, de-...

Charles Evered's West Coast premiere Class is a lovely piece of theatre currently onstage at the Falcon Theatre through April 19. It's always great to see a good script be given a laudatory production with fluid staging by director Dimitri Toscas, two sensitive performances from Gildart Jackson and ...

The always reliable and very informative host Bruce Kimmel unfailingly surprised his captured audience with the most interesting tidbits of Broadway trivia. Songs of this evening were chosen as to their fit in this, to quote Kimmel, 'potpourri of pleasant and perverse.'...

The best scripted comedy drag show in Los Angeles, this episode of the hysterical Hispanic spoof of the 1970's hit TV show Charlie's Angels receives a hilarious mash-up with another '70s hit The Love Boat....

Betrayal lurks around every corner when a ruler's ability to rule comes into question. Whether real or imagined, its weighty presence stands as a cautionary phantom in A Noise Within's JULIUS CAESAR. Directors Julia Rodriguez-Elliot and Geoff Elliot have turned Shakespeare's thought-provoking politi...

On Monday March 30 actor/singer Kevin Earley brought his show On the Record to a packed house of adoring fans at Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal in NoHo, and it proved nothing short of a triumph. Earley's tenor is no stranger to these parts, as the Chicago born spent a lot of time from 2001 onwa...

Thanks to Wilson Milam's fast paced direction and the highly gifted cast, CORKTOWN '57 truly becomes not only a serious look at a family in distress for both religious and political reasons but also a great history lesson on how intolerance can lead you down the wrong path to salvation. And how many...

Playwright Micah Schraft's world premiere of A Dog's House receives an absolutely stunning mounting with a first-rate, kick-ass cast. Schraft's witty, intelligent, entertainingly thought-provoking script flows fluidly out of the talented mouths of Christine Woods, Graham Sibley, Katie Lowes, and Dea...

In 1899 droves of newsboys from every borough of New York City banned together and went on strike against Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst and other wealthy newspaper owners, in a crusade to save children from menial wages and physical abuse. This was a first, where uneducated street kids st...

Broadway's Tony Award-winning production of Cinderella (2013) has a brand new book by Douglas Carter Beane and an expanded score of the glorious music of Rodgers & Hammerstein. As the musical based on the fairy tale possesses a more contemporary storyline, both Cinderella (Paige Faure) and Prince To...

Due to the enormous success of their first show, Sixth Avenue presented an encore of its National Tour 'ILove99 The Musical!' cabaret event to save Los Angeles intimate theatre on Tuesday, March 24 at the Dragonfly on Hollywood's Theater Row. Produced by Adam Silver and directed by Alan Smithee (wi...

The brainchild of Craig Taggart & Chris Pudlo, Rise 'n Shine with Bette & Juliette, exudes a fun 'Let's put on a show!' vibe via a talented troupe of enthusiastic performers....

Actors/singers Eddie and Anthony Edwards, identical twins originally from Burbank, Ca, have been doing singing impressions for the last 30 years. In their renowned Vegas-style show entitled Twintastic, which tours much of the east coast and Canada, Anthony creates mostly male celebrities and Eddie, ...

A talented ensemble energizes the Los Angeles premiere of playwright Leilani Chan's Global Taxi Driver, a collection of taxi drivers' stories from all over the world....

In playwright Kimber Lee's hushed yet absorbing sushi-making drama TOKYO FISH STORY---now having its World Premiere production at Costa Mesa's Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory through March 29---centuries of painstaking tradition are... well, rapidly showing its age against the progress of m...

More of a performance art piece than a play, Casey Smith masters an hour of mimed sketches timed with complementing video projections by Dustin Hughes. Not for the prude at heart, Smith performs a handful (pun intended) of explicit sexual miming, mimics loads of scat and vomit humor, and administers...

I remember the melodrama of the film Carrie (1976) and director Brian De Palma's splashy special effects more than anything else. Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie really tore up the scenery in their overblown scenes together. Onstage Carrie The Musical brings out so much more. It really zeroes in on th...

Early Albee is better than no Albee at all, but a recent look at his The American Dream, circa 1960, shows how he had not quite settled into a style of his own. Now onstage at Group rep in NoHo, the one-act belongs to the Theatre of the Absurd, and like any good vaudeville, pokes fun at just about e...

First mounted in 1985 at Theatre West, Jim Beaver's Verdigris was critically acclaimed. He has since reworked the play and now in its second production 30 years later, Verdigris still holds up as a major exploration of the dysfunctional American family in both a serious and comic vein. Directed ski...

Rockwell Table & Stage could barely contain the theatre aficionados' applause and excitement generated by the incredible singers belting out one showstopper after another in An Evening of Classic Broadway....

Switzerland/written by Joanna Murray-Smith/directed by Mark Brokaw/Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, Geffen Playhouse/co-world premiere with the Sydney Theatre Company/through April 19...

Any opportunity to catch two-time Grammy-nominated international jazz superstar and frequent favorite BroadwayWorld Cabaret Award-winner Jane Monheit bring her talents to a local venue outside of New York (and even nearby Los Angeles) is its own cause for celebration. That was certainly evidenced by...