LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

The Ahmanson Theatre welcomes back Dame Edna for the third time with Dame Edna's Glorious Goodbye The Farewell Tour. Things will never be quite the same thanks to Barry Humphries. He's Edna's manager and has exploited the lady's mind, body and spirit so much through the years that they are practical...

A friend referred to The King and I as a war horse, an old chestnut, for it has surely surpassed time as an enduring musical classic, but upon seeing it again, one realizes just how potent, vibrant and topical a piece it truly is. Musicals of such depth and perspective with a keen eye to the future ...

Disconnection really starts firing on all cylinders with the combined talents of Bo Foxworth as Landon; the successful, but damaged lawyer wanting piano lessons and Dennis Nollette as Michel, the charismatic piano teacher....

A noticeably long, drawn-out silence opens Cabrillo Music Theatre's production of COMPANY as 35-year old Robert (Alxander Jon) comes home to his empty New York bachelor pad. It is the final moment of solitude before the coordinated cacophony of voices begins in Nick DeGruccio's sleekly directed revi...

The stylistic marriage of Shakespeare's language and Tarantino's Pulp Fiction reaps heady rewards for linguists and lovers of indie crime drama in PULP SHAKESPEARE at Theatre Asylum in Hollywood. The runaway hit of the 2010 Hollywood Fringe Festival is reinventing itself in a new production produced...

Vibrant videos of saturated color on the 30-foot high backdrops combined with the elaborately detailed and bright traditional Chinese costuming make Shen Yun 2015 an explosion of bodies and hues in perpetual motion....

The Desert Rose Playhouse's production of Terrence McNally's LOVE! VALOUR! COMPASSION! is moving and absorbing. This gay heritage production follows eight men who gather at a lake house over holiday weekends in the summer of 1994....

Hal Holbrook presented his iconic one-man show, MARK TWAIN TONIGHT! , appeared at Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center for one show on Saturday, January 17th. Mr. Holbrook delighted the audience with Twain's words skewering Congress, misuse of religion, guns, and people's refusal to think before s...

Desert Theatreworks, a nonprofit theatre company in Palm Desert, has served up a delectable production of Neil Simon's LOST IN YONKERS, at the Joslyn Center's Arthur Newman Theatre. LOST IN YONKERS will be presented on January 23 and 24, 2015, at 7 p.m. and on January 24th and 25th at 2 p.m. Tickets...

On Sunday evening January 18 the beautiful songstress Nita Whitaker brought her inimitable style and warmth to Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal in a new show entitled All That Matters. Backed by musical director Nelson Kole at the piano and a three-piece combo, Whitaker spoke of the value of love ...

One of the first - if not the first jukebox musicals, The Buddy Holly Story is short on plot and high on the unique rock and roll music of Buddy Holly. This is my second time seeing the show - I first saw it on its American tour in 1999. The music I grew up with in the 50s is so appealing, that I si...

The ensemble effort of La Mirada Theatre/McCoy Rigby's cast of BILLY ELLIOT is an extraordinary accomplishment and especially resonant in a musical that is all about solidarity and overcoming the odds. It also has the kind of opening night story that wins hearts and shows how a company will rally li...

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies' thought-provoking Time Stands Still receives a strong mounting at the Secret Rose....

In South Coast Repertory's excellent new production of Matthew Lopez's captivating play THE WHIPPING MAN---now playing at the Tony Award-winning Costa Mesa theater through January 25---an internal, theological tug-of-war is brewing just as the Civil War has come to an end. The absorbing, character-d...

A playground altercation between eleven-year-old boys brings together two sets of parents for a meeting to resolve the matter in GOD OF CARNAGE, now onstage at Santa Monica's Morgan-Wixson Theatre through February 8, 2015. At first, diplomatic niceties are observed, but as the meeting progresses and...

A perfect combination of talents winningly converges in the world premiere of Serrano The Musical, a non-stop, jaw-dropping two-hour-plus of entertainment at the Matrix Theatre....

Like many of us, I love words…and I love to lose myself in a good book. But these days it seems like life moves at such a fast pace that there is little time to relax in the embrace of a good story, lost in a world of new ideas and adventures. The truth is - we're all busy. We all have to-do lists...

"Music was his dream but acting was his passion." That's how Chris Lemmon describes his famous father Jack in JACK LEMMON RETURNS, the 90-minute play with songs that has settled into the intimate black box theater (The Edye) at the Broad Stage. The show is a tribute to the man who meant the world to...

The Book of Oded: Chapter Two grabs hold of your attention in a totally involving, one-man retelling of a decade of Oded's life; and doesn't let go until the seventy minutes are over....

The lesson of The Pliant Girls is that that terrifying chaos affects everyone-and that the only way to make the world more manageable is to operate from a place of true compassion....

Loosely patterned after 'an audition process', this 9th annual fully produced event is geared to discovering new talent between the ages of 18 and 32 for the musical theatre stage....

When it comes to film-to-stage adaptations, the sassy, Tony Award-winning Best Musical KINKY BOOTS---whose touring company is now on stage at Orange County's Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa through January 11---is that rare phenomenon we all wish would happen more often: a stage show th...

Just how amazing is the music made by Pink Martini? Well, judging from their recent appearance on New Year's Eve December 31 at Walt Disney Concert Hall - and this was not their first NYE appearance in this venue - pretty awesome! How many other orchestras do you know that play such a mix of genres;...

Akin to a Las Vegas show, We 3 Kings works dynamically as a showcase for its 3 artists: Luca Ellis, Shawn Klush and Brandon Michael Jones, especially for Jones, currently considered the premiere tribute artist of Michael Jackson. Now onstage at the El Portal in NoHo through New Year's Eve, it's enjo...

The Best in LA Theatre for 2014 (alphabetical listings; Equity, Equity-waiver & Non-Equity productions are mixed) (artists performing outside LA may be included in performance categories)...