LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

It is one of the most wondrous moments in all of Shakespeare's plays; the moment near the end of The Winter's Tale when the statue of Hermione comes to life. Whether it is magic, divine intervention, or merely the resolution of a well-concealed plot, it doesn't matter. It never fails to leave me wit...

What do you get when you mash-up an ancient Greek play with the contemporary, meta-sarcasm of Mean Girls, Legally Blonde, and Bring It On? Why, the buoyant musical confection LYSISTRATA JONES, of course! Filled with witty dialogue, amusingly droll characters, and a high-energy pop score, this Tony n...

Me and My Girl/music by Noel Gay/book and lyrics by Douglas Furber and L. Arthur Rose/directed & choreographed by Orlando Alexander/Glendale Centre Theatre (GCT)/through March 29...

Larry Shue's career as playwright/actor fell far too short with his sudden death in 1985. He had written two howlingly funny farces The Nerd and The Foreigner, both of which have become cult classics. Each farce exposes an eclectic group of people to a mishmash of insanity. There is an underdog at t...

The Producers/book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan/music and lyrics by Mel Brooks/choreography (recreated from the original) by Linda Love Simmons/original direction recreated by David Lamoureux/3-D Theatricals @/Redondo Performing Arts Center/through March 2...

If 'all the youth of England are on fire,' as the first speech of HENRY V's Act II declares, then all the Porters of Hellsgate have carried the torch forward with guns blazing. Without a doubt, this is the Porters' finest stage work to date and a testament to the kind of theatre magic that can be cr...

Noel Coward's film Brief Encounter (1945) based on his 1936 play Still Life, is perhaps one of the finest movies ever made about illicit romance. Now the Kneehigh production from London, which played Broadway in 2010 to great acclaim, an event quite unlike any you will ever see, is being mounted at ...

Inner Circle Theatre Company explores the essence of love in its debut production, R+J EQUAL LOVE, directed by Casey Kringlen and adapted by Kringlen and Liz Nolan. In two acts, each slightly less than an hour, they tell the love story of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet twice, with two women in the t...

What do the 1950s have in common with 1912? Ages of innocence, both. When Meredith Willson wrote his story with Franklin Lacey about a con artist bamboozling an Iowa town in 1912, which formed the substance of his musical The Music Man (1957), the effect became like that of N. Richard Nash's The Rai...

Like a beautiful painting Adam Guettel's The Light in the Piazza is a true work of art. With discordant music not unlike that of Stephen Sondheim, written for a small chamber orchestra, feelings of love - from all kinds of people -fuel passionately. Without the right actresses to play the American m...

Talk about quirkiness and how it can be used to its best advantage in a musical! The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is terribly funny in a smart, slick, offbeat manner with prize worthy characterizations of lively eclectic people.It may be a tad long like the actual spelling out of words (th...

Dubbed 'Valentine's Day with Matthew Morrison,' the three-night engagement of the OC native's entertaining, high-energy take on swinging, big-band jazz standards and classic Broadway showtunes continues through Saturday, February 15 at the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa. Behol...

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 lyrics, t...

After a stellar off-Broadway run in 2012, and a Tony-award winning Broadway production in 2013, the Los Angeles premiere of Christopher Durang's "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike", opened Sunday night at the Mark Taper Forum, and it was well worth the wait to see....

Christopher Durang loves to take a somewhat placid environment and turn it upside down, inside out. What doesn't happen matters just has much if not more than what does and the characters let out their feelings at the slightest provocation. Sound like it's right out of Anton Chekhov? When Sonia give...

Comedienne Gilda Radner became one of the most idolized comic figures of the 70s as well as a popular tragic heroine of the 80s as she lost her battle with Ovarian cancer. Possessing an edgy brilliance that defied description, she lived passionately for every moment and won the hearts of millions. W...

Truly one of the most elegant, though underrated musicals of the new century, THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA---now on stage in a lovely new production at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through February 23---follows the uneasy journey that a loving, though over-protective mother must embark on when her...

With so many theatrical offerings and special events in the desert during "high season" it is easy for a smaller production, without the benefit of a hefty marketing budget, to get a little overlooked. This seems to be the case with a little gem of a musical playing at The Desert Rose Playhouse, and...

If life really is about not taking anything too seriously, as Mel Brooks would have us believe, then do yourself a favor and see 3DT's production of The Producers. It may be politically incorrect but it's the funniest version of this musical I've ever seen and it will push you to have a good time in...

To borrow a tagline from the long-running reality TV series 'The Real World,' the wickedly amusing GOD OF CARNAGE shows exactly 'what happens when people stop being polite... and start getting real.' Well, at least, 'real' in a comically over-the-top way, that is. This outrageous farce---directed by...

Noises Off/by Michael Frayn/directed by Kenneth Albers/Rubicon Theatre, Ventura/through February 23...

An hour and a half east of L.A. in Rancho Cucamonga, The MainStreet Theatre Company puts on a Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) season at Lewis Family Playhouse. Of that season, one of the shows is specifically chosen for the very youngest audience members and this year it's The Musical Adventures o...

Four guys who know there's nothing better than being inside a good tight chord are working their extraordinary vocal magic in Stuart Ross' Forever Plaid at Cabrillo Music Theatre. With incredible musicianship and a flawless blend, these clean-cut dapper lads are a dream for the roughly 90-minutes th...

On Sunday January 26 divine singer Nita Whitaker brought her brand new show Love 'n Stuff to Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal. Looking positively stunning in a black and white pageant dress accentuated with sequins - she was Miss Louisiana in the Miss America Pageant some years ago - and displayin...

Dynamic talents, such as triple-threat Chita Rivera, rarely give up. They are having too much fun to retire. Passionate, warm, funny and forever loyal to her art, Miss Rivera has always captivated her audiences and is still very much doing so, based on her performance on Saturday January 25 at the V...