LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

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...

Most people who change career paths make that choice due to being let go from a job or being offered a new challenge that seems to be something more rewarding. But what about those who walk away from a successful career, from a job with a great salary and excellent benefits, to go back to a more si...

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...

David Auburn's 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Proof receives a sturdy mounting from Noisy Nest, with Amanda Bird directing the real-time scenes with a firm grip....

A striking image hovers above the action in HENRY IV, PART ONE at The Antaeus Company. It is a partial rendering of the planets orbiting the sun which serves as a constant reminder that this is the journey of a king-in-the-making. As Prince Hal, also known as Harry, slowly transitions from party boy...

In ChicabaRENT, director/writer Shannon Sukovaty creates a clever mash-up of Chicago, Cabaret and Rent in a non-stop, in-your-face attack on your senses....

Winner of the Barclays Stage Award for Best Show for Children and Young People, LIFEBOAT by Nicola McCartney is a true story of courage, survival and enduring friendship set during World War II. In September 1940, a ship, the City of Benares, set sail from Liverpool for Canada. Onboard were 90 evac...

A stellar cast, led by Laurie Metcalf, gives their all in the West Coast premiere of Nick Jones' smartly written Trevor. Jimmi Simpson embodies his character of Trevor, an 11-year-old chimpanzee with a child-like humanness, not unlike a human youngster with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (...

Trevore Ross stages this splendid revival of a production originally created by Spanish director Emilio Sagi for the Teatro Real in Madrid. Thanks to his stellar ensemble who do the lion's share of changing the sets while playing multiple roles, the opera is just as lovely to watch as it is to hear...

Sisu is sheer delight for lovers of jazz, blues and soul. With a sound that is passionate and seductive, vocalist Rachel Sorsa's soft, high-pitched delivery is like that of a little girl...kittenish and erotic a la Earth Kitt. Add great musicians Andy Allen on bass, Preston A. Gould on trumpet, Gus ...

NEXT TO NORMAL tells the story of a mother, Diana Goodman, who struggles with bipolar disorder and the effect that her illness has on her family. This contemporary musical is an emotional powerhouse that addresses such issues as grieving a loss, ethics in modern psychiatry, and the day-to-day realit...

Charles Busch's one-act comedy, THE DIVINE SISTER, appearing at the Desert Rose Playhouse, in Rancho Mirage, is a divine parody of nun movies and a zany comedy. It is almost impossible to describe the over-the-top story, but the production is hilarious and well worth seeing....

CVRep's new production of LA GRINGA is brilliantly acted and brilliantly directed. The set design and other technical aspects of the production are also superb. However, Carmen Rivera's script is mediocre, because this 'comedy' is not funny....

Desert Theatreworks (DTW), one of the Coachella Valley's nonprofit theatre companies, is presenting the hilarious musical comedy, NUNSENSE: THE MEGA-MUSICAL. Dan Goggin's musical farce contains clever wordplay and groaner puns. The show as DTW presents it is silly, irreverent, and highly enjoyable....

One faces an undeniably horrendous situation that will only get worse before it gets better...and the clincher?... it is fueled by love. That's the trap created by Frawley Becker in his play Tiger by the Tail now playing at Group rep in Noho through April 19. The tender theme is made sweeter by smoo...

When TRU premiered on Broadway, Robert Morse won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show for his tour-de-force portrayal of Truman Capote. For his performance in the 1992 American Playhouse presentation of TRU, Morse w...

Kritzerland At Sterling's Upstairs at The Federal followed its successful formula of monthly themed cabarets with The Birthday Boys: The Songs of Stephen Sondheim & Andrew Lloyd Webber....

Pacific Opera Project boldly goes where no opera company has gone before in a Star Trek-themed production of ABDUCTION FROM THE SERAGLIO: POP puts their zany spin on Mozart's kidnapping caper by setting it in space... the final frontier. Klingons, slave girls, and all your favorite characters from t...

No reality exists in which an historical figure from the 17th century would end up in the present day kitchen of a realtor in Phoenix, Arizona but in the dreamtime of PROPERTIES OF SILENCE all things are possible. Here, authors Theresa Chavez, Rose Portillo, and Alan Pulner explore the imagination o...