LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

The challenge of balancing a career as a professional dancer with motherhood is the dilemma at the heart of Palmer Davis' one woman show SUBURBAN SHOWGIRL. Based on many of her own experiences, the likeable San Diego native has created an ambitious solo show populated with characters from her life -...

To close out its 60th Season in grand fashion, Musical Theatre West has commissioned a lush new revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Tony Award-winning musical SUNSET BOULEVARD on its home stage at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach. Directed by Larry Raben and featuring musical directio...

On Sunday, July 21, Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal in North Hollywood presented Gregg Marx and Sharon McNight, Together Again for the First Time. Gregg, a former Emmy-winning soap-opera star turned singer and Sharon, a thirty-five-year show-biz veteran, including Broadway, provided definite cont...

According to Euclidean geometry, a parallelogram is defined as a quadrilateral with two pairs of parallel sides that are non-intersecting, which means they will never cross. Bruce Norris throws definition to the winds as one of the characters in his blistery new play A Parallelogram, now at the Mark...

One of the most exciting, edgy, in-your-face new musicals to have popped up in recent years, the electrically-transfused angst-rock musical BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON is making quite a splashy, enjoyable Orange County debut at The Chance Theater. Filled with clever barbs and super-silly gags, this...

Shrek the Musical/book & lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire/music by Jeanine Tesori/directed by David F.M. Vaughn/3D Theatricals at Plummer Auditorium, Fullerton/through August 4/Redondo Beach, Performing Arts Center/August 9-11...

Legally Blonde The Musical/book by Heather Hach/music & lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin/directed by Tiffany Engen/Cabrillo Music Theatre/@ Fred Kavli Theatre, Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza/through July 28...

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Delightful and down-right hilarious, SISTER ACT - THE MUSICAL---the nun-tastic stage adaptation of the hit 1992 motion picture of the same name---is, frankly, to my pleasant surprise, an unexpected gem of a show. Heavily retooled from its 2006 Out-of-Town premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse and its e...

1993's rarely produced Sunset Boulevard is a flawed, somewhat boring musical play that satisfies best with the casting of an actress of great star quality as Norma Desmond, one whose face could have convincingly lit up a silent film screen. MTW has found its star in Valerie Perri, and under Larry Ra...

It is practically impossible not to be pulled into the passionately earthy, very Italian world of fictional film director Guido Contini (David Michael Trevino) in Maury Yeston's 1982 darkly breathtaking musical Nine. Guido's mental turmoil, a series of vivid images that come fiercely plummeting into...

Okay, I'll say it. I haven't seen a production of THE TAMING OF THE SHREW that comes anywhere close to this vivid interpretation of the story. It is spectacular!...

California Shakespeare Ensemble, in partnership with L.A. County Department of Parks and Recreation, staged a light evening of Shakespearean love scenes this past weekend in Altadena's Farnsworth Park. The event was an encore performance of a program the company presented at Descanso Gardens earlier...

Sister Act/book by Cheri Steinkellner & Bill Steinkellner/additional material by Douglas Carter Beane/music by Alan Menken/lyrics by Glenn Slater/directed by Jerry Zaks/Pantages Theatre/through July 28 only...

Independent Shakespeare Co. bookends its 2013 season with two witty romantic comedies, Oliver Goldsmith's SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER and Shakespeare's AS YOU LIKE IT, to offset a terrifyingly intense and bloody version of MACBETH during this summer's Griffith Park Free Shakespeare Festival....

In opera and operetta, the storytelling is completely through music; there are few or no spoken words. Steven Cagan's world premiere Love Songs is a modern day operetta of sorts with a line or two of spoken dialogue here and there, but composed of 99% music. Now through July 28 at the Attic Theatre,...

On Sunday July 7, Kritzerland presented its 35th show The British Invasion, music from UK musicals of the 60s and 70s, at Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal. I can only say to Bruce Kimmel, 'good show, ole' boy'!...

On Tuesday, July 2, Bryan Batt appeared at Rockwell on Vermont in Hollywood in Batt on a Hot Tin Roof. The show may have had nothing to do with Tennessee Williams, as Batt pointed out at the top, but boy oh boy did he SIZZLE....

A short drive up the 101 to Thousand Oaks, and located on the campus of Cal Lutheran University, you'll find the summer home of Kingsmen Shakespeare Company. For 17 years the professional theatre group has been presenting Shakespeare's classic plays outdoors in a lovely corner of the grounds, border...

On Sunday June 30 I went to Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal to see Polly Seale do her one woman show, Cougar Mama!, The Sensual Evolution Revolution. Before I get to Ms. Seale, I would like to say that I 'discovered' a new appetizer (or side) to their tasty hamburgers, and that treat is the grill...

Georges Feydeau and Maurice Desvallieres wrote the French farce Hotel Paradiso in 1894 to be enjoyed by a French audience. Any translation of it should keep the culture and manners of the people intact as their risque behavior is representative of the Parisian upper class of the time. In Group rep's...

Like The King and I, Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific is a heartbreaking story told across racial borders and has an elegant score. The look in its rich set design - from the original 2008 Broadway/Lincoln Center revival with an incredible, dreamlike Bali Ha'i in the background, setting the r...

Funny lady Jo Anne Worley brings her inimitable wacky, zany style of humor, that made her an overnight success in Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In (1967-73), to Welk Resorts in Escondido this week June 26-30. Jo Anne has a warm winning way with her audience; they are the reason she's performing, as she t...

To fully appreciate THE LAST DAYS OF MARY STUART it is necessary to forget what you normally think of when you think of musical theatre. The allegorical piece jettisons the traditional trappings of the genre and instead surfaces from a lengthy workshop process as a fusion of worlds....