LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

As many times as I have seen Man of La Mancha, I relish the music and high dramatic moments of this classic piece of theatre. Being, naturally, that the production of it is top notch, with the right actors and skilled direction! GCT's current revival is top of the line. I remember seeing Richard Kil...

FRANKENSTEIN, THE MUSICAL is based on the original novel by Mary Shelley and has music by Mark Baron, lyrics by Jeffrey Jackson, and a book by Jackson and Gary P. Cohen. The story follows Shelley's novel quite closely, and is ultimately about man reaching for the power of God, while battling the tw...

The Zombie Effect -the ideal scary experience for the haunting Halloween season. Like taking one of those house of horrors rides where some creature jumps out at you when you least expect it...

THE WINTER'S TALE is not the easiest of Shakespeare's plays to stage. It must believably present a story sharply divided into two parts set in two different countries with drastically contrasting tones, and pull off an ending that resolves them by way of magic or a well-concealed plot, based on whi...

Set in Appalachia and written entirely in verse, Biguenet's charming and mesmerizing solo play introduces us to a wacky, bizarre old woman living in an odd little shack deep in the woods… who just happens to be a witch. Creepily funny and frightening, Jenny O'Hara takes us back to our childhoods w...

In 1972 Pippin opened on Broadway and became one of the longest running musicals in Broadway history, closing in 1977. Stephen Schwartz's bubbling optimistic tunes made the surreal and sensual mood of the piece an ultra-pleasant experience for theatre goers. One actually left the theatre humming the...

Admirably directed by 3-D Theatricals co-founder and resident artistic director TJ Dawson, this ambitiously impressive regional revival of RAGTIME: THE MUSICAL, continues through October 26 at its home-base at the Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton before moving north for its set of performances at the...

At least four plays have been written about Florence Foster Jenkins, who in the 30s and 40s, in spite of being considered the worst singer ever, recorded and gave highly publicized annual SRO concerts including one in 1944 at... Carnegie Hall. A rank amateur, Jenkins had no pitch, tone or rhythm and...

Peter Shaffer's incredibly intriguing examination of the demise and death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the hands of Court Composer Antonio Salieri in 1791 Vienna is at the core of Amadeus, which premiered in London in 1979, went on to win a Tony Award as Best Play of 1981 and also an Oscar for the ...

Each Halloween season, Unbound Productions presents adaptations of classic horror literature as an immersive theatre event that takes place at Mountain View Mausoleum and Cemetery in Altadena, California. Yes, that's right - you spend the evening surrounded by dead people with much reverence and re...

A strong, nicely-matched cast of four playing well opposite, and with, each other; firmly directed at a steady clip by Elina de Santos; and presented with top-notch production elements make Nice Things a very nice 85 minutes of entertainment....

Multi-award winning playwright Jim Leonard, Jr. definitively succeeds in explicitly depicting the tragic affects of caring for Buddy, a mentally disturbed boy with a gift for divining water....

DISCORD brings three great thinkers together in a room which appears to be a holding cell for heaven. They enter according to the time period in which they lived: first Thomas Jefferson, then Charles Dickens, and finally Count Leo Tolstoy. When each enters through the only door, it closes and locks,...

Folks who are unfamiliar with the Don't Hug Me series of shows need look no further than at the signs in the lobby of the group rep that say 'Have a Crappie Day!' It's obvious that the show inside is unlike any other with an unmistakable individuality and peculiarly regional point of view, that ever...

Tim Bagley weaves the hysterically sad and poignantly funny incidents of his working actor career into his quick, one-hour, entertaining creation No Actors Allowed...

David Ives' fascinating two character play within a play Venus in Fur won a Best Actress Tony Award for Nina Arianda in 2012. It's no wonder as the role in theatrical size and scope is every actress's dream. Now onstage at SCR, Casey Stangl directs two first-rate actors in Ives' thoroughly engrossin...

Actor/singer John Lloyd Young, best known for his Tony-winning portrayal of Frankie Valli in the original Broadway Jersey Boys and for his performance in the 2014 film, has performed three cabaret concerts at the Cafe Carlisle in New York since 2013. He felt it was high time to bring the act home to...

Since its creation in 1997, Ragtime has remained one of my favorite musicals for two reasons. Its simply gorgeous almost opera-like musical score by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens moves me to the bone, and it has more meaningful historical content about America at the turn of the 20th century than...

Perhaps Kander and Ebb's best musical, apart from Chicago, Cabaret has it all: a fine book, deliciously diverse characters, dynamite music and a subtext that will not quit. The subtext being: either compromise or get out if you value your life, the latter, to be sure, the wiser. This is Berlin, circ...

For 90 solid minutes, Tony Award-winning Broadway icon Brian Stokes Mitchell---under the guise of a showtunes-centric cabaret concert themed around his most recent studio album Simply Broadway---provided his enthralled Costa Mesa audience a virtual master class in musical theater performance. Not on...

Directed by Caitlin Hart, WHAT OF THE NIGHT? is meant to be a poignant saga chronicling the life of Nadine's children, Birdie (Lisa Jai), Charlie (Marc Pelina), Rainbow (Alex Marshall-Brown) and Ray (Thaddeus Shafer), the son she gave away. As they traverse the moral and financial bankruptcy that is...

Dane Whitlock directs his creation, subtitled 'A New Musical Mash-up Parody SLASHER Musical,' at a uproarious neck-breaking pace allowing just enough time to laugh at the hysterical antics or gasp at the low-budget frights or sway your bodies to the recognition of Donna Summer classics....

Writer/director Sean Abley has wisely chosen this troupe of talented actors to be his Bitches. All women characters (performed over-the-top by males in men's clothing) sharply deliver some snappy one-liners with some delicious drag queen bulls-eyed intensities....

ON THE RAZZLE is an older British term for what we in the colonies would translate as 'partying down.' Playwright Tom Stoppard has stated that his 'primary concern is to make the tale as comic an entertainment as possible.' Stoppard's farce consists of two hours of slapstick shenanigans, mistaken i...

With the arrival of a two-disc studio recording of the complete Kander & Ebb score of And The World Goes Round from Kritzerland Records, there's reason to shout and sing out loud.Starring powerhouse vocalists Brent Barrett, Jason Graae, Christiane Noll, Kristin Towers-Rowles, Kyra DaCosta and musica...