LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

Starting with the imaginative small space staging by director Cate Caplin, musical direction by Jeff Bonhiver, and choreography by Samantha Whidby who also stage manages the production, each of the actors lovingly brings all our favorite Peanuts comic strip characters to life. Set to music in a ser...

The appeal of trading in the hustle and bustle of a 21st Century lifestyle for a 1955 throwback downgrade is the focus of Jordan Harrison's wonderfully intriguing play MAPLE & VINE, now having its Los Angeles/Orange County premiere production at the Chance Theater in Anaheim Hills through October 19...

What I found so utterly engaging about the world premiere of Steve Martin and Edie Brickell's new musical BRIGHT STAR is its complete unpretentiousness. Certainly its musical style --American bluegrass with a heaping helping of laid back mountain charm -- has the kind of lilting homespun ease that m...

Jersey Boys, called a jukebox musical, is an uber well-structured, Tony Award-winning show presented in a documentary-like format. It tells the true story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, retaining most of their original musical hits. There are lots of laughs, great rock and roll music and a r...

From the antics of silent film stars such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, to the more modern chicanery of the Marx Brothers or the physical comedy of the Three Stooges, people love to laugh out loud at the goings on of individuals trying to get away with something, even when they know they are...

Set to Tchaikovsky's sweeping score, the success of SWAN LAKE depends on its Odette/Odile, the sweetly vulnerable white swan/cunningly malevolent black swan. On the Los Angeles Ballet's 2014/2015 season opening night, the miraculous Allynne Noelle captivated with fragile, fluttering arms and superb...

In 1970, Michael Frayn, the English playwright who would go on to write NOISES OFF, was standing backstage in the wings watching a performance of another farce he had written, "The Two of Us." Of this performance, he said, 'It was funnier from behind than in front, and I thought that one day I must ...

In his timeless and invigorating script The Trip to Bountiful Horton Foote engages our attention with his keen appraisal that 'The world can't be bought'. Believing the best things in life are free - well, almost..., elderly Carrie Watts (Cicely Tyson), in her Tony-winning role, proves just how heal...

Tarell Alvin McCraney quite ingeniously explores the inner workings of a contemporary posh big city prep school by pitting five underclassmen against each other as they attempt to find unison in the school's choir. Nothing has changed in the course of the school's longevity; problems that once were ...

BRONIES! THE MUSICAL made a big splash at this year's Hollywood Fringe Festival. It won multiple awards including Best Musical, the Thirty9One Golden Elephant for best director/producers, and a Producers' Encore Award, and more importantly, it won the hearts of everyone who saw it....

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire's thoughtful, riveting character study GOOD PEOPLE continues at the La Mirada Theater for the Performing Arts through October 12. Buoyed by impressive performances, this excellent regional production of the Tony Award-winning play shines the spo...

I revert to childhood when I see a Mel Brooks movie or show. The sillier the better: the sight gags, the double entendres, the more the merrier. The New Mel Brooks Musical, Young Frankenstein is a real rip-roaring hoot of a show from start to finish as produced by DOMA with a great cast and zippy fa...

Nothing like an idyllic family portrait (at left): father Martin (Paul Witten), mother Stevie (Ann Noble), son Billy (Spencer Morrissey) and close family friend Ross (Matt Kirkwood). They are what one might call perfect. They have everything and adore one another. Martin is a prize-winning architect...

Amy Herzog's Pulitzer-Prize nominated 4,000 Miles explores a most difficult relationship between a grandmother of 90 and her grandson some seventy years her junior. That gap in age is very wide like the distance of 4,000 miles from Seattle, Washington to New York City which Leo (Christian Prentice) ...

Michael dies in a car crash that he calmly describes in explicit detail in the opening monologue of Antony J. Bowman's SOMEWHERE. It is a chilling few minutes that sets up what we think will be a thought-provoking exploration of what happens to one man after death....

GOODBYE MARILYN: A LOVE LETTER explores the last night of Marilyn Monroe's life. Essentially, the world premiere play written and directed by Michael Phillips, is a love letter to Marilyn, attempting to show her not as a celebrity, but as a person dealing with scattered memories from her life as the...

Melissa Arctic, Craig Wright's re-imagining of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, doesn't quite jell, despite many good elements in this two-hour production....

Most of the time, when you go to the theater, you pretty much know what to expect. Though the subject matter and delivery varies, when you buy a ticket to a play or musical you basically know what kind of show you're going to see. Well here's one for those of you that want something that is truly di...

The World Premiere of AFFLUENCE by playwright Steven Peterson is a pitch-dark comedy that may cause one to reflect on the true meaning of wealth. The play was the winner of the 2013 Julie Harris Playwright Award of the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild, now onstage at Theatre 40 through October 20, direc...

Audiences may be somewhat confused, but nonetheless intrigued and maybe even stimulated by Jordan Harrison's world premiere play Marjorie Prime now onstage at the Mark Taper Forum through October 19. It's an insightful 80-minute one-act but would most likely work better in tandem with another one-ac...

Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate is a timeless, delightful musical romp that can be seen again and again. It's an overblown, joyous account of two egotistical actors, once married to each other, who adore one another but just cannot be around each other very long without catastrophic, calamitous results. ...

Actors/singers David Burnham and Valerie Perri were critically acclaimed costars of Musical Theatre West's (MTW) Sunset Boulevard last season, but they have never sung together in cabaret until now. Together Again For the First Time premiered at Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal on Sunday September...

Clever and full of campy humor, the world premiere Scary Musical The Musical has a dangerously speedy pace that will surely keep you on your toes as you enjoyably try to figure out whodunit. Now at the NoHo Arts Center and produced by NoHo ACE, the new musical has brilliantly skilled direction and c...

Charles Dickens' last novel, unfinished at the time of his death in 1870, supplied the story for the musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood which won five Tony Awards when it first premiered in 1985. Although it won for Best Book and Best Score, I hardly find either completely satisfying. On the musical...

In Is There Sex After Marriage?, a talented cast of six hysterically illustrate the pitfalls caused by a husband's off-the-cuff, but honest remark about sex with his wife....