LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

Annapurna is one of the highest mountain peaks of the Himalayas, considered the most dangerous. Yet that does not stop climbers from risking their lives. Theirs is an extreme form of commitment. Sharr White uses scaling the mountain range as a symbol in his new play Annapurna now at the Odyssey thro...

On Sunday evening April 21 singer/actor Ramin Karimloo best known to UK audiences for his stellar performances as the Phantom in both The Phantom of the Opera and its sequel Love Never Dies, made his Los Angeles cabaret debut at Sterling's Upstairs at the Federal in Broadway to Bluegrass. Since this...

Boasting slick staging by director Garry Marshall and a stalwart ensemble of four, Billy & Ray, to quote a Wilder (Kevin Blake) phrase from the play, sparks and sparkles with entertainment value....

Billed as Barbara Cook's Special 85th Birthday Concert, the Tony Award-winning soprano's one-woman concert of musical theatre songs, rare selections, and jazz standards at the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa was met with well-earned---and well-deserved---adoring cheers througho...

Sweet Charity/book by Neil Simon/music by Cy Coleman; lyrics by Dorothy Fields/directed by Neil Dale/choreographed by Janet Renslow/Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre, Claremont/through May 5...

The freshest revival of a classic in years has opened at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts and this one is most definitely not your grandmother's movie musical....

When the original West Side Story opened on Broadway in 1957, it changed in many ways the concept of what constitutes a Broadway musical. Its creative team-writer Arthur Laurents, director Jerome Robbins, composer Leonard Bernstein, and lyricist Stephen Sondheim-took Romeo and Juliet and turned it i...

I am a huge fan of Louisa May Alcott's story of the March sisters and both films of Little Women, the one from the early 30s starring Katharine Hepburn and Joan Bennett and then the 1949 revival starring June Allyson, Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh and Margaret O'Brien. I'm partial to the latter film...

Two months from today Marilyn Monroe fans will celebrate what would have been her eighty-seventh birthday. It's hard to imagine her at such an advanced age, considering her beauty, vivacity, and girlish manner. Her death was indeed tragic, but it has left us with an image of Marilyn with her charms ...

Donald Freed's new play Tomorrow at the Skylight Theatre was written expressly for Salome Jens, and Miss Jens is one of the chief reasons to see it. More about her later! Not that the play itself is not worth the price of admission, for, indeed, it is a peculiarly artful and quite theatrically excit...

Occasionally a play comes along that, no matter how hard I try, I can't stop thinking about. Such was my experience over the weekend with THE BARGAIN & THE BUTTERFLY, inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Artist of the Beautiful', conceived & directed by Katharine Noon for The Ghost Road Theatre Co...

NAKED BOYS SINGING just completed a rare West Coast engagement at The Palm Canyon Theatre in Palm Springs to sold-out, and very enthusiastic, crowds. In my recent review I singled out Christopher Trepinski and Juan Guerrero as the two stand-out talents in this particular troupe and had the wonderful...

I will admit, from the start, that I was not racing to the theatre to see BLUE MAN GROUP. Having only seen them once or twice on television, and never being blown away by what I saw, I was more attending the show to fulfill my obligation of covering all of the Broadway offerings at The McCallum The...

Everyone is familiar with the old adage 'You Get What You Pay For'. Never was it more true than with NAKED BOYS SINGING, now playing for a limited engagement at The Palm Canyon Theatre in Palm Springs. You get exactly what you pay for - six naked boys singing. So who could complain? They don't promi...

Beautifully acted and heartbreakingly stirring, Samuel D. Hunter's excellent, emotionally-gripping play THE WHALE, plays at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through March 31. The play follows the story of Charlie (Matthew Arkin, in a truly transformative performance that many will remember for de...

D'Ysquiths are dropping like flies in The Old Globe's world premiere musical, A GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER, and each time one dies, Monty Navarro moves one step closer to becoming the ninth Earl of Highhurst....

Veteran Las Vegas performer Steve Connolly stars as the legendary Elvis Presley in the stage production SPIRIT OF THE KING, which premiered March 6 for an open-ended engagement in the Cascade Lounge of the Spa Resort Casino in Palm Springs. Dubbed "The hardest working KING in show biz," Steve Connol...

Ken LaZebnik's west coast premiere play On the Spectrum at the Fountain Theatre is a life-affirming work that explores the power of love between two autistic people, and the repercussions on those around them. Thanks to LaZebnik, a trio of fine actors and splendid direction from Jacqueline Schultz, ...

It is probably not the best form for a writer to begin a composition with “There are No Words To Describe” … but that is the first thing that came to mind after spending a glorious evening in the theatre with a true American Musical Theatre treasure, Barbara Cook, last Thursday at The McCallum...

Last night I fell in love … again … with Disney's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST! And that was surprise. The Musical holds a very special place in my heart since Broadway's original Belle, Susan Egan, and Broadway's final Belle, Anneliese Vanderpol, are both former students of mine. I was looking forward ...

While certainly a fun, buoyant little show---featuring some enjoyable music from HAIRSPRAY composers Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, as well as a very likable, extremely talented young actor, Stephen Anthony, at the center of its semi-autobiographical tale of successful grifting---CATCH ME IF YOU CA...

For diehard fans of Judy Garland, for those who adored every song she sang and every word she uttered, Peter Quilter's account of Judy's final comeback in the UK at Talk of the Town in December, 1968, called End of the Rainbow must be seen. Yes, it's darkly frank showing literally the decay of the a...

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...

The short and fast-moving Wolves, which comes in at about one hour, is a smart, scary, thrilling theatrical ride akin to a nightmare. What in the beginning upsets, though, sooner or later yields enlightenment and even an odd sense of relief. The whole bleak argument of the city as wilderness and man...

Triple threat actress/singer/dancer Betty Hutton is perhaps one of the greatest yet lesser known musical film stars of the 40s and 50s. Star of Annie Get Your Gun and The Greatest Show on Earth, Hutton possessed a uniquely energetic style that can be most realistically described as 'manic'. It seems...