LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

Actor/director Ben Rimalower brings his critically acclaimed show Patti Issues (about his infatuation with Patti LuPone) to Casita del Campo for two performances only Friday March 29 and Saturday March 30. Gravelly, yet sexy-voiced Rimalower, reminding me somewhat of a young Harvey Fierstein, is o...

It used to be, in days gone by, that hit Broadway shows would be made into movies; now, it's the reverse. With a dearth of ideas for Broadway musicals, the trend lately has been to turn to the big screen and revamp a popular film for the stage, adding song and dance. Such was the case with 9 to 5 an...

I am a big fan of The Palm Canyon Theatre. It is a community-based theatre with community at its heart. The casting and creative team is a mix of industry professionals with dazzling resumes (most of whom are locals) and 'just plain locals' with a passion, if not professional aspirations, for theatr...

Nina Raine takes the problems of a hearing vs. nonhearing world to a new and much higher level in her Drama Desk Award winning play Tribes now making its West Coast premiere at the Mark Taper Forum. Whereas Mark Medoff introduced audiences to the deaf community in his brilliant Children of a Lesser ...

TRIBES is a gripping, if somewhat uneven, play by Nina Raine, which has garnered accolades in both its run in London at the Royal Court Theatre and it's off-Broadway debut at the Barrow Street Theatre prior to its West Coast premiere Sunday night at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum....

West Side Story is widely considered to be one of the finest musicals ever written and it can be one of the most moving and emotionally-draining experiences one can have in the theatre. It has the capability of taking the audiences on a roller coaster of emotional highs and lows - from laughter to d...

Michael Feinstein's SINATRA PROJECT at The McCallum Theatre was 'Night And Day' above the theatrical offering I had seen the night before. (See my review of 'Prince Poppycock and Frenchie Davis' if you want to know what I am talking about). It was everything a concert should be and he was everything...

Many people do not realize, with the exception of us theatre junkies, that Billy Barnes, who regretfully passed from us in September of last year, was without a doubt the keenest composer of the theatre revue. He also created special material for TV's Laugh-In and The Carol Burnett Show, among other...

What an extreme pleasure to see 3-D Theatricals grow over the past three years into a major force on the musical comedy theatrical scene in greater Los Angeles. Based in Orange County, the group headed by artistic director T.J. Dawson is mounting 9 to 5 The Musical every bit as deliciously as the or...

Everyday life is often reduced to a showdown between the 'suits' and the common man struggling to just survive the uphill battle called life. The 4 darkly comic tales in 'Of Bats & Suits' at the Lyric Theatre take us into different variations on this theme, showing us that no matter what, living li...

For those who are fans of reality television - in particular 'reality competition' television - last night was a 'must see' evening in the theatre that featured finalists from three of prime time's most popular shows - American Idol, America's Got Talent and, the one I actually, personally, enjoy - ...

Cavalia has always hit the mark by putting man and horse together in a breathlessly singular way, and now in Odysseo with the beauty of nature as backdrop, they are more in tune than ever. Cirque, equitation and equestrian arts meet once more in a spectacular display!...

This year's 'LOVE BITES' is a delicious assortment of short plays that explore love in all its miserable glory with humor and irreverence ... the irresistible passion, the humiliating pitfalls, the euphoria, the anguish, and everything in between. The plays, performed at the Elephant Space in Hollyw...

When I first heard Janene Lovullo at Sterling's Upstairs at Vitello's in January of 2010, I was captivated by her beautifully fragile soprano voice and how well she was able to convey the delicacy of the lyrics of each song to a large audience. I also remember telling her how she needed to record, a...

Broadway's "Golden Couple", Marin Mazzie and Jason Daniely, brought their newest Concert-Cabaret to The Annenberg Theatre last Saturday night to a near-sold-out, highly appreciative crowd and for ninety-plus minutes recounted their personal love story in anecdote and song. ("We've been married for 1...

The highlight of The McCallum Theatre's 25th Anniversary Season thus far is, hands down, the incredible rock-opera concert put on by Australia's favorite singing frat boys, The Ten Tenors, who nearly blew the roof off of the theatre last weekend with their 'off the charts' vocals, irresistible chari...

On Saturday February 23, triple-threat actress/singer/dancer Bebe Neuwirth presented her critically-acclaimed cabaret act Stories with Piano at Valley Performing Arts Center, Northridge. Miss Neuwirth has a legion of fans for her two-time Emmy Award winning portrayal of Frasier's cold, bitchy, calcu...

Now in the final stretches of its 25-week national tour before ultimately making its sit-down Broadway transfer later this Spring, the brand-new, revamped revival of JEKYLL & HYDE - THE MUSICAL has finally returned to Southern California for the next few weeks, this time playing performances at the ...

This is the third production of The World Goes 'Round in and around Los Angeles in the last six months...and another best bet! Sure, it's hard to beat the joyous music of Kander & Ebb, in whatever way it's presented. But this production at DCLO has a style all its own. Though in some ways more tradi...

In its 1970 Broadway incarnation Company with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by George Furth reinvented the Broadway musical. Based on a series of short plays, it was the first time a musical could boast a nonlinear plot interweaving the stories of 5 distinctive married couples, all f...

When Oklahoma! was first produced on Broadway in 1943 it became the first smash hit for newly formed collaborating team Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II and also the first real book musical, preceded only by Showboat. It was a breakthrough musical, which when given a first-class production, ...

Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang's immensely funny CHINGLISH, a recent hit on Broadway, is now playing at South Coast Repertory through February 24. A co-production with the Berkeley Repertory Theatre -- and featuring almost the exact same cast from that Fall 2012 West Coast Premiere ...

Armed with twice the vocal power and awash with plenty of real, fiery chemistry, Broadway vets -- and real-life married couple -- Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley's romantically-themed cabaret showcase titled 'He Said/She Said' played to packed audiences at the Samueli Theater in Costa Mesa over Vale...

'Once Upon a Mattress' marked the 1959 Broadway debut of later stage and TV legend Carol Burnett, who originated the role of Princess Winnifred. In the performance I attended, the role was played by spunky Hannah-Michelle Provisor who charmingly displayed sass, vulnerability, strength of character,...