SANTA BARBARA THEATER REVIEWS

In Ensemble's presentation of Doug Wright's 'I Am My Own Wife,' actor John Tufts does an impressive job of personifying the history of cultural and political crisis and evolution in Germany and East Berlin by telling the story of eccentric transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who lived publicly as ...

For the first ten minutes of Peter Shaffer's knockabout farce, Black Comedy, the stage is dark, as engaged Londoneers Brindsley Miller and Carol Melkett get ready to receive wealthy German art collector Georg Bamberger, who they hope will purchase Brindlsey's latest modern sculpture. But a blown fus...

What do you get when you combine Alfred Hitchcock with Monty Python? The 39 Steps, a riotous adaptation of Hitchcock's memorable 1935 comic suspense film that features a cast of four actors and a minimum of everything else. The play made its debut last weekend at the OYES Theatre in Ojai and despite...

MacLeod's play points out the lack of representation of middle-aged, middle-class women in entertainment; and then reinforces the idea by using the very stereotypes about this group that generally prevent these women from being utilized more dramatically....

Prism Productions, a.k.a. The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society, presents 'A Christmas Carol' in a true, meta display of 'Waiting For Guffman' bizarreness....

A lengthy, stylized improvised narrative, especially one that isn't rooted in the predictable contingency of absurd comedy, is a sophisticated practice—one that Impro Theatre, a Los Angeles-based improvisational group presented in Santa Barbara by Instant Karma Improv Comedy, presents in abundance...

Most recently produced at the Timbers by Prism Productions, Rich Hoag has been presenting his version of Will Rogers—humorist, columnist, actor, performer, radio personality, and American celebrity—for over a decade....

Not many musicians would be willing to turn over the entirety of their proceeds from their new album to charities, but then Pete Muller isn't your ordinary musician....

Good Day is a well-crafted production that delivers precise characterization of confused, chaotic people....

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson investigate the mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville. Though he seems to have died of natural causes, the locals believe he was the victim of the Baskerville curse, in which members of the family are hunted down by the dreaded hellhound who wanders the moors....

Ensemble's 'Sweeney Todd' is a highly enjoyable production that captured the dark romance and comedy of this tale of love and vengeance....

Dark, feisty, and satisfyingly bawdy, 'Heathers: The Musical' offers witty dialogue and clever lyrics that highlight the humor in both the invented melodrama and the disquieting realities of the American teen experience....

Simple, profound realism layers comedy neatly into quirky, messy dissatisfaction in Melissa James Gibson's play about characters with varying degrees of social ineptitude dealing with the confusion of life's transitions....

PCPA closes out their season this year with 'Other Desert Cities,' Jon Robin Baitz's critically acclaimed drama about a troubled household struggling to overcome the pain and embarrassment of a disturbing family history....

An engaging spoof of Casablanca-style detective films, 'Murder at Cafe Noir' is a suitably wacky, everyone's-a-suspect caper in which the audience eventually chooses the guilty party....

Definitely one of this current millennium's funniest stage shows, the world-famous Hollywood Bowl certainly chose wisely in its decision to stage the hit musical comedy Monty Python's SPAMALOT as this year's all-star annual summer stage musical spectacular, which was welcomed with plenty of sustaine...

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Dark themes mercilessly played through incredibly sympathetic characters makes for an unapologetic and ambitious play that forces the audience to consider meaning, whether on a personal or universal level....

David Ives's play-within-a-play is a modern take on the constantly undulant and always tantalizing balance of power between the sexes....

'Bloody Poetry' shows that true libertines and true punks don't die; they rot away, into infamous paradigms of idealistic decadence....

'Dead Man's Cell Phone' is a play in which time is twisted, existence is questionable, and relationships are forged through the connective tissue of technology....

'Woyzeck' is lovely and horrible; a narrative, musical dream cycle of moments that represent the tragic realities of love and loss; and damaging effects of social hierarchy and human brutality....

Impro Theatre's production featured talented performers with a flare for biting, Austenian wit and an impressive aptitude for physical humor. The performance was swift and dynamic, and it conceptually captured the spirit of Austen's literary universe—without omitting the inherent comicality inevit...

'Light up the Sky' would have been more interesting as a show that functioned on two levels: a fun period farce and a smart satire about a play that's a smart satire. Instead, 'Light up the Sky' is fluffy and pointless; a superficial farce too unrelatable to be mindlessly funny, and not self-aware e...

'The Insect Comedy' is a series of clever scenes about the emblematic interactions that guide the direction of our lives by showing motivation within the structures of our existence....