THOUSAND OAKS THEATER REVIEWS

The idea for Nunsense, the whimsical musical about five wacky but lovable nuns from the Little Sisters of Hoboken, came to creator Dan Goggin from an unexpected quarter. A friend had presented Goggin with a mannequin dressed as a Dominican nun in traditional habit, with the idea that it would be f...

At the beginning of Act II of Ragtime, Terrence McNally's masterful musical adaptation of E. L. Doctorow's novel, journeyman pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr., decimated by the murder of his beloved Sarah, sings, 'Say goodbye to music / Say goodbye to light.' This sums up my feelings about Theater League...

John Ford's 1962 film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, is one of motion picture's all-time classic westerns. So when I heard that a play version was making its American premiere at the Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura, I got more than just a little excited. Envisioning the tensions seen on the s...

'A person's got to have something to do,' newlywed May Brummett says to her husband Raleigh, in a scene from the Rubicon Theatre Company's evocative drama, See Rock City. That statement sums up the theme in this second installment in Arlene Hutton's trilogy dealing with a young Kentucky couple tryin...

Laurel and Hardy must be smiling in the comedy Valhalla. Cabrillo Music Theatre's near-perfect production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which opened last night at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza's Scherr Forum, brings back the classic, broad humor from vaudeville, performed b...

EMPIRE THE MUSICAL has been knocking around in the wings ever since Caroline Sherman and Robert Hull began writing it in 1999. Its first fully-staged production took place at the Hudson Theatre in Hollywood in 2003 and it has had periodic readings through the years in both Los Angeles and New York. ...

Multi-Media UNDER FIRE at California Lutheran University Theatre Arts Department Celebrates and Honors The Warrior, Not The War....

With successful previous productions of Man of La Mancha and Our Town, the current fall musical offering of High Noonish solidifies that the Drama Department at Newbury Park High School is back and solid as ever!...

In the opening scene of the Rubicon Theatre Company's production of My Fair Lady, buskers in London's Covent Garden, where Cockney Eliza Doolittle works as a flower girl, are rewarded with tuppence given to them by members of the audience. It is this kind of intimacy, an initial breaking of the four...

When you walk into the plain storefront that serves as the home for The Flying H Group Theatre Company, you have to do a double-take to make sure you're in the right place. A narrow foyer gives way to a larger back room, which resembles an auto mechanic's workshop. Meticulously detailed right down t...

Like many from my generation, our love of screen icon Marilyn Monroe made her a star and continues to keep the flame of her incredibly hot sexual appeal alive. And while I have seen several performers take on the role. The amazing Sunny Thompson fully embodies the heart and soul, not just the heat ...

s I was waiting for my theatre guest to arrive at the Pantages Tuesday night for the opening of ANNIE, a school bus pulled up. Within seconds, a gaggle of little girls spilled out onto the sidewalk shrieking in anticipation and taking pictures of the sparkly marquee on their smart phones. They were ...

Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operetta, 'H.M.S. Pinafore,' made its debut last weekend at the Hillcrest Center for the Arts, and for all intents and purposes, it was just another in a long line of highly entertaining shows staged by the venerable Ventura County Gilbert & Sullivan Repertoire Company. ...

Attention: students slogging through boring classes of quantum mechanics - have I got a show for you. Go see Copenhagen, the Tony-Award winning play now being staged at the Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura. Written in 1998 by Michael Frayn (Noises Off), Copenhagen is an imaginative 'what-if' story...

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As the topic of guns in society becomes more and more prominent during the upcoming election season, Stephen Sondheim's controversial 1990 Off-Broadway and off-beat musical Assassins has increased in its relevancy. Rarely staged today, Assassins is an event that commands attention, and last week, we...

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One of the keys to providing great entertainment is understanding your audience. For a theatre company that means knowing what your audience wants and then being able to provide it so they keep coming back for more. Independent Shakespeare Co. has done a brilliant job of both. Not only do they play ...

In NO HOMO, playwright Brandon Baruch has written a very funny, smart and realistic script on the perceived misconceptions of Ash and Luke's relationship.  Their respective siblings and their friends think the two admittedly hetero guys really cohabitate as lovers and not just roommates. Jessica Ha...

If, for some inexplicable reason one didn't know, the world premiere of Citizen: An American Lyric  will make it a point to educate you that racism exists. The multi-awarding winning book of poetry of the same name by Claudia Rankine, on which Stephen Sachs has adapted, will reinforce the many inst...

Although I am not as familiar with the plays of Anton Chekhov as some, Christopher Durang's play, Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike, doesn't require a pop quiz of Chekhovian references in order for one to enjoy the show. This character study into the lives of three squabbling, middle-aged siblings has e...

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...

Baby boomers don't normally show their approval at the theater by leaping to their feet and giving standing ovations during a performance… unless they happen to be seeing A NIGHT WITH JANIS JOPLIN at Pasadena Playhouse. The power of remembrance combined with the powerhouse performances of Mary Bri...

When Bent first premiered in 1979 its persecution of gays in Nazi Germany was a real eye opener. This was before the onset of AIDS...in the first scene, the depiction of Max's (Patrick Heusinger)one night stand and his gay relationship with a dancer could have been taken right out of contemporary ...