THOUSAND OAKS THEATER REVIEWS

TARZAN THE MUSICAL is the latest winner in a string of ambitious musicals by the Dawson producing team at 3-D Theatricals (Gretchen, Daniel, Jeannette and T.J.). Perhaps it isn't surprising that a family run company would know the kind of heart it takes to bring to life a Disney adventure musical a...

Considered Andrew Lloyd Webber's first official musical in the late 60s, in spite of the fact that it really took off after Jesus Christ Superstar, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat has within itself a miraculous power to entertain and inspire...especially the young among us who dare t...

I have to admit I had never seen the 2001 MGM movie, Legally Blonde before seeing LEGALLY BLONDE The Musical at the Morgan-Wixson Theatre in Santa Monica. And I am happy to say it is great fun for all ages in every aspect from the effervescent musical numbers presented by the remarkably energetic c...

To those newer generation theatre and movie fans who do not remember 1952's blockbuster hit film Singin' in the Rain, directors Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green and costars Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds all contributed to making it the smash tha...

Adam & Eve and Steve/written by Chandler Warren/musical composer: Wayne Moore/directed by Ronnie MarmoTheatre 68 at/NoHo Arts Center/through August 30 A humorous take on the biblical version of creation as told through the rantings of dueling Beelzebug and God is the award-winning world premier...

The west coast premiere of Aditi Brennan Kapil's Shiv receives a simply gorgeous mounting at the Theatre @ Boston Court. Amazing just how far, with the proper elements, your imagination will allow you to go....

Playwright Wendy Graf totally deceives in naming her world premiere All American Girl. A much more appropriate and honest title would have been Anti-American Girl. All should run from this as fast as the main character did after she planted both bombs....

With the first production of their 19th Season, Kingsmen Shakespeare Company presents the dramatic-comedy Measure For Measure with a definitive French flavour....

The brilliantly creative mind of Michael Keith Allen has worked wonders with a new re-telling of Shakespeare's MACBETH at the Art of Acting Studio by setting the tragedy in a postmodern Scotland where street thugs battle for leadership as well as territory, while cutting the run time to 90 minutes a...

Neil Koenigsberg' Off the King's Road vividly illustrates the need for patience in dealing with your elders. The talented Tom Bower tackles the challenge of embodying a now single, unapologetic man going through his mundane everyday routines while grappling with continuing life alone without Betty, ...

Spectacle wins out in Cameron Mackintosh's latest tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre. Less reinvented than it is repackaged, the crowning glory of this production is its lavish costumes and sets (by Paul Brown and Maria Bjornson respectively), an...

In their 1962 Cold War song, 'The John Birch Society,' the Chad Mitchell Trio sings, 'You cannot trust your neighbor or even next of kin / If Mommy is a Commie then you gotta turn her in.' This suggests the dilemma faced by a suburban English family in Pack of Lies, Hugh Whitemore's 1983 drama of de...

The charming new regional production of the Disney/Cameron Mackintosh musical spectacular MARY POPPINS---currently playing at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts through June 21---has found a lovely, practically perfect Poppins in Hart of Dixie's Brandi Burkhardt, who confidently channels ...

Let's first get this very necessary accolade out of the way: South Coast Repertory's brand new production of Rick Elice's PETER AND THE STARCATCHER is, hands down, one of the most enjoyable, most thrilling, and most engagingly imaginative plays I have seen all season---a fitting capper to the Tony A...

A safe, inoffensive, cutesy crowd-pleaser for the young and the young-at-heart, the brand new non-Equity touring revival of the Broadway classic ANNIE is eager to please and pretty much does so. The show is, by all accounts, a cute if standard-issue charmer, filled with hummable ear-worm music (via ...

In the Los Angeles premiere of I See You Made an Effort; Annabelle Gurwitch adeptly performs excerpts from her bestselling  book of the same title. Gurwitch possesses a charismatic stage presence while definitively in control of her own storytelling. The main theme of her book/play revolves around ...

When one thinks of 'The Graduate', it is the iconic 1967 movie which catapulted Dustin Hoffman into mainstream American culture and solidified both his and Anne Bancroft's positions as some of the greatest performances of the silver screen. While the 2002 Broadway production saw brilliant performanc...

Groundlings Kung Fu Battle Island, the latest in The Groundlings' continued, well-oiled, laugh-filled Friday & Saturday night shows, just keeps the fine-tuned physical comedy and the hysterical jokes flowing....

Edward Albee once described fellow playwright Thornton Wilder's Our Town as,'...probably the finest play ever written by an American'. It is a play full of moving, intelligent, funny, and genuine moments and the ensemble cast of Newbury Park High School's Panther Players delivers a production of pro...

Turning a profit in the theatre business is challenging at best but it isn't surprising that MOTOWN THE MUSICAL easily recouped its initial investment during its run on Broadway, or its outlay for the First National Tour, now playing at the Hollywood Pantages. The popularity of the Motown sound is u...

The West Coast premiere of Dominique Morisseau's Sunset Baby provides a wonderful star vehicle for the very talented Nadege August. As the title character, August wholly embodies Nina, the troubled daughter of her recently deceased mother Ashanti X and her estranged father Kenyatta (who deserted the...

The Stephen Schwartz coming-of-age musical that helped put Bob Fosse on the map exploded onto Broadway in 1972. It then had a successful televised version in 1981. With the recent 2013 revival, the theatre world and all who see it are rediscovering this powerful show. It now has a showing through Ma...

South Coast Repertory's latest offering, MR. WOLF---now on stage in Costa Mesa through May 3---is a high-quality presentation of an intriguingly audacious if not quite fully-gestated new world premiere play from Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph, the playwright behind the celebrated BENGAL TIGER ...

Mary Poppins/book by Julian Fellowes/music by The Sherman Brothers/new songs by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe/directed by Lewis Wilkenfeld/choreographed by Cheryl Baxter/Cabrillo Music Theatre at the Fred Kavli Theatre of the Thousand Oakes Civic Arts Plaza/through April 26 only...

So. Cal audiences should check out Musical Theatre West's rather admirable regional production of LES MISERABLES, which continues its limited run at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach through April 26, 2015. This highly-commendable, local production features a superb-sounding 30-pers...