THOUSAND OAKS THEATER REVIEWS

In Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, an angel in training named Clarence comes back to earth to earn his wings by helping one man recognize his value in the world. The beloved classic is a reminder to all adults that every man matters and every angel has his own special way of helping those in ne...

The 2014 Western tour of ELF: THE MUSICAL stopped for two performances at Riverside's Fox Performing Arts Center before leaving Southern California. The show is fun, but it has flaws....

Loud repetitious music usually is a turnoff to me, in spite of the fact that the rock and roll of the 60s and 70s constitutes a large part of my musical background. I grew up listening to it and like much of it, but in later years have narrowed my preferences to pop standards, jazz and Broadway fare...

In Almost, Maine, playwright John Cariani brilliantly weaves his witty words into his collection of nine stand-alone short scenes thread together by their home town and the various townsfolk name-dropped throughout....

A frequent Leslie Jordan collaborator, David Galligan directs this pint-sized dynamo in an 80-minute mostly funny, but sometimes poignantly heartfelt walk down the Jordan Family's memory lane....

Prepare to be thoroughly enchanted by Oregon Shakespeare Festival's transfer of INTO THE WOODS newly arrived at the Wallis Center in Beverly Hills. It is, without a doubt, the most inventive and inspiring production of this Sondheim musical I have ever seen. Amanda Denhert's direction delights at ev...

Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre's annual Christmas show is an original with concept and script by artistic director John LaLonde incorporating well-known and lesser known holiday tunes and carols. It's Christmas Every Day is a feel-good, forget.your.troubles kind of show. Think the whimsy of Whi...

Ah, the art of making art! In an excellent adaptation of the 1999 Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's Putting It Together, Chromolume Theatre steps up to bat with stellar direction from Cate Caplin and boasting a terrific cast through December 21 at their home the Attic Theatre in West LA....

Joe Orton's insanely insane world in 1960s England is no better displayed than in his third and final play What the Butler Saw now onstage at the Mark Taper Forum through December 21. A terrifically energized cast are on hand as is seasoned director John Tillinger, but things got off to a somewhat s...

Victor Hugo's monumental romantic/gothic novel of the mid 15th century The Hunchback of Notre Dame centers in, around and on top of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. The new musical of the same name written by Peter Parnell, Stephen Schwartz and Alan Menken, which is receiving its U.S. premiere...

The Desert Rose Playhouse, in Rancho Mirage California, is presenting a hilariously funny sendup of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, SCROOGE IN ROUGE. The plot's premise is that a small music hall on London's outskirts plans to present A CHRISTMAS CAROL. When all but three actors in the twenty-member cast develop...

Slaughter House Theatre Company's West Coast premiere of Dirty wonderfully involves, intrigues, then incites indignation while always keeping its audience interested....

Chromolume Theatre succeeds in putting together a strong cast of five vocally gifted singers to harmoniously perform the collection of Stephen Sondheim songs strung together in the revue Putting It Together....

As the axis of this spinning vortex, Noel Coward's The Vortex, the talented Shannon Holt dominates as Florence....

Susan Soon He Stanton has woven insights to Japanese philosophy amidst sharp, witty lines in her two-hour, three-dimensional character-driven drama, directed by Leslie Ishii in a smooth, flowing pace....

Following in the footsteps of La Cage Aux Folles, Billy Elliott and Priscilla Queen of the Desert, all foreign films turned into Broadway musicals, Kinky Boots, the 2013 Tony Award-winning Best Musical, brings its spirited message of 'Just Be Who You Wanna Be' to the Pantages in its West Coast premi...

This isn't the first time the Illyrian Players have taken on Shakespeare. In 2011, the company began its provocative theatrical conversation about gender and sex with Twelfth Night, and it has since given LA a BDSM version of The Taming of the Shrew and a gender reversed Macbeth. In addition to Shak...

A troupe of 8 talented actors perform essentially 8 separate monologues during this 90-minute show, Tom Yewell's THE PENIS CHRONICLES...

Greasepaint's best and most recognizable songs ('Who Can I Turn To?' 'The Joker') receive strong vocal performances, backed by fully-realized acting from the charismatic Alec Medlock...

In the world premiere production of playwright (and creator of NBC's Smash) Theresa Rebeck's ZEALOT---now performing at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa through November 16---Mecca, Saudi Arabia serves as the setting for a volatile tug-of-war that erupts at the start of the 'Hajj,' the holy city'...

Get ready all you "Rocky Horror" fans! There's a new show in town that is begging for you to join in the fun, just as long as you don't mind being splattered with blood, breaking pencils, or waving pompoms. Due to robust ticket sales and an ever-increasing dedicated fan base, RE-ANIMATOR THE MUSICAL...

Based on Daniel Wallace's 1998 novel and Tim Burton's 2003 film of the same name, Big Fish, with a few minor changes in plot, becomes quite an imaginative musical...with Andrew Lippa composer of some of the best songs written for a Broadway show in a long time. So, it is hard to imagine why its Broa...

Everyone in the audience, including the men, ended up sobbing by the end of this, in real time, eavesdropping of a mother and daughter's last conversation, otherwise better known as Marsha Norman's Pulitzer Prize winning 'night, Mother....

Long before Trey Parker and Matt Stone became famous and transformed the world of entertainment with their hit television series South Park and Broadway phenomenon The Book of Mormon, they were two unknown college student with big dreams. They shared the same wickedly subversive sense of humor and h...

Arguably, director Diane Paulus' greatest triumph to date is the spectacular new production of PIPPIN, the 2013 Tony-winning revival of Stephen Schwartz's trippy but winsome musical about the angst-riddled but hyper-aspirational young son of King Charlemagne, and his erratic, sometimes frustrating j...