Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Dolly Parton announced Tuesday that her autobiographical stage musical “Dolly: An Original Musical” will have its world premiere in Nashville this July, the first public stop on the way …
SOURCE: Variety at 11:42AMSunday, January 12, 2025
For most of the film and TV industry, the devastating L.A.-area fires of the last week have at least avoided scorching the studios where the work largely occurs. But there’s no such consol…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:20PMSunday, January 5, 2025
Although most of Greg Wells’ professional life has involved producing or writing for big pop artists (including Adele, Katy Perry, OneRepublic & Timbaland, Twenty One Pilots and John L…
SOURCE: Variety at 07:52PMSaturday, January 4, 2025
It’s become an annual ritual: Every Jan. 1, more classic works of art or characters enter the public domain, and exploitation filmmakers with a tiny budget and a big taste for grisliness a…
SOURCE: Variety at 12:57AMTuesday, December 31, 2024
Stephen Schwartz will see you now. The worthier wizard of “Wicked” is the one who wrote one of Broadway’s all-time top song scores and now, a little over two decades later, has oversee…
SOURCE: Variety at 02:20PMTuesday, December 3, 2024
When Kevin Cahoon got his Tony and Drama Desk nominations in 2023 as a featured actor in Broadway’s “Shucked,” he played a hayseed character whose sexuality might or might not have bee…
SOURCE: Variety at 07:37PMSaturday, November 23, 2024
When the sing-along screenings of “Wicked” go down beginning Christmas Day, I’ll be there — but not because I have any intention of personally raising my voice in song. (Or maybe I�…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:50PMFriday, November 15, 2024
The city of Ojai has a long-established reputation as one of California’s most quintessentially laid-back small towns. But residents and frequent visitors who have a love for movies may ac…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:00PMFriday, October 11, 2024
The name Yola is not to be confused with YOLO, but if her moniker were to be an acronym, it might stand for You Only Live Awe-Inspiringly. The British-born singer has been expanding her hori…
SOURCE: Variety at 07:33PMFriday, September 27, 2024
The devil is making them do it… or maybe it’s actually an exercise in divine justice. “Randy Newman’s Faust,” the only musical comedy ever written for the stage by the dean of barb…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:43PMTuesday, September 17, 2024
Singer-songwriter Allison Russell had a song called “Persephone” on her debut solo album, so there may be some destiny in the fact that she will soon step into a role with that name in t…
SOURCE: Variety at 11:29AMTuesday, August 20, 2024
Whatever counts as Sara Bareilles’ day job right now, it’s not regualrly releasing albums and touring. Her last studio album (2019’s “Amidst the Chaos”) and tour are both five year…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:49PMTuesday, August 6, 2024
If you were cataloging the signs of a stage musical that has had a robust life over a period of not just years but decades, here are two things that might be included on that list: A) The sh…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:23PMFriday, June 28, 2024
At some point, if you are enthusiastically trying to get everyone you know in Los Angeles out to see “A Strange Loop” — and anyone who hasn’t should try to, as the production come…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:01PMFriday, June 21, 2024
It’s been just over one year since the Tonys gave the Pasadena Playhouse an award for regional theater, and that honor looks more justified than ever now that the venue is presenting a muc…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:13PMSunday, June 16, 2024
A lot of bong water has passed under the bridge since “Reefer Madness: The Musical” first premiered at the Hudson Theatre on Santa Monica Blvd. in 1998. Like, legalization of the demon w…
SOURCE: Variety at 06:50PMWednesday, June 12, 2024
For his new “Honeymind” album, singer and actor Ben Platt brought in an especially honeyed voice as a counterpart on one song, Brandy Clark. He had written “Treehouse” in a writing s…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:45PMThursday, June 6, 2024
Not to be confused with “Hello Dolly,” there’s a musical earmarked for Broadway by the name of “Hello, I’m Dolly,” with country-pop superstar Dolly Parton spearheading the effort…
SOURCE: Variety at 12:00PMMonday, April 15, 2024
The 30th anniversary of the original animated film version of “The Lion King” will be celebrated at the Hollywood Bowl next month with a live-to-film concert/screening that will include …
SOURCE: Variety at 09:29AMSunday, March 24, 2024
Does “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” count as a genre unto itself, given how many plotlines in the last half-century have relied on the suitor-out-of-water supper guest as a linchpin? T…
SOURCE: Variety at 05:03PMThursday, March 7, 2024
Steve Lawrence, a king among easy-listening crooners who rocketed to fame in the ’50s and ’60s as half of the duo Steve and Eydie, died Thursday at age 88. Lawrence died at home in Los A…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:33PMThursday, January 25, 2024
It’s not exactly breaking news in the world of show-biz satire that actors can be vain, or insecure; it’s been mined. But for as long as time and human consciousness still exist, there w…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:17PMThere’s no IP more innately suited for adaptation as a pure two-hander than the tale of Adam and Eve, a story in which, initially at least, there are no other characters, excepting the cre…
SOURCE: Variety at 12:15AMMonday, January 15, 2024
The musical-comedy “Shucked” had its closing performance on Broadway Sunday night, but the show went out with an even louder set of whoops than expected, as the curtain call included the…
SOURCE: Variety at 11:56AMTuesday, December 5, 2023
Hello, beautiful. That’s what some Barbra Streisand fans have been murmuring to their physical editions of “My Name Is Barbra,” her memoir, since it came out one month ago, and over th…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:11AMSaturday, November 11, 2023
Southern California comedy aficionados have experienced some FOMO when it comes to on-and-off L.A. resident Alex Edelman having become the toast of the town in New York theater circles with …
SOURCE: Variety at 03:07PMTuesday, August 22, 2023
“Peter Pan Goes Wrong,” now playing at L.A.’s Ahmanson Theatre, has its roots partly in silent-film slapstick, partly in British pantomime and partly in Python. But maybe the best shor…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:58PMSunday, August 13, 2023
“Try to Remember,” the most famous song to have come out of the stage musical “The Fantasticks,” was noted for its autumnal feel, sung by someone reflecting back on youthful days. Th…
SOURCE: Variety at 04:27PMTuesday, July 25, 2023
You remember the famous Talking Heads song with the lyrical hook, “This ain’t no disco…”? Part of the mission of the producers of “Here Lies Love,” a stage musical created by Dav…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:39PMSaturday, July 1, 2023
In “Into the Woods,” the audience laughs at the gluttony of the Little Red Ridinghood character, especially in the earliest, most deliberately cartoony parts of the production. But in a …
SOURCE: Variety at 09:40PMThursday, June 15, 2023
In a move certain to shock Los Angeles theatergoers, the Center Theatre Group (CTG) announced Thursday that it is canceling plans for a 2023-34 season at the Mark Taper Forum, one of the mos…
SOURCE: Variety at 08:22PM 
