Saturday, January 16, 2016
There's nothing quite as gratifying as spending 90 minutes in the company of a gifted storyteller. James Lecesne holds his audience rapt at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, where his solo show "The…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:13PMFriday, January 15, 2016
They weren't household names, and only one of their faces might be widely recognizable, but the deaths in rapid succession of Myra Carter, Brian Bedford and Alan Rickman represent an incalcu…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:50PMThursday, January 14, 2016
When literary classics are adapted for the stage with kid gloves, Masterpiece Tedium is usually the result. The reason is fairly straightforward. Art that makes a lasting impression must pos…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:52PMTuesday, January 12, 2016
Sandra Tsing Loh's midlife crisis may turn out to be the best thing that has ever happened to her career. Adultery, divorce and menopause have given this multidisciplinary humorist a banquet…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:30PMSunday, January 10, 2016
Sometimes the word "unforgettable" can be taken literally. I can still feel that electric charge when I first encountered Rajiv Joseph's "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo" in 2009. The world …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:49AMSaturday, December 19, 2015
Still haven't checked off those on your gift list who are of a more melodramatic or histrionic temperament? Never fear. There is a cornucopia of holiday goodies waiting for the thespians and…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:49PMSaturday, December 12, 2015
Idina Menzel is such a beloved Broadway talent that it only makes sense that a show built around her would give us two Menzels for the price of one. "If/Then," the 2014 Broadway musical now …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:35PMHere, in alphabetical order, are my 2015 theater highlights. "Amélie," Berkeley Repertory Theatre: An enchanting act of theatrical translation that brought the French film to the stage in a…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:35PM"Identity politics" has an old-fashioned ring, the banner of the academic culture wars of the 1990s, but the conflicts over race, religion, sexuality, gender, nationality and, let us not for…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:35PMThursday, December 10, 2015
What a difference a director makes. Having seen the original Broadway staging of "The Color Purple" in New York and then the touring production at the Ahmanson Theatre, I was in no rush to r…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:57PMTuesday, December 8, 2015
The crowds in the theater district here have been as large and unwieldy as they typically are this time of year. Walk along Broadway or 8th Avenue between 42nd and 50th streets around 7:30 i…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:05PMSunday, December 6, 2015
NEW YORK — The youngsters from the new musical "School of Rock" are on a rescue mission. Not only are they trying to salvage their wacko teacher's dream of transforming their nerdy selves …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:42PMFriday, December 4, 2015
With his gray mane and gravelly roar, Al Pacino skulks around the stage like an old lion in "China Doll," David Mamet's yakking character study of an aging oligarch still trying to intimidat…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:56PMSaturday, November 28, 2015
Thespians, a superstitious lot, insist that "Macbeth" should never be directly referred to inside a theater. If an actor accidentally forgets to call Shakespeare's malevolent masterpiece "th…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:59PMFriday, November 20, 2015
This fall season has provided Los Angeles theatergoers the opportunity to become better acquainted with the most exciting generation of playwrights to have burst onto the scene since I becam…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:52PMWhen the drizzle outside is as continuous as the chatter inside, you can be sure the play you're watching is set in Ireland. Such is the case in John Patrick Shanley's gentle dramatic comedy…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:34AMTuesday, November 10, 2015
Knowledge has been a central subject of Western drama since Oedipus went on a manhunt and discovered that he himself was the culprit. Who are we? What are we doing here? And how shall we car…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:50PMMonday, November 2, 2015
An appealing cast and some gorgeous singing enliven "Breaking Through," a new musical about an old subject — the music industry's uncanny knack for destroying the talent it packages for fl…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:30PMSaturday, October 31, 2015
"Hamilton," which began off-Broadway at the Public Theater and is now happily ensconced at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre, where tickets are fetching a Russian oligarch's ransom, is the …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:28AMTuesday, October 20, 2015
Courtney Love wears her ghostliness with a rock star's swagger. When she enters the playing area that has been set up at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, where "Kansas City Choir Boy" opened Sunday…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:50AMThursday, October 15, 2015
Rajiv Joseph, the boldly adventurous author of “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” begins “Guards at the Taj” on a Beckettian note. The play, which opened Wednesday at the Geffen Play…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:50PM"In Your Arms," the audience-pleasing new dance musical receiving its world premiere at the Old Globe, seems designed, packaged and market-tested for Broadway.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:09PMThe most tantalizing aspect of "La Mélancolie des Dragons," an eccentric performance work by French artist and director Philippe Quesne, is the gentle camaraderie of the longhaired heavy-me…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:09PMCommedia dell'arte meets British farce: In "One Man, Two Guvnors," Richard Bean gives Carlo Goldoni's 18th century comedy "The Servant of Two Masters" the Benny Hill treatment.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:09PM"Amélie," the new musical based on the offbeat 2001 French film that made a star out of a pixieish Audrey Tautou, does more than translate for an American audience the tale of a minor mirac…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:09PMThe program for South Coast Repertory's production of Qui Nguyen's "Vietgone," which is having its world premiere in Costa Mesa, has some interesting biographical tidbits about the author th…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:08PMFrom the merest suggestion in Shakespeare's "Othello" that Desdemona may have had an African maid as a girl, Toni Morrison imagines hidden dimensions in the mind and heart of the Senator's d…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:08PMFunny the way success renders yesterday's avant-garde palatable to today's mainstream. Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard, once bewildering to theatergoers addicted to stories with a beginning, m…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 11:26AMBroadway went big this year. Big box office, big attendance, big flops and big statements. The biggest statement by far was "Fun Home" winning five Tonys, including the best musical award, t…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:52AMFriday, August 21, 2015
The Fountain Theatre, established 25 years ago, began, as many things used to do, with a fateful phone call.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:01PM 
