La Jolla Playhouse has picked its lead duo for “Freaky Friday,” the stage-musical take on the movie-based saga of switched personalities. And the theater didn’t have to look far: The t…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 01:00PMJust over a year ago, George Takei experienced what he calls the “incredible, absolute thrill of a lifetime”: Seeing the title of the stage musical he inspired go up on a Broadway marque…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 06:00PMIt’s 1916 all over again (say hey to Woodrow Wilson and World War I) as Lamb’s Players Theatre steps back 100 years in time for “An American Christmas,” its sumptuous annual stage s…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 12:00PMJust when you think there’s nothing new under the sun (or inside the snow globe), along comes a Christmas show that reminds even the Scrooge-iest soul how rewarding holiday theater can be…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 04:00PMWhen things are going well at a nonprofit arts organization — revenue up, audiences engaged, creativity flourishing — the glory often goes to the group’s top executive (or executi…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 12:00PMThe holidays won’t be the same this year for fans of San Diego’s longest-running Christmas theater tradition. For the first time in 25 years, “La Pastorela” — a show that’s upda…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 07:00PMSometimes, creating theater is like making a fresh miracle happen every day (twice a day if you’re talking weekends). So sure, why not add a few degrees of difficulty by dreaming up a b…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 10:00AMJust when you think you’ve got “The Mystery of Love and Sex” all figured out (the play, not the riddles it references), someone can be counted on to throw expectations to the curb with…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 07:00PMWorks by a quartet of rising playwrights will get their first showcases in January, as the Old Globe Theatre announces the lineup for its fourth annual New Voices Festival. Among the plays t…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 08:40PMSome shows make you want to shout. Others very much want to make you shout, whether you had it in mind or not. “A Snow White Christmas” is unabashedly one of the latter: Audiences for …
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 03:00PMHedwig can you hear me? OK, wrong musical — although the heroine of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” does riff on “The Who’s Tommy” in this hard-rocking show whose faithfully freaky …
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 04:00PMThe adventurous and socially engaged InnerMission Productions has just launched its second full season with a lineup of works that are all San Diego premieres. First up is Martin Zimmerman�…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 12:00PMFour plays will be getting their initial shakedowns in December as La Jolla Playhouse brings back its DNA New Work Series for a fifth edition. The DNA showcase, which runs Dec. 9-11, has pro…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 05:00PM“I was born on the other side / of a town ripped in two. I made it over the great divide / now I'm coming for you.” — “Tear Me Down,” from “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” When the…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 12:00PMWe may have only just reached Thanksgiving, but San Diego theater is already wading deep into the yuletide. (Twelve days of Christmas? Make that 45.) And while this year’s holiday stage …
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 04:00PMThe men in Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart” come from many walks of life, but in Ion Theatre’s bracing revival of the 1985 play, they all pad across the stage the same way: barefo…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 04:00PMAnd you thought that thing about the playgoer who tried to charge his phone onstage last year was the weirdest Broadway story you’d be hearing anytime soon. The drama-within-the-drama at …
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 02:00PMNot every ghost story hitting the boards this season features the likes of Scrooge — and San Diego Rep doesn’t necessarily give a figgy pudding if its upcoming world-premiere production…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 06:00PMLast year at this time, La Jolla Playhouse was announcing it would roll out four world-premiere shows for its 2016-17 season, an ambitious commitment to new work. Now, for 2017-18, the Play…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 01:00PMIn a couple of telling scenes from the smart new touring version of “The Sound of Music,” people struggle to summon the words to songs that have faded from their lives and minds. That�…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 04:00PMThe little musical that wouldn’t die (its original off-Broadway production ran nearly 42 years, still a record) has just hit Scripps Ranch Theatre for a fresh go-round, complete with that …
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 11:00AMSarah Gubbins is an L.A. transplant whose heart still beats Chicago blue, and the playwright says with a laugh that being on the West Coast when the Cubs won the World Series earlier this …
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 04:00PMJack O’Brien has been one of the biggest names on Broadway for well over two decades now — and these days it seems even New York’s boulevard of dreams can’t quite hold him in. Fresh…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 12:00PMIt’s a familiar story: A guy with some pretty odd locks swoops down from his tower to assert power, leaving citizens feeling jittery and bewildered. Will his heart soften, or will the popu…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 04:00PMNative Voices will return in 2017-18 as La Jolla Playhouse’s resident theater company, the Playhouse has announced. It will mark the first time that a theater troupe has done a second stin…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 03:00PMThree decades ago, Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart” detonated like a grenade on the New York cultural scene. The 1985 play was (and remains) an angry and provocative work of advocacy…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 06:00PMFor the mom and daughter in the captivating new musical “Miss You Like Hell,” driving across the Great Divide proves easier by a mile than healing the one between their hearts. (And let�…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 06:00PMShould laws and leaders always be followed, no questions asked? Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” asks that question — and so did Old Globe Theatre teaching artists who posed it t…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 04:00PMDinner parties gone very wrong are something of a dramatic staple, but even by the lively history of that subgenre, the combative gathering in “Disgraced” takes the (scorched) cake. Ayad…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 03:45PMLa Jolla Playhouse may be the birthplace of the Broadway-bound musical “Come From Away,” but the remote town of Gander, Newfoundland, is in many ways the show’s spiritual home. And thi…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 06:00PMThe La Jolla Playhouse-bred musical “Jersey Boys” may be saying goodbye to Broadway in January after a glorious decade-plus run, but the Midtown Men keep on carrying the torch for the sh…
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune at 11:00AM
