James Cagney is remembered best for playing tough-talking gangsters in Warner Bros. movies in the 1930s and ’40s, which, according to “Cagney,” a loving and cartoonish small-scale bio-…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:15PMIt’s part haunted house, part art installation, part performance-art piece: The Rogue Artist Ensemble and East West Players’ immersive “Kaidan Project: Walls Grow Thin” unfolds in an…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMThe old Hollywood adage that directing is 90% casting holds just as true in the theater, especially with a new play: Those first performances can turn heads, build buzz, entice other theater…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:00PMThe Broadway star Carmen Cusack arrives at the Silver Lake Reservoir dressed for a midday walk in shorts, sneakers, a hat and sunglasses. Even the most devoted theater fanatic would be hard-…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 01:00PMJeremy J. Kamps' play "Runaway Home,” now premiering at the Fountain Theatre, is set in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward three years after Hurricane Katrina. The waters may have long receded,…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:10PMOur weekly picks in the small-theater scene: "The View UpStairs" at Celebration, "Exit Strategy" at the LBGT Center, "Br'er Cotton" at Zephyr and "Wicked Lit" in Altadena.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMLos Angeles actresses Rebecca Mozo and Linda Park have learned what to expect when they tell TV and film colleagues that they’re juggling pilot auditions and shooting schedules with theate…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 08:00AMIf you enjoy Cirque du Soleil acrobats but believe they'd be even better with dirty jokes, then "Absinthe" is the spinoff you've been waiting for. Playing downtown in a tent at L.A. Live, "A…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:00PM“There’s a beautiful line by T.S. Eliot,” says the actress Jane Kaczmarek: “‘Something about how we wander through life, ‘… and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive w…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:00AMChita Rivera originated some of the most indelible roles of Broadway’s Golden Age: Anita in “West Side Story,” Velma in “Chicago,” Rosie in “Bye Bye Birdie.” She also starred i…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:55PMI spent much of “The Lion,” singer-songwriter Benjamin Scheuer’s one-man musical at the Geffen Playhouse, inwardly commiserating with my twentysomething self. She hung out in so many c…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:00PMPanto, short for pantomime, is a family entertainment popular at Christmastime in Britain since the 1700s — and more recently here at the Pasadena Playhouse, where Lythgoe Family Product…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:20PMDuring Alena Smith’s play “Icebergs,” in its world premiere at the Geffen Playhouse, thirtysomething screenwriter Calder (Nate Corddry) sets up an air mattress in his Silver Lake livin…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:40PMWhen I was a kid watching cartoon on TV in New Jersey, I saw ads for Broadway shows: "Annie," "Peter Pan," "Barnum," "Evita" — fascinating, frustrating teasers that left plot lines mysteri…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 04:50PMThe Getty Villa, that reproduction Roman estate in the Pacific Palisades where the J. Paul Getty Museum keeps an antiquities collection, has presented a Greek or Roman play in its outdoor am…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:00AMThere should be a special award for when one actor wins the Tony, but then another actor still finds a way to kill the role — to act the heck out of it and to make it new. I'd nominate Hug…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:20PMFrom the title of Jerry Lieblich’s play “D Deb Debbie Deborah,” I was ready for an exploration of the fluidity of identity, perhaps at different stages of a woman’s life. But in thi…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:42PMThe musical “Cabaret” will turn 50 this year, and its latest incarnation opens Wednesday at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre. It comes with a slightly complicated provenance: This “Cabar…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:58PMBarry Mann and Cynthia Weil, the married songwriting team behind "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," "On Broadway" and some of the most enduring hits in the history of pop music, have been fi…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:50PMTo star in a national tour of the Broadway hit "Beautiful — The Carole King Musical," which opens this weekend at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, is to brave comparisons not only to King h…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:32AMThe line between political reporting and parody is blurrier than ever these days, especially since Donald Trump launched his presidential run. It's not always obvious whether a headline come…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:37PMCraig Wright's oft-produced play "The Pavilion," now in a lovely revival at Malibu Playhouse, takes place in the early 2000s, in the fictional town of Pine City, Minn. (That's where Wright, …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 02:05PMIn the opening scene of Eliza Clark's "Future Thinking," commissioned by South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa and now in its world premiere there, a middle-aged man sits alone in a hotel room…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 07:57PMThe Irish actress Lisa Dwan is visiting the Broad Stage in Santa Monica one bright morning when she asks theater staffers one key question: "How is the blackout coming along?" For five shows…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 03:21PMIs “Women Laughing Alone With Salad” the first play inspired by an Internet meme? In 2011 the feminist website the Hairpin published stock photographs of slender models appearing to exul…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:54PMIt could be the setup for a Harlequin romance: A beautiful novelist curls on a couch in a bed-and-breakfast in rural Michigan, proofreading a manuscript, completely alone. Heavy snow has det…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 06:34PMCulture shock, like grief, progresses through distinct stages: There's the honeymoon period, when an expatriate is enchanted by a new country. Bliss gives way to withdrawal and hostilit…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 10:02PM“I am not your rabbi, I am not your father, I am not your shrink, I am not your friend, I am not your teacher,” the Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko warns his new assistant in …
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:05PMNew evidence suggests it’s easier to build the world’s tallest skyscraper than to create an original American musical. “Empire: The Musical” has just opened at La Mirada Theatre f…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:13PMHow seriously do you take your art? Would you kill for it? Literally? Those are the questions that animate "Bullets Over Broadway," Woody Allen's delicious cinematic parable about the strugg…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 09:44AMIt happens so often in Iowa that the housewives have come to expect it: Moments after their husbands and children head off to the state fair, hunky photographers arrive, asking directions to…
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times at 12:35PM
