Steven Dietz's play, Bloomsday, which made its debut at the Elite Theatre Company in Oxnard January 17, is a Twilight Zone-like story that mixes past and present, using James Joyce's novel U…
In Finding Neverland, reality is blurred by imagination as J. M. Barrie, the creator of the characters and the original play version of Peter Pan, struggles with writer's block as he tries t…
It's time once again for the annual "Vee-Cee" Awards, in which we honor some of the most memorable performances on Ventura County stages over the course of the past year. As I explain each y…
For sheer timeless comedy, there are few plays better than The Man Who Came To Dinner, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's hilarious love letter to owlish American theater critic Alexander Woo…
Toward the end of Meredith Willson's The Music Man, traveling salesman Harold Hill tells Marian Paroo, "For the first time in my life, my foot got caught in the door." A few weeks ago, 5-Sta…
Bandstand is a musical that most people are not familiar with, but should be. Its plot deals with a group of musicians who come back to the U.S. after serving in World War II and finding it …
Good news for theater fans! Rubicon Theatre Company's current production of Big River has been extended until November 17. Its success is due in part to Beverly and Kirby Ward's evocative…
Bringing a show as expansive as Big River to the small stage of the Rubicon Theatre Company was a daunting prospect, but Kirby and Beverly Ward thrive on such problems and ended up producing…
There is one word that best describes the motivation of the two main characters in the 1985 musical Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The word is "freedom." Both Huckleberry Fin…
In this first of three features on the Rubicon Theatre Company's production of Big River, co-producers/directors Beverly and Kirby Ward discuss their vision for bringing the Tony Award-winni…
Every so often an actor emerges who is what I call a "five-tool-player," a term borrowed from baseball, describing someone who can run, hit, field, throw, and hit for power. In the theater, …
In 5-Star Theatricals' current production of Meredith Willson's The Music Man, acrobatics worthy of an Olympics gymnastic meet are turned in nightly by Antonia Vivino, who plays starry-ey…
Last week we spoke with Adam Pascal about his approach to playing Professor Harold Hill in Meredith Willson's classic musical comedy The Music Man. 5-Star Theatrical's production, whic…
Ventura County theater fans were overjoyed when 5-Star Theatricals announced that veteran Broadway star Adam Pascal would be starring as raffish traveling salesman Harold Hill in the company…
In British playwright Joe Penhall's Blue/Orange, Christopher is a patient in a London psychiatric hospital who has been admitted under a "Section 2" for what has been diagnosed as a "b…
Plays that show characters changing through the years are some of the most challenging actors can experience. In the 1976 Off-Broadway play Vanities, author/playwright Jack Heifner focuse…
Today we received a letter from Andrew Landecker, senior film student at Calabasas High School who played the role of Amos Hart in the school's March production of Chicago. Here's what…
In a world that is consumed by political correctness, Avenue Q, which made its debut at the Conejo Players Theatre May 3 for a brief two-weekend run, shatters Broadway conventions with its r…
Camelot, the original "Game of Thrones," is familiar to theater and film fans through its highly successful stage productions but a new ballet, produced by Pacific Festival Ballet, makes its…
Its theater is definitely of the no-frills variety, a black box constructed in the space of two public storage units in an industrial park in Ventura, but there is no denying the talent that…
Next week, former Cabrillo Music Theater artistic director Lewis Wilkenfeld returns to Thousand Oaks to direct Matilda, the story about a precocious English girl who uses books and litera…
Ragtime, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's musicalized version of E. L. Doctorow's novel about a quickly changing America at the turn of the 20th century, has received a new concept, which …
Musical Theatre Guild's latest staged reading, Minnie's Boys, was performed at Glendale's Alex Theatre on Sunday, February 10, and although it was great to finally get to see this rarely …
As Simon Stephens' 2015 play Heisenberg opens, a 75-year-old Irish butcher named Alex Priest is sitting in a London Underground station, listening to music on his iPhone. Without warni…
Next week, Agoura High School senior Griffen Hamilton will be directing the school's production of Mamma Mia!, his first full-length musical. Griffen has been featured in Raymond Saar'…