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…
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…
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…
When 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…
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…
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 flee…
"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 …
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…
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 Playhouse's …
"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.
The 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…
Commedia 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.
"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…
The 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…
From 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…
Funny 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…
Broadway 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…
The Fountain Theatre, established 25 years ago, began, as many things used to do, with a fateful phone call.
On the outside, Dan, the 31-year-old computer guy with a fleshy middle, knows he comes off as "unassuming and plain." Good at math, he tells us he's 5-foot-10, 200 pounds and that 52 is the …
Shortly after savoring Rogue Machine Theatre's scrupulously acted production of Samuel D. Hunter's "A Permanent Image" and just before attending the much-praised Antaeus Company revival of W…
It's hard to go wrong with "Spamalot" at the Hollywood Bowl. The Tony-winning show, based on the cult movie comedy "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," leaves no silliness unturned as it affec…
It's only fitting that American Conservatory Theater should inaugurate the Strand, its new second stage in the city's tech corridor, with a recent play by the inexhaustibly original British …
"Kiss Me, Kate," the 1948 backstage musical comedy with the matchless Cole Porter score, seems made for blissed-out summer nights - a classic to be savored with gelato and Prosecco for those…
How does it feel seeing your life pass before your eyes in a documentary?
Terrorists make the covers of newspapers while those who selflessly give comfort and support in times of crisis are usually relegated to the back pages.