71 stories by "Daryl H. Miller"
Sondheim, 91, whose work is driving this year's holiday cultural season, was rousingly welcomed at the production's triumphant reopening.
It's 44 BC, a bit before the ides of March, and Roman citizens are in the streets singing a cheeky ode to life in the Seven Hills " to the tune of Weezer's "Beverly Hills." This can mean jus…
Sniffles in the darkness. They're a sign of success, right? Yes, but at productions of the 1991 Broadway musical "The Secret Garden," they're a backhanded indicator. They come only when the …
Taylor Mac knows how to throw down a challenge. Visiting L.A. last year with the music party/drag extravaganzas "A 24-Decade History of Popular Music" and "Holiday Sauce," the New York-based…
Notions of family figure into the shows in this week's 99-Seat Beat up-close look at Los Angeles' smaller theaters. Families of the traditional, nuclear kind find themselves plunged into qua…
You could call it Cirque du Soleil: The Theater Geek Edition. Known as a theatrical circus for its no-animals, acrobatics-forward, story-framing format, the French-Canadian company has been …
Squeaks of anticipation greet the opening strains of familiar songs at a local revival of the stage musical "Singin' in the Rain," adapted from the 1952 MGM movie that keeps Gene Kelly, Debb…
The first half of the musical "Falsettos" is set in 1979, the second in 1981 " years when Marvin, who leaves his wife and son for a man, was on the wrong side of sodomy laws in a number of s…
Imagine you're holding a bar of Wonka's Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight. The name alone promises deliciousness inside. A name's a powerful thing, especially if it has delivered satis…
Even the grandest stories, full of epic adventures, are built of everyday experiences. Mary Zimmerman creates theater magic in much the same way, bringing the world's foundational tales aliv…
Community is at the heart of several plays on the 99-Seat Beat, our weekly look at Los Angeles' stages. Folks support one another through daily challenges in 1968 Boyle Heights, work shoulde…
"Othello" is an extended free-fall " a national hero's plunge from widespread acclamation and joyful new marriage to legendary despair. In a gripping new staging for A Noise Within, director…
Call it navel-gazing or, if you're feeling poetic, peering into the soul's very depths. At L.A.'s small theaters this weekend, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina does it. So too, in her way, does inqui…
As Pasadena Playhouse revives "Ragtime," the theater's leader wonders whether he'll receive letters from viewers who believe the piece has been altered. The 1996 show is based on E.L. Doctor…
How quickly things change. In just four years, it's become unimaginable that anyone would write a musical about our nation's founders without giving them a hip-hop beat. But before "Hamilton…
Santa Claus, George Bailey and the original winter solstice party boy, Dionysus, have a busy weekend ahead as they entertain L.A. audiences with the seasonal shows "The Year Without a Santan…
Rule No. 1 of musical theater is to send 'em out the doors energized. For Musical Theatre West's staging of "Elf: The Musical," that means a finale packed with tap-dancing Santa's helpers, c…
History figures prominently at Los Angeles' smaller theaters this weekend: a slice of L.A.'s past in "Remembering Boyle Heights"; the heated days of the House Un-American Activities Committe…
Think of them this weekend as mental gymnasiums. In Los Angeles' smaller theaters you can work out with an injured soldier dreaming of social revolution in "Johnny Got His Gun," a colorful c…
Among the shows playing in Los Angeles' bustling smaller theaters this week are two Pulitzer Prize drama finalists, one receiving its West Coast premiere, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' "Gloria," t…
As its second presentation, the revived Reprise 2.0 is offering a John Kander-Fred Ebb cabaret. Not their "Cabaret," mind you. Lowercase cabaret. The show is "The World Goes 'Round," a small…
As theatergoers surge out the doors of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's three theaters, the air hums with discussions about the just-seen shows. Next morning, conversations are still going …
Like the pie fillings dreamed up by its central character, the 2007 independent movie "Waitress" is made of ingredients that wouldn't seem to belong together yet combine into something delic…
Stephen Sondheim " writer of unhummable melodies and cynical lyrics? Or unerring saint of musical theater? In the mid-1970s, opinion often gravitated toward the former. Then "Side by Side by…
A search for family propels "Annie," the 1977 Broadway musical inspired by the Depression-era comic strip "Little Orphan Annie." In a weekend staging at the Hollywood Bowl, that came to mean…
