The week's offerings in L.A.'s small theaters include "Kaidan Project" by Rogue Artists, "A Love Affair" at Santa Monica Playhouse, "Resolving Hedda" at Victory Theatre and "The House on Man…
Churchgoer. Gymgoer. Fundraising executive. Devoted spouse, son and colleague. This is the trickster of Los Angeles theater? My, but Tom Jacobson's still waters run deep. He is, after all, t…
When Thomas "Fats" Waller played piano and sang, life was a party. A large man with a big personality, he was known as much for making people laugh as for his extraordinary skill at a jumpin…
Los Angeles theater picks this week are "In a Word," "Walking to Buchenwald," "Daytona" and a bilingual "Aladdin."
Music is a gathering place that can be big enough to accommodate a crowd or small enough to nestle two yearning hearts. Rarely has this been as poignantly conveyed as in the 2007 movie "Once…
A martial cadence is heard throughout the soul-rattling musical "Parade." You could think of it as the drumbeat of history " a history from which we repeatedly fail to learn. Time and the da…
Amélie Poulain sees the world as no one else does. Her imagination is a fun-house mirror that magnifies the oddities, intensifies the colors and warps every random detail of her environs in…
In this age of instant communication, he can't manage to say anything. The title high-schooler in "Dear Evan Hansen" is an endearing misfit so afraid of social interaction that he can't face…
Leslie Odom Jr. sings through innumerable earbuds these days as the magisterial, supremely self-assured Aaron Burr, the Founding Father who butts heads with the excitable, even more supremel…
History is more complicated than the simple version we're told in school or around the dinner table, says South Coast Repertory's artistic director, Marc Masterson. He is talking about L…
The time is always right for a production of "Cabaret." Its slinky songs will seduce an audience in nothing flat, and its story, about the world slipping into brutality while people aren'…
The Antaeus company's "Hedda Gabler" is just what you want from a production of a classic play:Â It cracks open the text to reveal details that you hadn't fully noticed before. Through the…
Lounging kimonos, simple housedresses and prettier frocks hang on a rack just off the rehearsal area. On the opposite wall stands a row of wigs, near a makeup station. This could be the dres…
At the back of the church, a pair of cutups whisper to each other and try none too hard to stifle their giggles. They are not kids, from whom one might expect such behavior, but a married co…
Playwright Samuel D. Hunter hears Middle America's quiet desperation, the low moan of people who have lost their connection to the past, to loved ones, to the lives they thought they'd lead.…
About to ship off for Vietnam, a young Marine learns to be a man as he and his buddies forge bonds of loyalty, common purpose and sacrifice. Before he leaves, he will pick up other important…
Mary Zimmerman watches her "Guys and Dolls" actors rehearse a scene. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) When theater director-adapter Mary Zimmerman was bestowed a MacArthur Foundation…
In the center of the rehearsal room stands a cluster of men of all ages and sizes. They're in street clothes, but from their loose postures and colorful New York patois, they are instantly r…
"Use at your own risk," the local vice minister of culture says enigmatically to an Ohio businessman seeking a contract in China.
Among theater geeks, "The Baker's Wife" is a sort of merit badge. Top marks to the person who can sing "Meadowlark," the show's ravishing mini-musical of a ballad, from memory -- and bonus p…
 Life bustles in the clock shop/residence of the Fail family of early 1900s Chicago. Father and daughter huddle eagerly over timepieces. Another daughter, an aspiring competitive swimmer,…