Sara Bareilles didn't know quite what she was getting into when she signed on to write the score for "Waitress," the musical-stage adaptation of the late Adrienne Shelly's film about a diner…
Three years after it premiered at San Diego's La Jolla Playhouse, the musical "Come From Away" " a story of journeys interrupted by tragedy and redeemed by kindness " is about to see its own…
When the Broadway stars Matthew Morrison and Kelli O'Hara reunite for a concert with the San Diego Symphony next week, you can count on hearing their voices soar. There's also a slight possi…
When it comes to holiday stage happenings in San Diego, the traditional theater feast feels just a bit slimmed-down this year, with such notable absences as Lamb's Players Theatre's long-run…
A door gets the last word (as it were) in Henrik Ibsen's great 1879 play "A Doll's House," when the disaffected Norwegian housewife Nora Helmer slams it on her husband and her own stultified…
It takes a perverse sense of poetry to make a grin sound grim. But leave it to Sarah Ruhl to achieve that early on in "Melancholy Play," her charmingly oddball 2002 work now getting a reviva…
First, it was the story of religion in a scenic mountain metropolis " and maybe, to some degree, the story of any place in America confronting tensions between the secular world and communit…
Country music has always been the place where Clint Black hangs his hat " and if you know this Texas-raised superstar, you've seen the jet-black cowboy number that has long been his head-top…
The forest outside Athens was a patch of plastic chairs, and fluorescent lights stood in for moonglow, but playgoers still found magic in the staging of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dr…
"What's past is prologue," as Shakespeare wrote in "The Tempest." And when people from across the San Diego theater community first began gathering last spring for a series of summits on the…
Both leads Jackie Burns (Broadway's longest running Elphaba) & Kara Lindsay (a comic natural)have deep experience with their roles and it shows brilliantly as they get strong support from Jo…
Whether portraying a frazzled acting teacher in La Jolla Playhouse's "What Happens Next", a troubled waitress in Ion Theatre's "Bug" or a fame-hungry spinster in Diversionary's "The Moors," …
Stephen Schwartz remembers exactly where he was when "Wicked" opened on Broadway 15 years ago this month. And it wasn't anywhere near the Emerald City. "I was already in Vermont," says the c…
Assimilation, discrimination, the hazards of navigating dual cultural identities: Those are big, potentially daunting concepts that are skillfully distilled into an intimate story made both …
You might've thought Jane Austen had visions of orchestras and chorus lines in her head when she was penning all those famous novels, so regularly are they now adapted into works of musical …
The trailers for the upcoming movie "Holmes & Watson" depict Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly " as the great detective Sherlock Holmes and his trusty confidant, Dr. John Watson " snapping sel…
Spanish-language telenovelas " those pulpy soap operas that play out like romance-novel cover shots come to life " are clearly not the subtlest of entertainment forms. But in Tony Meneses' g…
Every year, the winners of the statewide Playwrights Project contest prove that young dramatists are fully capable of thinking outside the box. This time around, though, one honoree has show…
If it's true, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, that there are no second acts in American lives, then Carole King is one radiant exception: The pop composer co-wrote a string of enduring hits for…
Ask Rob Lowe what part of his touring one-man show he likes the best, and he'll tell you, basically: The end. Not in a "please put me and the audience out of our collective misery and grant …
If you think about it " that is, if you care to think about it, because it's not the happiest thought " every relationship is kind of one long breakup. It's pretty much assured that if matte…
"Diana" has crowned its princess: La Jolla Playhouse is announcing today that Jeanna de Waal will play the late Diana, Princess of Wales, in the theater's world-premiere musical about the U.…
There's a certain conversation that transpires time and again, says the writer Douglas McGrath, when a woman who has just seen "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical" approaches him about the s…
Right from the start, "Bull in a China Shop" makes it clear that if this is a period piece, it's one that comes with an exclamation point. (Not to mention plenty of &%@#'s.) At Diversionary …
Warren Leight has been a go-to creative force in television for long enough " including five years as show-runner of the hit series "Law & Order: SVU" " that it might be easy to forget the m…