TWO VOICES, ONE VOLTAGE An evening of operatic power finds its charge in connection, not just scale BroadStage does not often present evenings of this ambition: a sold-out house, a freelance…
EVERYTHING'S COMING UP JULE Broadway's golden-age hits return in a world premiere revue that treats them as living drama Jule Styne's name tends to arrive attached to titles that feel immova…
DELIBES TAKES THE LEAD In ABT's return of Ashton's Sylvia, the best performance at Segerstrom wasn't onstage Frederic Ashton's Sylvia arrives at Segerstrom Center for the Arts after nine yea…
THE RAIN IN SPAIN, UNRESTRAINED At full symphonic scale, My Fair Lady finally sounds the way it was written to be heard George Bernard Shaw got what he deserved. He spent decades refusing to…
THE DREAM ON CREDIT A clear-eyed, unsentimental staging that lets Miller's argument land with full force Arthur Miller finished Act I of Death of a Salesman in a single day and the rest in s…
THREE MEN IN A BOAT, WAITING FOR A FISH At Laguna Playhouse, the making of a blockbuster becomes a chamber piece about ego, craft, and survival Gildart Jackson, Will Block, and Adam Poole Th…
INTIMACY AND ENORMITY: MOZART AND MAHLER IN COSTA MESA Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488, is a peculiar piece to a classical program. It omits oboes entirely, replacing them …
STILL THE PHARAOH-EST OF THEM ALL, AKHNATEN STUNS AT LA OPERA An intellectually rigorous, visually arresting production that embraces the opera's challenges rather than disguising them There…
OPERA RETURNS TO RIVERSIDE, AND IT'S BRINGING A 54-PIECE ORCHESTRA The Riverside Lyric Opera's gala concert on March 7 marks a rare moment for the Inland Empire: a full-scale operatic event …
THREE SYLVIAS, ZERO THRILLS Beth Hyland's world premiere at the Geffen Playhouse arrives with the kind of literary bait that makes theater people clasp their reusable water bottles in deligh…
PATRON SAINT OF THE SECOND-RATE A rigorously intelligent and theatrically thrilling revival that restores Shaffer's parable to full force Schopenhauer once drew a distinction between talent,…
TWO MONOLOGUES IN SEARCH OF A DIALOGUE Justin Tanner has spent decades making chaos look easy. Those early Cast Theatre productions like Pot Mom and Zombie Attack trafficked in a particular …
THE ACTRESS WHO MADE THE RIDICULOUS PROFOUND Catherine O'Hara, who has died aged 71, could make you laugh and break your heart in the same scene. Most performers pick a lane; she moved betwe…
Three Couples, Zero Accumulation With a score that forgets to remember, The Notebook drowns in its own mawkish bathwater There's a musical version of The Notebook that might actually work. A…
THE PLAYWRIGHT WHO CHOSE RADIO OVER JAWS Steven Spielberg had asked Tom Stoppard to write the screenplay for Jaws, and Tom said he couldn't as he was writing a play for the BBC. Spielberg sa…
A Night with a Gentleman Thief: Pacific Opera Project's Delightful Fra Diavolo Daniel Auber's Fra Diavolo amassed over 900 performances at the Opéra Comique during the 19th century before b…
AMAZING THEATER HERE AND NOW Kai A. Ealy stands in a doorway wearing a coat that looks like it weighs forty pounds. Maybe it does. His Herald Loomis has just walked off seven years of forced…
WHEN GRIEF MEETS THE ALGORITHM The terrible beauty of grief is that it makes us do irrational things with the most rational tools. In Lauren Gunderson's anthropology, now in its North Americ…
When creation becomes choreography in Frankenstein, the laboratory turns into a stage of desire Mary Shelley's creation continues to haunt not only literature but the stage, where movement a…
HUZZAH AND HO-HUM The curtain speech at Huzzah! " which opened Thursday at The Old Globe " comes with bassoon and tambourine: silence thy phones, feed not ye actors. This bit of business tel…
A Town, a Tragedy, and the Triumph of Kindness The musical Come From Away " with book, music and lyrics by married couple Irene Sankoff and David Hein " tells the remarkable true st…
MURDER NEVER SOUNDED SO SWEET The gentleman killer returns to Southern California with a smile that could polish the silver. In a joint run between Laguna Playhouse and North Coast Repertory…
OUTBREAK OF MANNERS: WHEN POLITENESS TURNS CONTAGIOUS The play begins with a picture of composure. Five parents sit at a polished library table in a progressive private school in Berkeley. T…
THEATRICAL ARRHYTHMIA La Jolla Playhouse has always been fairly adventurous in its programming, but its latest premiere chooses a subject that feels less like theatrical fodder than a medica…
OPERA WITHOUT WALLS: VERISMO IN THE PARK Pacific Opera Project opened Pagliacci into the open air of Heritage Square Park last night, and the result was a strangely festive collision of carn…