BILLIE'S LIFE WASN'T NO HOLIDAY The title actually says a lot. When a star as bright as Billie Holiday, the sultry jazz singer whose career lasted from 1929 to 1958, is performing at a bar a…
DUBLIN YOUR PLEASURE WITH GOOD DRAMA AND COMEDY With a somewhat-forgettable title and a rather vague plot summary on the website, one walks into Outside Mullingar not quite sure what they ar…
KNOWING WHICH IS WITCH The word "crucible" has two very different meanings. One is a pot in which substances are heated to high temperatures. Another is a situation in which people are sever…
MY KIND OF SHOW, CHICAGO IS Coming to the San Diego Civic Theatre is the National Tour of the 1996 revival of Chicago, now the longest-running revival in Broadway history, and the second …
There's no doubt why Lynn Nottage's drama Intimate Apparel won five national awards for best play, including the Drama Critics' Circle Award and American Theatre Critics Association's Primus…
ALTOGETHER OOKEY GOOD FUN When American cartoonist Charles Addams started drawing a family of moderately harmless ghoulish folks for The New Yorker in 1938, how could he have expected them t…
WHO LEFT FROWNING? NUN OF US! When you're picking shows for your season, you're off to a good start when you pick the second-longest-running show in Off-Broadway history. One that's been pro…
GIVE THREE CHEERS AND ONE CHEER MORE FOR SILLY GOOD FUN In the US, the term "Savoyard" generally means a person intensely interested in, and perhaps highly knowledgeable about, the works of …
MAKE THIS FUN SHOW ONE TO CHEKHOV YOUR LIST Any time you take one sibling out of a group of three, the remaining two are bound to talk about the missing one. Take that situation further, wit…
DON'T KNOW WHETHER TO LAUGH OR CRY You know that close friend or relative you have who they can talk about the most trivial stuff in their world and you'll still ask leading questions for mo…
DIAGNOSIS: DANCER Human nature loves to ponder the impossible to answer: What does food taste like to other people? What does a colorblind person imagine color looks like? What is it like to…
DON'T BE SKIPPIN' PIPPIN Here's a can't-miss opportunity: Beginning tomorrow, July 19, North Coast Rep is presenting the perky but dark 1972 musical, Pippin. With a book by Roger O. Hirson,�…
BREWING UP SOME GOOD CHUCKLES IN THEIR KITCHEN Cooking shows are typically feel-good shows. The calm of Martha Stewart. The sweetness of Rachel Rae. The edge of Emeril Lagasse. Of course, it…
THESE PASSENGERS WON'T STAY IN THEIR SEATS! Die-hard fans of So You Think You Can Dance get to know their choreographers. For me, there was Sonya Tayeh (Moulin Rouge! The Musical) … and th…
WHEN KING WAS THE QUEEN OF THE COURT Ask most people what they know about Billy Jean King, other than fact that she played tennis, and there's a good likelihood that you'll hear a story abou…
AS IF TELENOVELAS WEREN'T MELODRAMATIC ENOUGH FOR YA'… As someone who blew off after-school activities because he just couldn't miss General Hospital (in the grand days of Luke and Laura v…
XANA-DOOZY OF A MUSICAL Playwrights of musicals have frequently, with varying degrees of success, taken a successful non-musical movie and worked it into a staged musical. Billy Elliott, Wai…
VISHNU WERE HERE First, a little history lesson:Â In the Hindu religion, the god Vishnu incarnated ten times as different "avatara," which can be interpreted different ways, including "de…
VISITING THE PAST FOR PRESENT LAUGHTER If you're looking to expose yourself to the plays of Noël Coward, this is where to start. Not only did he write Present Laughter (in six days!) to a…
WE BUILT THIS SILLY ON ROCK AND ROLL Most musicals start with a premise, develop a plot, and then write songs to fit the themes. Rock of Ages flips the process by starting with class rock so…
LIFE AIN'T JUST A BOWL OF CHERRIES IN 1903 RUSSIA Written and set in 1903 Russia, Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard would be the master playwright's final creation. Unless one already has k…
ANOTHER FEATHER IN MOXIE'S CAP Playwright Anna Ouyang Moench uses the setting of a wooded area " beautifully designed at MOXIE Theatre by Robin Sanford Roberts " as the backdrop of this beau…
A STORM IS BREWING IN THIS FAMILY Perhaps the two most chilling words that can be uttered in a family are "Alzheimer's" and "dementia."Â Physical pain, as horrible as it may be, is someth…
NO ONE'S WEEPING ABOUT THESE GREAT BLUES Everything comes out in blues music: joy , pain , struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. " Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis The blues is a s…
SPELL "DELIGHTFUL" "D-E-L-I-G-H-T-F-U-L" " DELIGHTFUL! OB Playhouse used to do all of their own productions, but nowadays it is primarily a rental space. When I saw that The 25th Annual …