BOOGIE WOOGIE BUGLE GIRLS OF THE U.S.O. Deanna Durbin is all but forgotten now, but there was a time when her movie musicals were so popular, they were said to have literally saved Universal…
JACQUES IN THE BOX I think if I had been alive and living in New York in 1968, I would have been beguiled by Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Eric Blau and Mort Shuman tra…
MY SHOW, THE NUT Dear Mr. Ted L. Nancy: You are a funny letter writer. In fact, you are the best letter writer who reads his own letters in a show with an actress reading replies to his lett…
PARALLEL UNIVERSES AND THE PHYSICS OF LOVE I have a brother-in-law who is a mathematician and a brother who's an astrophysicist. Both have tried to explain to me what they do, with little su…
LOVING YOUR OPPRESSOR The audience is delighted when a character in Alexi Kaye Campbell's beautifully written play The Pride tells another, "Stop sucking the dick of your oppressor!" It's a …
REQUIEM FOR WHITNEY Even if you've never seen the 1992 film that gave birth to the musical in 2012 in London's West End, the story is familiar: A pop superstar falls in love with her bodygua…
WOMEN WITH HEARTS OF IRON Before going to see Rogue Machine Theatre's latest production, Lost Girls, I turned to my companion and asked, "Why is everything that Rogue does so good?" Then a h…
MID-LIFE MYSTERIESÂ AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS A long-married couple says good-bye to the final guests who leave their house after a party. They are known for their parties; for their happy mar…
I COULDN’T BARE IT There's a kind of desperate seriousness about the "rock" musical Bare " more pop than rock " first produced in 2000, now back with updated music and a telegenic and …
THE NEVERLAND AFTER DARK This ain't Mary Martin's Peter Pan. Or Walt Disney's. Or Stephen Spielberg's. With Peter Pan: The Boy Who Hated Mothers, playwright Michael Lluberes' has his own tak…
BEWITCHED, BEGUILED AND THRILLED Mark Saltzman is one smart cookie. He approaches his new bio-musical of the legendary Lorenz Hart with a passionate curiosity about the great man's life and …
THE MISCHEVIOUS INDEMNITY OF NOIR You can bring a blanc sensibility to noir, but noir finds a way of seeping in"its luxurious, sweet poison stealing focus when you're not looking. In Billy &…
WHEN 'TOMORROW' ISN'T ANOTHER DAY Anyone who cares about acting or classical theater or Shakespeare (particularly Macbeth) must see Donald Freed's new play Tomorrow. It has moments of spot-o…
THE HONESTY OF HYPOCRISY The Motherfucker with the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirgis is a crackling, compelling play that finds genuine comic pathos not only in its characters' struggles with addi…
A JOLLY OSMOND HOLIDAY To fans and detractors alike, Donny and Marie represent a cultural and show business ethos so strong, and so specific, that their actual talents sometimes get lost in …
WHAT THEATRE 40 NEEDS IS A GUIDE TO AN EXCRUCIATINGLY CORRECT PRODUCTION Miss Manners, the alter-ego of writer Judith Martin, is my heroine. Her "Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior" is…
AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF SILICON VALLEY Build hasn't started yet, but the minute you walk into the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at the Geffen Playhouse you feel drawn into another world by …
HIS OWN PRIVATE BOISE We're in Boise, Idaho, in the break room of an arts and craft chain store called Hobby Lobby. Two men appear on closed circuit television doing a sort of home shopping …
JUSTIN IS JUST IN THE MIDDLE The best thing about Justin Love, Celebration Theatre's 30th season opening production, is the fun of watching the stylish performance of Grant Jordan, who gives…
THE 'TROUBLES' WITH FAITH Choosing to write about the Irish Troubles comes with baggage"many people have come before you, and many will come after. Like the Holocaust, it can conjure a deep …
MAID IN HOLLYWOOD The history of people of color on the screen is complicated, to say the least. The great Hattie McDaniel was hurt and bewildered by criticism from some in her own community…
GODS AND MONSTERS Oedipus gets all the attention, what with his Freudian mixture of patricide and mommy love, but an arguably much more influential character in the Greek pantheon is the dee…
THREE DEGREES OF SEPARATION A woman asks for a martini in a highball glass and accuses her husband of peeing in the sink… again. He doesn't cop to it, but doesn't deny it. The couple seems…
PRACTICAL PERFECTION There is a good natured pragmatism at work in the stage musical version of the film classic Mary Poppins, now back in Los Angeles at the Ahmanson through September 2. It…
THE TRUE AMERICAN DREAM: KILL A PRESIDENT The cast is terrific in the Coeurage Theatre Company's revival of Assassins at the Actors Circle Theatre"and it is their commitment to the material …