POETRY OUT OF MOTION I was quite keen to see Amy Freed's The Psychic Life of Savages; curious about its fictional take on Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, the dead, messy poet heroines of my an…
DIS HERE’S A DIFF’RENT KIND OF HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL There is something very sweet going on in Eric Dodson's and Alan Ross Fleishman's new musical A Ring in Brooklyn. The unusual p…
A VERY COLD WAR BETWEEN THE SEXES I was a huge fan of Peter Lefcourt's 1999-2001 Showtime series Beggars & Choosers. It was something of a bomb financially but a great favorite of those …
THE GIFT OF SPEECH There is no possibility of love or happiness in Enda Walsh's play The New Electric Ballroom, produced by Rogue Machine, winner of 2010 and 2011 Ovation and L.A. Drama Crit…
THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT A demon-possessed, bleeding-eyed, pyro-maniacal Raggedy Ann doll with pre-cum on her face is the vortex around which Michael John LaChiusa's new comedy Sukie and Sue:…
EXPOSITION, THE MUSICAL SPOILER ALERT in this first paragraph! There are attempts at surprising plot twists in Octavio Solis' and Adam Gwon's new musical drama Cloudlands, but this new piece…
COME FOR THE MUSIC, STAY FOR THE CADILLAC The music is everything in Miss Saigon"not the plot, which is strangely muddled at times, and not the lyrics, which are sometimes awkward. What stic…
DAMES AT SEA: NOTES ON CAMP When Dames at Sea opened in 1966 at the Caffe Cino, a small coffee house and performance space in New York City’s Greenwich Village that was at the heart of…
A VERY F***ING SPECIAL SHOW One of the big dramatic moments in Billy Elliot, making its Los Angeles premiere for a month-long run at the Pantages, comes late in the second act, when Billy's …
FEEDBACK: THE BIG TEASE Everything that works and doesn't work about Jane Miller's new play Feedback turns on one thing: Nudity. In terms of talking the talk, the whole exercise is about get…
MAMMA MIA: TEN YEARS OF DIZZY, FIZZY DELIGHT The most essential elements of the Mama Mia! National tour, now in its tenth year, and visiting Los Angeles once again at the Pantages for the ne…
THE QUESTION IS: CAN YOU SEE TOMMY? Everything is murky about the DOMA Theatre Company's new production of The Who's Tommy at the Met Theatre"the performances, the sound design, the staging,…
ROCK & ROLL CAMP The cast of Rock of Ages is riotously hell bent on making you have a good time. They beat you into submission with energy, wide smiles, and hair"lots and lots of great b…
GROUNDLINGS ZERO The best part about cleaning up my DVR last weekend was catching up on Raising Hope, the hilarious FOX comedy. It's funny, surprising, naughty, sometimes dirty, and wholly o…
ORIGINAL SIN In their fevered exploration of the seven deadly sins, Figure 8 playwright/co-director Phinneas Kiyomura and co-director Jerry Kernion seem hell bent on making sin seem as origi…
SUPER STRUCTURE The Cost of the Erection: The title of Jon Marans' new play sounds like one of those gay shows where comely actors get naked to pump up the box office. There is some veiled n…