PARTNERING ARROGANCE WITH SACRIFICE In taking residence at the Electric Lodge, their new digs in Venice, Rogue Machine makes an audacious choice with the American premiere of Tom Morton-Smit…
HANNIBAL THE CANNIBAL WANTS A WHIFF OF SOMETHING SPECIAL I didn't know what to expect when I made plans to see Bucket List Theatre's production of Silence! The Musical, a parody of the multi…
ANCIENT LIES AND MODERN QUESTIONS Theatrical magic happens when all the elements of a production come together to form a seamless whole; when the text, direction, acting, and technical contr…
A THOROUGHLY METROPOLITAN LIFE A worshipful cult greeted Fran Lebowitz at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel in downtown L.A. on September 30. She seemed incredibly pleased but not at all surprise…
FEAR THAT TASTES LIKE CHICKEN IAMA Theatre Company's 2018-19 season opener, Bess Wohl's American Hero (a Pasadena Playhouse guest production at the Carrie Hamilton Theatre) is a portrait in …
THE ENDURING LEGACY OF JERRY HERMAN AND THE 'STAR VEHICLE' The chief pleasure in Musical Theatre Guild's presentation of Mame at the Alex Theatre is hearing the music, full-out, as written, …
LOVE AND TOLERANCE BEGIN AT HOME Debra Jo Rupp is like a hurricane in miniature. She takes us inside a character's small, unexpected, interior storms. We see and feel her mind and emotions c…
MODERN LOSS MEETS THE ORPHEUS MYTH, BUT NEVER MAKES IT TO THE OTHER SIDE A superb cast tackles life and death in José Rivera's new play The Untranslatable Secrets of Nikki Corona, now in it…
THE WAR OF ROSES — AND WEEDS Christian Barillas is adorably frazzled and enormously appealing in Native Gardens at the Pasadena Playhouse. He plays Pablo Del Valle, an ambitious lawyer…
MURDER WITHOUT END Sha'Leah Nikole Stubblefield is already a mesmerizing, ethereal presence on stage when you take a seat for Rogue Machine's American Saga Gunshot Medley: Part 1, now in its…
WE ARE THE MEAN GIRLS The subhead of Jocelyn Bioh's 2017 play, now at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, is alluring but ultimately misleading. School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls…
THE BIRTH OF TRUMP'S RACIAL BLUE-COLLAR DIVIDE Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage places much of the action of Sweat, now at the Mark Taper Forum, in a working-class bar in Reading, Pennsylv…
MAGIC IN THE MUSIC Sometimes jukebox bio-musicals get so caught up in the fame and fortune of the journey that they miss the creative passion that is the true force driving most artists forw…
THE MOTHER OF THEM ALL "Don't call me a liar," a mother says. "But you lied," responds her daughter simply. And all holy hell breaks loose. In I Go Somewhere Else from Playwrights' Arena at …
RED SCARE IN BROOKLYN I was at a dinner party in New York once and met a 97-year-old woman who embodied a kind of Upper West Side left-wing glamour I find intoxicating. She had grown up in a…
ALMOST PARADISE There are many pleasures on display in the newest incarnation of the bluegrass musical Paradise, which has been in development for over five years. Now at Ruskin Group Theatr…
THE PLEASURES OF WEBFOOT COCKLEWOMEN AND MINCED CAT Under Milk Wood is a vivid combination of poetry, drama, and music that was first performed as a radio play in 1954, and it is squarely ro…
EMOTIONAL TURMOIL AND MUSICAL BLISS One of the pleasures of the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble's production of Side by Side by Sondheim is the experience of hearing voices without amplification. I…
THE TRAGIC COMEDY OF LOVE Antaeus Theatre closes its season with a terrific production of Three Days in the Country, Patrick Marber's adaptation of Turgenev's A Month in the Country. Turgene…
HALLUCINOGENS, MAN-WHORES & CHINA PEOPLE I'm not sure why Steve Chang chose to call his world premiere one-man show at the 2018 Hollywood Fringe Festival A Complete Waste of Time. It isn…
MOTHER COURAGE IN MOTOR CITY The marvel of scenic designer Rachel Meyers' work greets you when you enter the theater at the Geffen Playhouse, and draws the audience into Skeleton Crew, the t…
ONE ARMENIAN, ONE TURK, ONE ROOM " WHAT ARE THE ODDS? "Your blondness has not served you the way we had hoped," says a woman to her daughter, as a husband and father is dying of heart failur…
A WALL WILL NEVER STOP A BUTTERFLY When I was a kid, the word "wetback" had negative connotations, but I don't remember it being considered particularly hateful. My mother even used it to de…
BUT IS IT GOOD FOR THE JEWS? I love Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now. It feels a bit highfalutin putting it that way, as if I sit around reading Victorian classics when not appreciatin…
“I'M NOT ALONE ANYMORE, I HAVE ME!” Charles Busch once said he thought of himself as the Loretta Young of drag, specializing in creatures of artifice, vanity, and soulful, often …