THERE’S A REASON WE RETURN TO BRAHMS AND RAVEL Under guest conductor James Gaffigan's assured leadership, the Los Angeles Philharmonic brought a fuller and more vibrant sound to two ve…
 A BIRDIE THAT TAKES WING Having no intention of reviewing, I bought a couple tickets to a non-union production of Bye Bye Birdie, but the entire affair had me so damn giddy that I can…
IN AND OUT AT HOME The Tony-winning 2013 coming-of-age memory play/chamber musical Fun Home"based on Alison Bechdel's 2006 semi-autobiographical graphic novel"is a worthy coming-out tale. We…
NEVERLAND FOUND AND LOST Playwright Alan Knee called Sir J. M. Barrie "the man who was Peter Pan." If so, it was an author's compensation as much as creativity. James Barrie was a shy Scotsm…
THEATER’S BLUE PERIOD Steve Martin wrote Picasso at the Lapin Agile in 1993. The offbeat meta-theatrical play opened at Chicago’s Steppenwolf, went to Los Angeles’s West…
A SCALED-DOWNÂ ROBBER BRIDEGROOM STEALS YOUR HEART ON CD It will always remain one of the great unsolved mysteries in Broadway history. Composer Robert Waldman and librettist and lyricist …
MORE THAN JUST VARIATIONS ON A THEME "Why did the great German composer Ludwig van Beethoven write 33 variations on a trivial little waltz by a mediocre amateur composer?" On the surface, th…
SUPER SQUIRREL Flora Buckman, the ten-year-old central character of Flora & Ulysses, the best play I’ve seen all year, begins when this self-proclaimed Â"natural-born c…
COME JOIN THE CIRCUS As if to compensate for the unpopularity of animal acts, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus began to beef up their productions in recent years, but that lack …
SHE’S BA-A-A-CK AND SHE’S FA-A-A-ABULOUS Charles Busch's Die, Mommie, Die! is equal parts comic melodrama, Greek tragedy and Hollywood kitsch"and all campy noir classic in the ve…
A GUY WALKS INTO A CUCKOO’S NEST… Jazz pianist, TV personality, actor, author, film composer and arranger Oscar Levant (1906-1972) was quite possibly one of the quickest wits on …
AND EVITA KEEPS ROLLING IN That great balcony scene is back. No, not R&J. It's the one with Eva Duarte Perón's valedictory aria "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina." As this princess of t…
WORKING UP YOUR APPETITE Bringing the aesthetics of classical theater to the realm of the contemporary circus, the fearless performers of The 7 Fingers (also known as Les 7 Doigts) explore l…
ZOOT SUIT FITTED FOR A NEW GENERATION When Zoot Suit was originally commissioned and developed by Center Theatre Group in 1978, it played for nearly a year in Los Angeles"first a…
THE MUSIC AND THE WORDS BEHIND THE MUSIC With astounding chromatic structure and continually shifting tonalities and rhythms, Debussy's music has always mystified and transported me. Certain…
KNEEHIGH RETURNS TO THE WALLIS I wonder if L.A. residents know how ridiculously lucky they are to have the Wallis Annenberg Center, an outfit so prestigious that Britain's Kneehigh …
FOUND IN THE STARS Lost in the Stars is quite possibly composer Kurt Weill’s magnum opus for the American Theater. The score is prime Weill, characteristically mixing high operatic sty…
GUESS WHO’S NOT COMING TO DINNER? At first, we have no idea why a well-to-do couple has invited another couple and their son over for dinner. The hostess Debora (Ann Hearn) is on edge …
A WHALE OF A PRODUCTION Moby Dick, Herman Melville's 1851 whale of a tale (or tale of a whale), is as unsinkable as its title cetacean. It's never been more so than in Lookingglass Theatre C…
CUMMING AND SAPPY Yes, Disney Hall is a large venue for a cabaret act, but you can expect Tony Award-winning actor Alan Cumming to turn the venue into the most intimate hotspot when he prese…
JERRY HERMAN’S LEGACY ISN’T IN JEOPARDY, BUT TRIBUTE CONCERTS ARE With an evening of Jerry Herman tunes sung by Broadway powerhouses Ron Raines, Karen Morrow, Debbie Gravit…
JAMES CAMERON MEETS CIRQUE DU SOLEIL Cirque du Soleil writes a new chapter in make-believe with Toruk " The First Flight, a not so typical two-hour fantasy inspired by (but not based on) Jam…
A SALUTE TO GREAT SONGS AND A GREAT CLUB Any excuse to expose selections from the Great American Songbook to a modern audience works for me. And a cabaret revue entitled A Night at the Stork…
THE MANE EVENT Watching the Los Angeles premiere of writer/performer Benjamin Scheuer's one-man show The Lion, directed by Sean Daniels, the element I am most taken with is Mr. Scheuer's …
‘TWAS BRILLIG, AND THE SLITHY TOVEY The witty, charming raconteur and conductor Bramwell Tovey has never failed to have the audience in the palm of his baton-filled hand. As ener…