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…
WHIMSY WASHOUT Adapting a film or play into a musical is a dicey proposition. There’s no perfect formula, but theater’s great librettists"Oscar Hammerstein, Alan Jay Lerner, et a…
TAKING NOTES TO THE NEXT LEVEL Los Angeles native Stew, born Mark Stewart, is one of today’s most fascinating songwriters. He has released both solo albums and with his band, The Negro…
I'M DREAMING OF A WHITE CHRISTMAS WITH A BETTER SCRIPT I suppose it’s possible that Irving Berlin's White Christmas might succeed with audiences. Possible, that is, if they are w…
EVERYBODY LOVES SHE LOVES ME I'll be the first to admit that it may be impossible to create a bad production of the 1963 jewel-box musical She Loves Me. This perfect show, based on the 1937 …
BEYOND COMPARE In the past five years, I have encountered only a handful of fresh-to-the-scene classical soloists who completely enraptured"those who combine the old-school magnetic quality …
BOYS WILL BE BOYS Musical Theatre West's (MTW) Reiner Reading Series begins its 2016-17 season with a musical from the beginning of the second decade of the Broadway Musical's Golden A…
THE WINNER BY AN INCH Not long into its original run at Jane Street Theatre Off-Broadway in 1998, a cult following had already been firmly entrenched for Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It was th…
MEMPHIS SOARS The most entertaining musical of the year is not a great musical. Here is a show with a predictable, synthetic feeling book and 19 songs which only emulate the m…
BRING ON THE TEARS Orlande de Lassus, Europe's most famous musician during his lifetime, created nothing finer than the Lagrime di San Pietro, (Tears of St. Peter) a collection of twenty spi…
STILL SEARCHING Is there life after Lily Tomlin? Producer Jon Imparato is attempting to find out: under his auspice, the Los Angeles LGBT Center is reviving The Search for Signs of Intellige…
O’HARA SALON Broadway icon Kelli O'Hara ventured far west of the Great White Way Friday night to perform Broadway favorites and a few originals to a well-sold house at V…
DEFICIENT DRAMA DILUTES DELUSION In 2011, writer/director Jon Braver created Delusion, a new kind of haunted house. In the ensuing years (except last year, 2015, which was dark), with a diff…
REVEALING THE SOURCE There’s so much buzz about The Source, which opens at REDCAT next week, that an extra performance has been added (the show runs Oct.19-23, 2016). The most fasci…
DUDAMEL AND BELL MORE THAN WELL Drop your plans this weekend and get to Disney Hall to witness conductor Gustavo Dudamel leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic in an astoundingly satisfy…
WHAT A WORLD 1969. The final year in what was one of the most turbulent decades in American history. The battle between counterculture dissidents and the corporate establishment could melt l…
DAISEY’S TRUMPETRY The virtues of monologist Mike Daisey are many. He’s gifted at societal critique; he creates awesome mental pictures; and he’s a wiz at diagnosing and di…