IT’S TIME TO PARTNER UP Pageant of the Masters, now in its 82nd year, is a singularly unique entertainment that has perfected the art of tableaux vivants ("living pictures"). With worl…
A FIRE SPARKLING IN HOLLYWOOD Opening a play or musical is always a risk. Plenty of hard work (and sometimes a lot of money) goes into a show, and producers just have to keep their fingers c…
A MORE CASUAL CRUELTY Richard III, the final play of eight of Shakespeare's histories, has also been an ever-popular play. It offers one of the most coldblooded characters in all of literatu…
THE MUSICAL WITH LEGS A Chorus Line remains as fresh as the day it appeared just over forty years ago, when the standard Broadway musical was already fading away, making room for the j…
IT’S YOUR DREAM NIGHT, GIRLS After nearly two years of renovations, I caught an early glimpse of the historic John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, one of Los Angeles’s top entertainm…
ABT’S FIREBIRD SWOOPS INTO THE CHANDLER Making a rare visit to Southern California, American Ballet Theatre returns after a three-year absence to Los Angeles’s Mus…
AÂ MANE EVENT Writer/performer Benjamin Scheuer's one-man autobiographical song cycle, The Lion, has certainly caught fire since it premiered under a different name at the 2013 Edinburgh F…
GOING UNDERGROUND A Critics’ Pick by both The New York Times and Backstage, the passionate docudrama Home/Sick explores how idealism turns to radicalism, as a handful of leaders from t…
SCREWBALL MUSICAL HEAVEN When it opened on Broadway in 1978, On the Twentieth Century achieved the impossible. Cy Coleman's clever score"a beautiful pastiche of turn-of-the-century operetta …
THE CITY COMES ALIVE The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is about to begin a new era under the leadership of its new Artistic Director Paul Crewes. Right out of the gate is a…
MAKE SOMEONE SOMEWHAT HAPPY At the risk of repeating myself — oh, wait — I am repeating myself, but it bears repeating. I wrote about the great Coco Peru when she appeared in Mis…
NOW IS THE TIME FOR ACTION For almost 40 years, The Groundlings has proved itself to be one of the premiere comedy troupes in the nation, creating more stars than the Big Bang (and creating …
FINDING THE HEARTBEAT OF FIDDLER "To Life" indeed. There's a ton of it, not to mention heartbreak and wisdom, in the 1964 Stein/Harnick/Bock musical triumph, Fiddler on the Roof, now receivi…
KISS OFF A backstage comedy with more personalities than Sybil, Sarah Ruhl’s preposterous — and in some ways pretentious — 2011 play was apparently given a boffo treatme…
INDEED I DUBIN He wrote the lyrics to the songs that kept the world singing through some of the darkest times in human history: The Great Depression and WWII. But as with most songwriters wh…
FRIENDSHIP AS A LIFE VEST For the lucky few who know confidence and fit in with no real problems, high school is a pleasant stepping stone from adolescence to adulthood. For many, the yea…
FAR MORE EDENIC THAN I EXPECTED You would think that if Stephen Schwartz (composer/lyricist of Pippin and Wicked) wrote a musical with John Caird (adapter of Les Misérables and Can…
NUNBEARABLE Deloris, a  pushy, smart-alecky, malopropism-spouting black woman, is disguised as a nun as she awaits a court date to squeal against her gangster boyfriend. Her background…
NOT YOUR AVERAGE VIOLINIST; NOT YOUR AVERAGE TANGO Coming up on April 15 and 16, 2016, in Irvine and La Jolla, acclaimed violinist Augustin Hadelich will be joined by dazzling pianist Joyce …
KEEPING THE DREAM(GIRLS) ALIVE Dreamgirls opened on Broadway in 1981, won six Tony awards, and ran for nearly four years. Since then, the Michael Bennett musical has been revived, present…
ALMOST 70 YEARS AFTER IT WAS WRITTEN, PREVIOUSLY UNHEARDÂ VERNON DUKE MUSIC IS ORCHESTRATED AND RECORDED For over half a century, record companies have given the studio treatment to long-s…
THERE WILL BE BUZZ ABOUT THIS PLAY, BUT IT’S ALL STING AND NO HONEY As honey bees gather pollen and nectar for their survival, they pollinate crops such as cranberries, melons and broc…
SOMEWHAT FORCED, WE STILL GET THE GLORY OF WEST SIDE STORY Strangely enough, West Side Story feels more dated than Romeo and Juliet, its 500-year-old inspiration. Compared to Sha…
WRAP YOUR BRAIN AROUND A NEW A NEW BRAIN When A New Brain opened at Lincoln Center in 1998, I couldn't understand why the reviews were so higgledy-piggledy. True, I hadn't actually seen the …
ONE NERDY, ANAL AND SINGULAR SENSATION The first two weeks of June, 2001, was a very good time to attend Broadway shows. On one day alone, I saw The Producers at 2:00, The Rocky Horror Show …