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 …
EVEN GOD CAN’T SAVEÂ THIS FROM ITSELF Dear God (if I may quote Alice Walker): What’s going on with the theater these days? Oh, that’s right, you already know. In fact, yo…
MAGIC CAN STRIKE TWICE IN THE SAME PLACE In 2013, a new production of The Magic Flute from Berlin's Komische Oper became a sell-out sensation, courtesy of the Los Angeles Opera. Now, it retu…
AÂ HOLLYWOOD MUSICAL AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN IT In 1993, H.R.H. the Princess of Hanover appointed Jean-Christophe Maillot as the head of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo. Backed by his experi…
AÂ FUNNY AND NOT-SO FUNNY THING An irresistible mix of Roman "new comedy," commedia dell'arte, and vaudeville, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum rivals The Producers as the fu…
COLORFUL COLORATURA IN A CLUNKY CANDIDE There isn't much I could say about the musical Candide that hasn't been written about before. Leonard Bernstein created one of our greatest Broadway s…
CENSORSHIP COMES TO LOS ANGELES The Wooster Group has let Stage and Cinema know that Samuel French, Inc., which manages the United States rights for Harold Pinter's work, has bannedÂ�…
THE TROCKS ROCK! As part of their worldwide tour, one of the most original troupes on the globe is coming to Carpenter Center in Long Beach this weekend. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte C…
A MUSICAL THAT REACHES FOR NEW HEIGHTS Built during the Depression between 1930 and 1931, the Empire State Building became the world’s tallest office building"surpassing the Chrysler B…
YOUR PAL IS COMING TO TOWN Sassy and brassy Pal Joey is a wondrous rouser that spins the tale of a roué gone rotten in Depression-era Chicago. As part of its Reiner Staged Reading …
THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT IS When the meek and paranoid everyman Winston Smith scribbles “Down with Big Brother” in his journal, he soon blossoms into a determined and impassi…
WHAT/EVER Saved from total disregard by a libretto that occasionally manages to engage with humor and knowingness, this brave attempt to examine the subject of fate versus choice utterly fai…
CROSSFIRE Between religious zealots, especially those who use the word of God to control the populace rather than to create peace, and the liberation of a new world"gay marriage, Roe v. Wade…
ME SO FELIZ A friend mentioned that three comediennes–a Cuban American from Miami, a Mexican American from Texas, and the daughter of an “over-dedicated Mexican mother and …
APOLLO EARTHBOUND; SHOSTAKOVICH SOARS Rollicking, mysterious, and adventurous may be attributes of Britten’s Young Apollo,but these adjectives also describe the outcome, respecti…
DO I FEAR A WALTZ? Musicals are generally "lost" for any one of a number of reasons: the libretto may be filled with once topical socio-political humor now meaningless to contemporary audien…
IF STORYTELLING’S YOUR THING, SKIP SCOTCH French poet and essayist Charles Pierre Péguy wrote, “It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas.” Yuval Sharo…