LET’S BE FRANK The dictionary has two main definitions for the word "bash": One is "a thoroughly enjoyable, lively party," which is undoubtedly what the producers of Christmas My Way "…
ALEXANDER THE GREAT…CHARMER, THAT IS When I first heard Cortés Alexander sing in 1992, he wasn't alone. He was part of a group named The Tonics, and they performed a jazzy rendition o…
STUCK IN THE DESERT Don't the powers that be at Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum understand that casting is roughly 80% of a play's success? Don't they understand that any play, includi…
BOB'S HOLIDAY OFFICE FIASCO Bob's Holiday Office Party, now in its 17th season, is basically a fifteen-minute Carol Burnett Show-type sketch stretched out to about 100 minutes. And unless a …
RECIPE FOR A CHRISTMAS STEW I sent this recipe to a friend, who will let us know how this Christmas Stew turned out: This is a family favorite, cooked up every holiday season. There are a lo…
SECOND CITY OFFERS A LUMP OF COAL Scene 1"INTERIOR OF SPOOGE AND FARLEY'S CRITIC HOUSE (EVERWHEEZER SPOOGE, an irascible, irritated editor-in-chief and theater critic, is hunched over his la…
LAMC SHINES IN A HISTORICALLY INFORMED PERFORMANCE OF MONTEVERDI'S VESPERS OF 1610 After Los Angeles Master Chorale's (LAMC) astoundingly successful performance of Claudio Monteverdi's Vespe…
BEST TO LOOK AT THE QUILT AS A WHOLE, NOT THE INDIVIDUAL ELEMENTS Intimate Apparel is a delicate but persuasive play about Esther (Vanessa Williams), a gifted black seamstress in 1905 who be…
GREAT F. SCOTT! REDCAT'S GOT GATZ A phenomenon is arriving at the Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theatre (REDCAT) this week in Los Angeles. I promise that once its 9-performance run is over on…
CHRISTMAS ISLAND With the superfluity of Christmas-themed theater descending upon America like a Biblical plague, there is one play which is opening this week that has intrigued and even exc…
CALL ME SLACKJAWED It's amazing what critics and audiences alike are willing to forgive when they're in the presence of a true star. Regardless of some bouncy and hummable Irving Berlin tune…
AN OPENING NIGHT SURPRISE It's one of those instances that may just be talked about in the San Francisco opera circle for years to come. In Act One of Puccini's Tosca (1900) at San Francisco…
AÂ DREAMY BEDTIME STORY Theater critics often speak of "universal themes" in the theater"these are topics to which people in any place and at any time can relate. One of the main reasons t…
THERE HAS TO BE ANOTHER WAY When Anna Ziegler's world premiere play Another Way Home began, it seemed that the thrust of the play would revolve around Joey (Daniel Petzold), a 17-year-old sp…
FAR FROM WILD Thornton Wilder, especially as a playwright, looks to the commonality of all people to demonstrate the value in appreciating life, especially when the death of a loved one is i…
THE HAT'S JUST KEEP ON COMIN' Billed as the world's longest running musical revue, Steve Silver's Beach Blanket Babylon is a flamboyant, frivolous, and frothy burlesque that takes a jab at p…
AN IMAGINATIVE STORY AND SPECTACULAR VISUALS MAKE UP FOR CALCULATED FAMILIARITY It's quite an accomplishment for Disney that the multitude of elements in Wreck-It Ralph don't collapse in on …
HOW TO LAUGH AND CRY AND BE UNMOVED AT THE SAME TIME Playwright Bill Cain, after discovering his mother, Mary, had six months to live, moved into the family home in Syracuse, New York. Like …
AN AUGUST PROJECT In many ways, playwright August Strindberg's influence in the theater has been far more significant than his public reception. While theater historians and scholars speak o…
THAT’S AMORE I hope San Franciscans actually know how advantaged they are to have a company like 42nd Street Moon, which presents fully staged productions of rarely-seen musicals. Whil…
RED AND BROWNÂ IS THEATRICALÂ GOLD Los Angeles is usually the last major theater city in the states to see productions of playwrights whose works have received praise in their world prem…
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID Bootleg Theater continues its run of the world premiere of Death of a Salesgirl, an absurdist tragicomedy with integrated media, about one woman's struggle to fr…
THE MADNESS OF SITE-SPECIFIC THEATER Back in 2010, First Folio presented David Rice's site-specific theater piece, The Madness of Edgar Allan Poe: A Love Story. If any show should be heaped …
I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE TITLE MEANS Every once in a while, a theater company falls in love with a script and simply must stage it. I can't imagine any other reason that Seanachaà decid…
A DEATH OF FRESH AIR During the height of WWII in Germany, a recently orphaned adolescent girl named Liesel is taken in by a poor couple in The Book Thief, now receiving a world premiere pro…