PICKED, PECKED, AND PACKED Some solo shows can be valued simply for their superb simulations of someone else's story. Others succeed because we pay extra special attention when the chronicle…
MIND YOUR MANOR Now camping through November 24 is Ravenswood Manor, a much-needed send-up of all things soap, perhaps even the one you dropped in the shower. You never know with funnyman Ju…
MIRACLE ON NORTH GOWER STREET If you're in need of a miracle, look no further than the Los Angeles premiere of Lance Arthur Smith's new adaptation of Miracle on 34th Street: A Live Musical R…
THE MIGHTY MISSISSIPPI JUST GOT MIGHTIER Do whatever you can. Take a raft, pretend you're a duke, toss pig blood around your lean-to so everyone thinks you're dead, but get to Rubicon Theatr…
HE'S BACK ON DUTY It's now become a holiday classic, Mary Zimmerman's gorgeous The Steadfast Tin Soldier at Lookingglass Theatre. It was glorious last year. It's lost no luster since. In onl…
A SHOW THAT CASTS A SPELL Whether it really works or it's just self-fulfilling wishful thinking, magic can misfire. Â Detailing a downhome tragedy set in Memphis during the Depression, Hoo…
TWO WAY STREET INTERSECTS AT TOUCHING PERSONAL DRAMA The Last Five Years shares the joys, trials, and failures of two people, Jamie (Michael Louis Cusimano) and Cathy (Racquel Williams), in …
A PENNY DREADFUL SAVED ISN'T ALWAYS EARNED Back in the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing in merry ole England. The working class was becoming more educated and printing was …
A LIVING ROSE If you have even a modest love of French songs, or just the art of performance, of hearing and seeing a singer bring a lyric to vibrant life, do yourself a favor and go see thi…
IN TROUSERS William Finn's musical masterpiece Falsettos is a melding of two one-acts: March of the Falsettos " debatably one of the best scores of the 1980s " which opened Off-Broadwa…
50 YEARS SINCE ITS BIRTH AND JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR FINALLY RISES AGAIN Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar is given the rock concert treatment for its 50th Anniversary…
THE HURT OF HATE Dirty laundry demands an airing. Given the disunion afflicting our republic, a play like N (short for the "N word") has healing to share. A provocative world premiere …
TOSSING OUT THE BABY BUT KEEPING THE BATHWATER Reluctance takes center stage in Center Theater Group's production of Mike Birbiglia's theatrical child The New One. In his 2018 one-man show, …
THE SINS OF THE FATHER There's no doubt that Arthur Miller's 1947 play All My Sons is an astonishing piece of theater. Not only is the writing brilliant, but the themes addressed are timeles…
HATE CRIMES ROCK A SUBVERSIVE COMEDY This show can never be nice: Along with The Taming of the Shrew, a comedy built squarely on misogyny, The Merchant of Venice, a tragicomedy festeri…
ONCE AGAIN, PLEASE Ironically, the real-life love affair between collaborators Glen Hasard, an Irish singer-songwriter, and Markéta Irglová, a Czech songwriter, fizzled after John Carney…
CABIN FEVER AT ITS CRAZIEST Make of this what you will. All too predictably, every review that Grey House receives will be different. Because this new work by Red Orchid Theatre ensemb…
IT JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER In 1994, 5-Star Theatricals (formerly Cabrillo Music Theatre) produced its first show: Meredith Willson's The Music Man, which opened on Broadway in 1957 and bec…
PIAZZA EXPLODES LIKE TUSCAN SUNLIGHT From London's Royal Festival Hall to L.A.'s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion comes a rapturous new production of the Tony Award-winning musical The Light in the…
UP CLOSE, SHE'S BIGGER THAN EVEN PEANUT BUTTER From the start it seemed strange that anyone would make a musical out of a movie that embodies its medium so completely. Yes, the film All A…
ON ANASTASIA, AMNESIA, AND ANESTHESIA First came the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, who was murdered in 1918 just after the Bolshevi…
CINDERFELLA The best play on any L.A. stage right now, Daniel Pearle's 2013 A Kid Like Jake couldn't be more relevant. The parents of a four-year-old boy are applying for a private primary s…
THE DIRTY WAR COMES HOME Stephanie Alison Walker's The Abuelas at Antaeus Theatre is the story of a woman discovering that she is a child of the "Disappeared," the approximately 30,000 peopl…
SHEPARDING OUT THE TRUTH Sam Shepard's domestic disruption True West hasn't left the theatrical landscape since it first premiered with Peter Coyote at San Francisco's Magic Theater in 1980.…
A FAMILY IN KEY SIGNATURES As she showed in Five Mile Lake, Rachel Bonds works with a small brush. She lays low before her subject in order to convey tender, unassuming connections bet…