THE MUSIC MAN BEHIND THE MUSIC MAN When 5-Star Theatricals announced their production of The Music Man, which opens next week in Thousand Oaks, I actually got excited. I never tire of seeing…
ON THE BORDERLINE What do a Latino cop, a black vet in the Bronx, a Saudi Arabian without a country, a gay pagan goat rancher, and a homeless HIV-positive man have in common? Dan Hoyle. SF's…
WHAT LIES BURIED Actor Hamish Linklater's funny, sharp and tender play The Vandal begins on a cold winter night as a down-on-her-luck middle-aged woman waits for a bus on a deserted street. …
THE CORE IS THERE, BUT THE POSE IS OFF Not only is yoga a gentle exercise and a Hindu spiritual discipline, it's also an $83 billion international industry. Meet Joan (Susi Damilano), a new …
THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME Terry McCabe, artistic director of City Lit Theater, knows Sherlock Holmes and his shadow sleuth Dr. Watson almost as well as author Sir Arthur …
WELL, LERNER & LOEWE ME DOWN Seldom has a dream team had a shorter span: It was all over in only 13 years. But between 1947 and 1960 Alan J. Lerner and Frederick Loewe ran a glorious gam…
A GREEN NEW DEAL As Little Shop of Horrors teaches us: sometimes you just need fresh blood. In that vein, the Pasadena Playhouse more than delivers. Their audacious revival of the quirky cul…
I LIKE YOUR STYLE P. T. Barnum claimed there's a sucker born every minute, but composers like Cy Coleman come along only once in a lifetime. His vigorous score was in the capable hands of mu…
NEVER TAKE FOR GRANTED THE PHRASE "NEVER AGAIN" Wendy Kout, the playwright of Never Is Now asks the question, "What happens when people from diverse backgrounds experience the firsthand acco…
YOU'RE THE TOP, GIRLS For the most part, Joyce, a working class Englishwoman in Ipswich is not a sympathetic or likeable person: She is annoyed by her teenage daughter Angie (who admittedly …
SHOWTIME AT THE VANITIES Ethan Coen's A Play Is a Poem at the Mark Taper Forum strikes me as neither a poem, nor, strictly speaking, theater. I don't know what it is. For the most part the f…
TO BE OR NOT TO BE SARAH BERNHARDT Well, with "Bernhardt" and "Hamlet" sharing the marquee, Goodman Theatre's season-opener must be larger than life if not literature. Sprawling and stuffed …
A MUSICAL CIRCLE JERK You could call it a daisy chain of horizontal encounters, this chronicle of sexual partisans whose sleeping around creates a sort of chain letter of lust. A ton of tale…
MY FAIR MONARCH We love levelling. Mark Twain's prince and the pauper, Queen Victoria and her Scottish and Indian boyfriends, Queen Anne and her favorites, a British schoolteacher and the Ki…
DANCE OF DIPLOMACY Clandestine and volatile, high-stakes diplomacy can be as taut as any courtroom drama. It's hard to imagine a story more intrinsically theatrical than the real-life crises…
SHOULD EVERYONE KISS MY AZTEC? IT DEPENDS… For fans of John Leguizamo, the notion of a full-length musical written by him is a thrilling draw. Whether a fan from his numerous edgy one-man …
FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT; IT'S GOING TO BE A GRUMPY RIDE John and Max are elderly neighbors in a cold Minnesota town. They both live alone in their homes since their wives have died, and exchan…
THE NEW NORMAL A weird dynamic takes over the house at Skintight, Joshua Harmon's comedy, now at the Geffen Playhouse. In broad terms, it feels like a battle of the sexes " with men in the a…
HOOP DREAMS IN THE CELESTIAL KINGDOM No question, Lauren Yee is a wonderful new voice in theater. With Cambodian Rock Band she made crucial connections between iconic survivors and unspea…
BONE CALL When a young Bekah Brunstetter set out to explore where she stood on issues like animal rights, faith, and even relationships, it was before she had ever learned to question what s…
A PRODUCTION WITH SOLID LIFE Phil and Alice are in love, the kind of messy, well-known, commonplace love that many couples are familiar with. They meet cute in a post office when a package f…
CAPSULE CURES Not to be confused with anything else, Tiny Beautiful Things is a theatrical curiosity, fluidly blocked but dramatically static as it unleashes a swirling cascade of ques…
A CONVERGENCE OF HISTORY It was supposedly the "end of an era," the memorial service for Richard Nixon in the Nixon Library in his birthplace Yorba Linda, California, on April 27, 1994. And …
CHANGE IS NOW We hear that that the only thing constant is change, yet we struggle against change, we fight against change, and some are even willing to succumb to the unyielding stress of d…
TITLE I saw this beautifully sad, poignant, dark play last Saturday evening and I'm still thinking about it. Thanks to the wonderful writing, acting and directing this two-person outing base…