SOME, NOT ALL, IS ILLUMINATED Sadly, not everything is illuminated in British playwright Simon Block's fascinating but problematic adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's best-selling novel abo…
CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE THEATER Well, there certainly is nothing wrong with good advice. And there's plenty of that in the structurally unconventional Tiny Beautiful Things, Nia Vardalos's stag…
CAN LOVE ENABLE EVIL? There is no last supper or cross on Golgotha but, yes, Hannah and Martin is a true passion play. What makes this even stranger is that it's as much about clashing…
GOTTA DANCE! Now 44 years old, which means that a third generation of hoofers is now recreating it, A Chorus Line remains the late Michael Bennett's breakthrough backstage musical, winner…
HATE VS. MUSIC It's impossible to grasp a monster evil like genocide as a whole, to weigh it as so many calculable, tangible acts of human failure that yield a vast vileness and a terrible w…
THERE WILL BE NO REVIEW This hasn't happened before and I hope it won't again. My regrets for a wasted night. I'm (sort of) sorry but, alas, I found last night's Goodman Theatre world premie…
VOLCANOES WITHIN AND WITHOUT When you walk into the theater for playwright Mary Lyon Kamitaki's Southernmost, Justin Huen's scenic design transports you immediately into another world: An in…
TAYLOR MADE If timing is everything with comedy Renée Taylor in My Life on a Diet is proof positive. This revival of her one-woman show, based on her 1986 memoir of the same title, is a mas…
THE BOYFRIENDS ARE BACK Back by popular demand but for only one week at the Auditorium Theatre, the mega-jukebox musical Jersey Boys continues to stir up a perfect storm of industrial-…
HERE'S THE BEEF What happens when you're brought up to feel invisible? Where do you go for solace? Where do you go to find your identity? For actress Debrianna Mansini it was in cooking; thi…
AFFIRMATIVE RE-ACTION Don't let the title fool you. Produced last year at Lincoln Center Theater, Admissions arrived too early to address the recent scandal involving illegal offenses in col…
DOES LOVE NEED A LEASH? "The heart wants what the heart wants." Emily Dickinson's seemingly simple saying (akin to Gertrude Stein's "A rose is a rose is a rose") in fact packs a lot of wary …
THE CANDY MAN CAN'T The stage musical adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory " Roald Dahl's beloved children-of-all-ages' story " has spun into town just, it seems, to make your tee…
CHAPSCHTICK It's 1944. The war is raging across the English Channel and the Germans could invade at any moment. Britain needs levity to get through these tough days. Miles (Charles Evans, Jr…
PRETTY HURTS SO GOOD The title of Tori Sampson's If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka is a sly retort to Beyoncé's 2013 song "Pretty Hurts," both of which lament the negative impacts of …
TODAY'S LOST BOYS Theater takes us places and shows us stuff that we might never freely choose to go or see. Exhibits A-Z areYen, a 2013 visit to Gorki's "lower depths" by British playwright…
GRACE NOTES Now on the Kleberg Stage in Austin, TX, Anna Deavere Smith's powerful, engrossing and resonant solo play " Notes from the Field " has been updated for four actors by ZACH's Produ…
BLONDE, YES: SMART? WELL… It's tempting, if unfair, to compare Willy Holtzman's Smart Blonde to the 1963 Broadway musical Funny Girl: both use flashback to frame the biographies of young J…
A VAULTING MATILDA Imagine Annie with psychokinetic powers, Nancy Drew as a mind-reader, or Cinderella acting as her own fairy godmother. Self-empowerment fuels this upbeat, knock-down, pell…
THANK GOD IT'S FREAKY FRIDAY On the weekend of her mother's everything-must-be-perfect second wedding, teenager Ellie (Rivers Harris) is in a funk: little brother Fletcher (John Perry Wishch…
THE BUSINESS OF FAITH The late Irish playwright Brian Friel's Faith Healer premiered some 40 years ago and is now considered one of his greatest works. It is a memory play with three charact…
A BRIGHT STAR ISN'T ON THE HORIZON; IT'S RIGHT HERE You can savor heart and hope in every scene in Bright Star, BoHo Theatre's new triumph in their upstairs home at the Greenhouse Thea…
THIS IS THE MOMENTOS I have seen the Chicago-based performance collective Manual Cinema on their home turf twice, and the theatricality is awesome. This endlessly inventive group of artists …
PRECIOUS NONSENSE MAKES MELANCHOLY PLAY A FORTRESS OF ARTIFICE If you ever feel "slightly dead," you may be prey to the humor of melancholy. Melancholy Play: A Contemporary Farce, a 2002 dra…
photos by Little Fang Up Here La Jolla Playhouse 2910 La Jolla Village Dr in La Jolla ends on September 6, 2015 for tickets, call (858) 550-1010 or visit La Jolla Playhouse