REST ASSURED: THE LIES LOVE LIVES ON You can't keep a good comedy down. Wildly popular in its time, Dion Boucicault's 1841 London Assurance is a mating romp that, inexplicably, has not been …
A VERY GOOD GRIEF This funny but disturbing update of Charles M. Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip first arrived at the Blank Theatre, after which Worst First Kiss Productions wisely ut…
IT GETS WORSE TOO Teenage suicide due to cyberbullying deserves its storytelling: In just 70 minutes, Canadian playwright Jordan Tannahill’s Late Company seems to cover the bases…
SONGS FROM THE BOTTOM OF A BOTTLE Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre really loves the sad songs of Jacques Brel. First came A Jacques Brel Revue: Songs of War and Love in 2005. Three years later th…
HOW’S THE WITHER? (JUST IN CASE YOU WERE WUTHERING…) A complicated nineteenth-century story of love and retaliation, featuring 13 characters, could be tough to pull off …
A BRUTAL TRUE-LIFE EVENT IS THE BASIS FORÂ POWERFUL THEATER Katharine Cortez' 80-minute take on the after-effects of the brutal slaying of 49 people at the LGBT dance-bar, PULSE, a year ag…
THE WHITE WHALE RETURNS! You can't keep a good cetacean down. Buoyed by the success of their 2015 inaugural production and national tour, Lookingglass Theatre Company (in association with Th…
GRILLED TO PERFECTION North Coast Rep's rendition of James Valcq and Fred Alley's simple musical The Spitfire Grill demonstrates two things: the redemptive power of acceptance, forgiveness a…
PARALLEL UNIVERSES AND THE PHYSICS OF LOVE I have a brother-in-law who is a mathematician and a brother who's an astrophysicist. Both have tried to explain to me what they do, with little su…
THE WAR WITHIN THE WAR As sturdily written and swiftly moving as it was in 1982, Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play remains an enduring testament to the home front battles that African-Americ…
THE STAR WHO WAS A CONSTELLATION "Stardust" was the name for what made Bette Davis shine. With playwright Jessica Sherr's solo recreation of more than big eyes and flouncing cigarettes, t…
ELEMENTARY BUT AMUSING Unbound Productions takes original material and sets it in vaguely similar settings using carefully-chosen actors and company directors; the company has been produc…
LOVING YOUR OPPRESSOR The audience is delighted when a character in Alexi Kaye Campbell's beautifully written play The Pride tells another, "Stop sucking the dick of your oppressor!" It's a …
THERE’S NO INTERFERING WITH GREAT THEATER What an extraordinary piece of theater was this Hollywood Fringe entry from Pepperdine University in Malibu. The Interference confronts the di…
FREE WILLY Imagine if cast recordings from the fifties and sixties recorded out-of-town tryouts, then changed material, then recorded the Broadway production, then changed material, then …
IT’S LIKE REAL LIFE, BUT BETTER About a decade ago, I was having a miserable time dating. The age of electronica was firmly in place, and chat rooms, lengthy bios, and requested cock s…
OOH-LA-LA Where am I? Is this a dream? Just when you thought cabaret in Los Angeles was on life support comes this bar of gold at the Hollywood Fringe. Do not miss this extravaganza of re…
THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT A WARHOL If you thought Pop Artist Andy Warhol only referenced and defined mass culture and consumerism through replicated images of Campbell's soup cans and Marilyn …
PROVOCATION PLUS DISRUPTION" 2017 GETS ITS PLAY! Ever since artistic director Anna Shapiro took over Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the Chicago mecca hasn't been afraid to upset an audience. S…
IS IT OK FOR PCÂ TO FIGHT BSÂ IN D.C. at the V.G.? (NOT WHEN IT'S TV…) There's a cable series on the Investigation Discovery channel called Fear Thy Neighbor: It recreates real-life tr…
DANCE BEGINS AT 40 For Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, it's time to take stock. This 100-minute evening does it all and well. It's as much a showcase for seven seminal choreographers (Lou Cont…
FLAGGED DOWN Who hasn’t walked away from some bad dates thinking, “Jesus, that was like being in a play.” Well, now Capital W — a theater company that offers uncon…
DAMN, YANKEES DOESN’T HIT IT OUT OF THE PARK While many of Jerry Ross and Richard Adler’s songs from the 1955 Broadway classic hold up rather well, Douglass Wallop and George Abb…
WHAT A SHOCK In 1845, German psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann wrote a disturbing but popular children’s book featuring the perils of children who misbehave. AÂ century and a half later…
 MICHAEL FEINSTEIN! LIZA MINNELLI! STORM LARGE! JOEL GREY! BROADWAY! No one can argue that Michael Feinstein"charismatic, appealing, boyish, excited, and eager to please"has singlehandedl…