A FAR FROM COSMETIC MUSICAL MAKEOVER In the late James Kirkwood's Legends!, two feuding divas–played on a 1986 national tour by theatrical goddesses Carol Channing and Mary Martin&#…
HIPOCRACY BEGINS AT HOME In theater revenge is best served quickly. That's a virtue in David Alex's 80-minute family drama, now detonating four times a week at Chicago's Redtwist Theatre. A …
IN HARLEM’S WAY "One never knows, do one?" That's the favorite catchphrase of Fats Waller (1904-1943), an irrepressible master of music. The 285-pound, cherubic-cheeked jokester genius…
RUN TO THE CABARET You better tell Momma and everybody else to come see Roundabout’s production of Cabaret, which kicked off its national tour this year. It plays the Hollywood Pantage…
IT’S TIME TO PARTNER UP Pageant of the Masters, now in its 82nd year, is a singularly unique entertainment that has perfected the art of tableaux vivants ("living pictures"). With worl…
COLORFUL CHARACTERS AIN'T ENOUGH Between Riverside and Crazy is a 2015 slice of strife from Stephen Adley Guirgis (perpetrator of The Motherf**ker with the Hat and Jesus Hopped The 'A' Train…
A MORE CASUAL CRUELTY Richard III, the final play of eight of Shakespeare's histories, has also been an ever-popular play. It offers one of the most coldblooded characters in all of literatu…
A FIRE SPARKLING IN HOLLYWOOD Opening a play or musical is always a risk. Plenty of hard work (and sometimes a lot of money) goes into a show, and producers just have to keep their fingers c…
THE MUSICAL WITH LEGS A Chorus Line remains as fresh as the day it appeared just over forty years ago, when the standard Broadway musical was already fading away, making room for the j…
A JEWÂ WALKS INTO A COMMUNIST MEETING… Sometimes whistle-blowing can echo from the past. It's never too late for a timely reminder that ignorance is no excuse. A 95-minute solo show …
IT’S YOUR DREAM NIGHT, GIRLS After nearly two years of renovations, I caught an early glimpse of the historic John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, one of Los Angeles’s top entertainm…
ABT’S FIREBIRD SWOOPS INTO THE CHANDLER Making a rare visit to Southern California, American Ballet Theatre returns after a three-year absence to Los Angeles’s Mus…
AÂ MANE EVENT Writer/performer Benjamin Scheuer's one-man autobiographical song cycle, The Lion, has certainly caught fire since it premiered under a different name at the 2013 Edinburgh F…
THE LIES THAT PASS FOR LOVE Many years ago, a half hour into the Body Politic Theatre's revival of The Importance of Being Earnest a woman behind me very softly threw up. It was done so effi…
BEE THERE The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee has charmed audiences across the country with its effortless wit and humor. Featuring a fast-paced wildly funny and touching book by Rach…
HOLY DIONYSUS, GREENSPAN! Five-time Obie Award winner David Greenspan's unique brand of gentle wit and exquisite lyricism will be on display when Odyssey Theatre Ensemble presents the West C…
ANYTHING BUT DISGRACEFUL Sometimes plays that win the Pulitzer Prize do so less for their content and more for the ideas they embody and the zeitgeist of their time. It's just an added bonus…
FREEDOM BEHIND BARS: THE UNREACHABLE STAR JUST GOT REACHED A skeptic might argue that Man of La Mancha succeeds because it lifts the guilt of anyone who never read Don Quixote. (Two hours in…
STET OFFENSIVE After watching Kim Davies' inspired S&M play Smoke, about two young people connecting in the kitchen of a house in which a sex party is in progress, I became an instant…
KEEPING COMPANY–SONDHEIM'S BITTERSWEET BEST It's the first musical in Writers Theatre's sumptuous new $30 million-dollar home in Glencoe, a light-loving complex with a more spacious lo…
BIKINI BOTTOM HITS THE HEIGHTS Upfront confession: I've never seen Nickelodeon's 17-year-old SpongeBob SquarePants animation series. But my ignorance of this aquatic Sesame Street and its fi…
"IT SHALL GO HARD BUT I WILL BETTER THE INSTRUCTION" Deep into the world premiere of Aaron Posner’s variation on The Merchant of Venice last Saturday, Shylock pointed at me from the st…
THE CANDY COUPLE "The world belongs to the fools who dare to dream": Reprising the crowd pleasure of music-hall euphoria and pantomime cut-ups with a charming quintet of Cockney buskers, An …
OUT OF CONTEXT BUT EASY TO ADMIRE William Finn, a gay songwriter with wit and warmth (and second only to Sondheim), writes story ballads and situational numbers that teach as much as touch. …
RADIANT THEATER In Philip Ridley's brilliant black satire Radiant Vermin, a seemingly nice, average twenty-something couple with an infant, tells us of the horrible things they did to get th…