FRIENDSHIP AS A LIFE VEST For the lucky few who know confidence and fit in with no real problems, high school is a pleasant stepping stone from adolescence to adulthood. For many, the yea…
A STUDY IN SPITE BECOMES A PUERILE HISSY FIT The joke's on us in Thomas Bradshaw's 75-minute Carlyle. Goodman Theatre's premiere is agit-prop theater, a trifle that contains more guts and…
CAN A CLONE HAVE AN IDENTITY CRISIS? We share 99% of our genetic material with every other human, 90% with each chimpanzee, and 30% with any bunch of lettuce. (Talk about "six degrees of sep…
FAR MORE EDENIC THAN I EXPECTED You would think that if Stephen Schwartz (composer/lyricist of Pippin and Wicked) wrote a musical with John Caird (adapter of Les Misérables and Can…
PUZZLE PIECES OF A PERSON Snapshots from a family album, jump cuts from a movie, scattered entries from a constant journal"it's hard to get a fix on Mary Page Marlowe, a very different offer…
NUNBEARABLE Deloris, a  pushy, smart-alecky, malopropism-spouting black woman, is disguised as a nun as she awaits a court date to squeal against her gangster boyfriend. Her background…
DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL, DON’T GO Lucas Hnath, a disconcertingly popular scribe, writes playful, pseudo-historical, and narrative-heavy dramas crammed with deliberately stilt…
TWENTY YEARS OF HARD-HEELED HOOFING What Stomp delivered through percussive street-dancing, Forever Tango gave to Argentina’s national cooch dance, and A Chorus Line and 42nd Street…
NOT IN MY DOWNTOWN Mosque Alert, an explosive world premiere, is seen"and felt"from all sides. Jamil Khoury's culture-clashing creation depicts a suburban showdown, a battle over whether to …
NOT YOUR AVERAGE VIOLINIST; NOT YOUR AVERAGE TANGO Coming up on April 15 and 16, 2016, in Irvine and La Jolla, acclaimed violinist Augustin Hadelich will be joined by dazzling pianist Joyce …
AMOR MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU'RE SORRY Based on the graphic novel of the same name by French writer Régis Jauffret, Historia de Amor, which opens this Thursday, March 31 at REDCAT in L…
DISRUPTION 1633 It's intriguing but frustrating that Bertolt Brecht refuses to dramatize the most potentially powerful moment in The Life of Galileo. (It's like presenting Romeo and Juliet w…
THE EFFECT OF GREAT THEATER In Lucy Prebble's captivating two-act, The Effect, crisply directed by David Cromer, 20-somethings Connie (Susannah Flood) and Tristan (Carter Hudson) meet as tes…
GIVE YOURSELF OVER TO ABSOLUTE PLEASURE Those familiar with the movie version of The Rocky Horror Show may be shocked to find that there is no typo in the title of the stage version: Here, t…
KEEPING THE DREAM(GIRLS) ALIVE Dreamgirls opened on Broadway in 1981, won six Tony awards, and ran for nearly four years. Since then, the Michael Bennett musical has been revived, present…
A GOLDEN RECORDING It only took 61 years, but, but PS Classics and the Lyric Stage in Irving, Texas have conspired to make legions of musical theater fans happier than the first time t…
FENCES THIS AIN’T We are taught that tolerance is a virtue, that common ground is not only findable but a state of mind. We are taught that our obligation is to our neighbor as much as…
MIND OVER MUSIC Imagine Annie with psychokinetic powers, Nancy Drew as a mind-reader, or Cinderella acting as her own fairy godmother. Self-empowerment of the Mulan persuasion fuels this upb…
KISSING KILLINGÂ COUSINS Serial killers can be fun. In the film Theatre of Blood Vincent Price sardonically played a Shakespearean actor, a hate-filled ham who doggedly "offs" the critics …
ALMOST 70 YEARS AFTER IT WAS WRITTEN, PREVIOUSLY UNHEARDÂ VERNON DUKE MUSIC IS ORCHESTRATED AND RECORDED For over half a century, record companies have given the studio treatment to long-s…
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE WHEREVER IT LEADS Evidence, A Dance Company is recognized nationally and internationally for its fusion of African dance with contemporary choreography and storytellin…
BEATEN UP FOR COMING OUT Awesomely authentic, Chelsea M. Warren's setting for after all the terrible things I do isn't just a character in itself"it's a cast. This designer has perfectly con…
BOYS WILL BE PIGS Stop the presses for a late-breaking alert: Men can be crude, drunk, womanizing wretches. This astonishing revelation fuels the bottom-feeding 75 minutes of Caroline M. McG…
MISS MATCH MISMATCH Though it's usually the other way around, sometimes musicals actually improve on the sources that inspire them. Arguably, West Side Story is stronger stuff than Romeo and…
YOU WANTÂ THE SLEUTH..? The kind of intimate theater I saw Sunday is targeted for elimination by Actors’ Equity Association: Low-tech projects, produced of donated resources without …