SLIDE INTO THE OLD DISNEYLAND My first visit to Disneyland was 1964, and I still remember many attractions from that day which will be covered when pop culture humorist and author Charles Ph…
"DON’T LOOK AT ME" Jillian Leigh’s second play, Hooked, is extremely ambitious and fairly successful in the hands of director Terri Treas, producer Michael Zand, and a strong cas…
COMING CHOREOGRAPHY Opening its 60th season, the Joffrey Ballet literally leaps into the future with Millennials, a three-part program at the Auditorium Theatre. Closing Sunday, it features …
SCHOOLED BY CALLAS If you've ever been to a master class, then Terrence McNally's Master Class (1995) will seem very familiar. If you haven't, then you're in for a real eye-opener. A master …
GANGSTER MUSICAL You've seen the movie, you've seen the car, now see the musical. Meet the most famous robbing, murdering, loving couple in U.S. history. From their first meeting at a West T…
RAVE ON Almost a month ago, I went to Rogue Machine’s storytelling night for the first time. You know storytelling nights " they’re like poetry slams, only whiter and less politi…
BOYS WILL BE PIGS The title can mislead: Dogfight is not about World War I flying aces Eddie Rickenbacker and The Red Baron doing loop-the-loops as they shoot each other out of the sky. Dogf…
ANTIGONE AND JULIETTE In Anne Carson's crisp new translation of Sophkles' Antigone, the great Juliette Binoche embodies the title character, a young woman who breaks the law under penalty of…
HAM INÂ BED At the beginning of Hamlet in Bed, when its author and co-star Michael Laurence comes up to the standup microphone at the front of the stage, I can't help wanting him to succee…
ON GOLDEN PONDLING In her perfect little one-woman show Pondling, Genevieve Hulme-Beaman is captivating as Madeleine, a little girl who lives with her older brother on her grandfather's farm…
RETURN OF A SMART IDIOT It’s always satisfying to see a show that really works get a remount. DOMA, which presented the best version I have ever seen of Green Day’s American I…
BORDERING ON TRAGEDY There is a lot to like about playwright Luis Alfaro's Mojada, a modern retelling of Medea which sets the main character as an undocumented immigrant and seamstress in th…
WHEN GETTING THERE ISN'T HALF THE FUN Call it a combination of Locked Up Abroad and Coming to America. In 90 gorgeously pictured minutes, "multi-racial" performer Debra Erhardt thrillingly c…
DOUBLE DUTY DOMINGO The biggest names in opera, cinema, and classical music converge for the opening of LA Opera's impressive 30th anniversary season. The double bill which opens Saturday is…
DELIVERANCE FROM DROUGHT It's a terrific recipe for powerful theater. Confront audiences with an unfinished situation amid a collective challenge–with seemingly no way out. Then introd…
A POOR MAN'S PETER PAN Let's put two prequels in perspective: What the novel-based Wicked is to The Wizard of Oz, Peter and the Starcatcher, a novel-derived "origins tale," is for Sir James …
RECREATION My editor and I didn’t toss a coin to see who would write the review " he’s smarter than that; he wrote a very nice preview piece, the kind I find very difficult, and …
BEYOND THE PALE Bad Jews (the provocative title not as anti-Semitic as it sounds) was a 2015 hit at London's St. James and New York's Roundabout theaters. In the Chicago area Jeremy Wechsler…
PLOYS IN THE ATTIC It's noble to sacrifice for loved ones who need you. But what if it was for nothing? Arthur Miller's 1968 family play The Price puts its title to rich use. Ostensibly, it'…
AMERICAN CLASSICS WITH AUDRA MCDONALD & AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE The last time I saw the captivating singer and actress Audra McDonald in concert, she sang the Bernstein/Comden/Green t…
DIXIE DOODLES IN DISTRESS Beth Henley, author of 1979's Pulitzer-winning Crimes of the Heart, has practically patented the Southern stereotype. Drawling in a stilted patois, Henley's despera…
THROWN BY AÂ LOOP I'm not partial to dramas set in prisons; these tend to be ugly, depressing, violent and hopeless, or worse"sentimental, and I find myself reluctant to be transported to …
FROM THE MINES TO THE MOON A feel-good story of literal uplift, the new musical October Sky, like the 1999 film, is an anagram of Rocket Boys, the true-life confessional of Homer H. Hickam, …
ALTRUISM OR ARTISTRY? Margaret's Safe Place, "a boarding facility that houses the most vulnerable students of The Kibera School for Girls" in Kenya, sheltering girls from domestic sexual vio…
WAKING UP FROM THE AMERICAN DREAM The title of Oracle Theatre's typically invigorating offering, THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THE AMERICAN DREAM IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO, is actually a…