SUPER ZEROES UNITE! Aging heroes, flat jokes, and laughs that need life support Golden Age by Thomas J. Nisuraca is the roughest of rough theatre. Staged by Force of Nature Productions and d…
RAISING THE CURTAIN AGAIN Palm Springs Plaza Theatre celebrates its grand reopening with a free community open house After a two-year, multimillion-dollar restoration, the historic Palm Spri…
A GREAT PREMISE GETS LOBOTOMIZED Laguna Playhouse offers a dazzling wall of doors and not much behind them Paul Slade Smith's new play Beside Myself arrives with a knockout premise: Gemma, a…
GUNNING FOR PUERTO RICO Stephen Sondheim chose an unlikely topic for his 1990 Assassins, a musical that portrays assassinating or attempting to assassinate a president is as American as popu…
THE QUIET COST OF BELONGING Suh's Thanksgiving duet is lovely and lived-in, but leaves one wishing for deeper stakes The Heart Sellers at South Coast Rep offers a focused, uninterrupted glim…
A SPELLBINDING CAULDRON BOILS OVER, SUMMONING THEATER'S WILD GODS Suffice it to say, there's nothing else in New York quite like Anne Washburn's new play The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire, …
MUCH TOO GAY? JUST GAY ENOUGH! This past Thursday evening, Revolution Stage Company presented a dazzling, high-energy celebration of LGBTQ+ pride, self-acceptance, and joy"filled with wit, g…
THIS HOUSE STANDS ON FAITH AND FURY Invictus Theatre's The House That Will Not Stand blazes with wit, grief, and grace Following the smashing success of its production of Angels in America, …
A LOVE LETTER TO THE OBAMAS THAT BRINGS THE WHITE HOUSE DOWN The biggest surprise of the season for me has been 44 the Musical, which opened last night at the Daryl Roth Theatre. Billed as a…
WOOD YOU BELIEVE IT? CV REP'S PINOCCHIO CARVES OUT A WINNER The Conservatory program at Coachella Valley Repertory opens its arms wide to the next generation of theatre lovers with Pinocchio…
NOSTALGIA IN THE SPOTLIGHT, MODERNITY IN THE WINGS At a time when most new musicals chase novelty, Reunions looks lovingly backward. Conceived as a pair of one-act chamber pieces performed b…
POP-UP, FLOP-DOWN: WHEN DINNER UPSTAGES THE THEATER The foundational idea of Suite 524's Pop Up Dinner Theater at Barlume Downstairs is solid " four courses from Barlume's excellent kitch…
SECOND STAR TO THE RIGHT"AND STRAIGHT INTO HILARIOUS DISASTER The La Mirada Theatre's Broadway Series takes a gleeful nosedive into chaos with Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Mischief Theatre's follow…
PLAYING THE CARDS YOU'RE DEALT: THE PILON SHUFFLES LOVE, VALUE, AND IDENTITY Sometimes theater takes you places you never expected " or even wanted " to find yourself. For some, Red Theater'…
HONORING A FAMILY STUCK IN A HOLOCAUST NIGHTMARE Four actors, four moving walls, a wooden table and chairs, and historical projections combine into an extraordinary theatrical experience in …
SHRINKING THE SCALE, NOT THE MAGIC Coachella Valley Classical Voices' recent production of Hansel and Gretel, the beloved 1893 opera by Engelbert Humperdinck, ran this past weekend at Palm C…
THINGS THAT GO BOOM AND JUST RIGHT It's impossible to see a production of Jonathan Larson's Tick, Tick … Boom! without seeing it as a precursor to his Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Rent. …
SWING ON IN! If you want to have the time of your life, you can't do better than get a ticket for Cirque Le Swing, an immersive supper-club experience that combines a three-course dinner, ja…
Play has always been at the heart of human creativity. It is the impulse that drives both performance and imagination"the desire to transform ordinary experience into something meaningful. W…
THIS BAT COMES OUT SWINGING Back in the nineties when tabloids ruled the world, there was one especially erroneous publication: Weekly World News. Presenting stories so outrageously false ye…
GREEN SCALES AND SHAM I generally count on SpeakEasy Stage for stellar productions of innovative and ground-breaking plays and musicals. But that history, along with fine performances and ch…
CELEBRATING THE INDESPENSIBILITY OF CHICAGO'S CREATIVES Glowing cultural vibrancy and great world cities are so often intertwined they are effectively one. Scan the globe and nearly every ci…
FOWL PLAY: WHEN THE TRUTH TAKES AIM IN THE WILD DUCK Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck, now at Shakespeare Theatre Company's Klein Theatre (in a co-production with Theatre for a New Audience), is…
A TIME WARP TO THE 1970s WOMEN'S MOVEMENT, REFRACTED THROUGH 2025 EYES STILL SQUINTING TOWARDS EQUALITY "Why does it feel somehow like it's all slipping away? And how do we get it back?" Tha…
THE FIRST OPERA GETS NEW LIFE FROM HAYMARKET AND NEWBERRY CONSORT The origins of opera are somewhat obscure and not well-known. Haymarket Opera and The Newberry Consort, two of Chicago's fin…