COME JOIN THE CIRCA Brisbane-based Circa creates circus that moves the heart, mind and soul. The company discovers, cultivates and presents works and experiences from the living heart of cir…
THE ACTUAL CITY OF DETROIT HAS FEWER PROBLEMS THAN THIS PRODUCTION After watching San Diego REP's production of Lisa D'Amour's Detroit, most audience members will be dumbstruck that this bla…
LBO MAKES A KLINGHOFFER YOU CAN'T REFUSE The big story this weekend isn't the appearance of John Adams' The Death of Klinghoffer. Since its arrival in 1991, the opera has been encircled by c…
I LOVE LUCIA Lucia di Lammermoor, Gaetano Donizetti's darkly romantic tale of honor, betrayal, loss and madness, opens this Saturday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and plays through April …
AN UNHAPPY COUPLE – UNHAPPY IN ITS OWN WAY Stockholm Syndrome is a form of traumatic bonding in which hostages develop an irrational sympathy for their captors. The term refers to a ro…
WAITING TO CLIMAX To use a sexually potent metaphor, STePz' display of tap choreography was long on foreplay, producing many unfulfilled climaxes which led to an awkward happy ending. The sl…
THE RHAPSODIC SIDE OF STALKING Stendhal wrote a story once about a man who also wrote a story as a way to force himself to fall in love. It seems an impossibly pure task. Passion carries tha…
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER THE THEATER As staged by Linda Ames Key, Paul Bowles' adaptation of Jean Paul Sartre's No Exit, a play that imagines three individuals' hell as being trapped in…
SOUL MATES FROM 167 YEARS AGO "Oh, we have paid for our children's place in the world. We have paid again and again." This assertion of achievement rings terribly true after two and a half h…
SCRIPT ABOUT VIDEO GAME USAGE NEEDS FIXES Early in Leveling Up at Steppenwolf Theatre, professional gamer Ian (Clancy McCartney) makes it clear that he prefers playing video games all day ra…
POP MISSES AN OP Pacific Opera Project's production of Carmen is difficult to review, only because the benchmark is unclear. Bizet's ever-popular four-act 1875 opera about a gypsy temptress …
THE FORCE OF FORGIVENESS What's too ugly or scary to process, let alone to confront, in real life is grist for the mill of theater, such as how a gun appears and death comes out of nowhere. …
NOTSOGUD Everything you need to know about Ruskin Group Theatre's current world premiere production is revealed in the title: TALHOTBLOND: everybody lies online. If you are at all tech savvy…
SHAKESOPHRENIC, OR SCHIZSPEARE American director Barry Edelstein knows his Shakespeare. Before being appointed Artistic Director of the Old Globe 16 months ago, he was Director of the Shakes…
STEPS THAT SOAR Produced by Moya Doherty, the dynamo behind Riverdance, director John McColgan's well-crafted spinoff just launched its U.S. premiere at Chicago's Oriental Theatre before con…
GOAT ON A BOAT Edward Albee's diligently disturbing tragicomedy, The Goat or Who is Sylvia?, is running at California Repertory Company in the belly of the Queen Mary's Royal Theatre. One of…
A SHORT TAKE ON A LONG TRIP Sometimes critics get caught up in their own words and feel the need to expand upon their self-important ramblings beyond all reason. Â They spew forth with so …
NOT SO INCOMPLETE The Incomplete Guide to Everything features scenes culled from more than 50 years of The Second City performances, right up to sketches that are part of the soon-to-end mai…
CRY!BOYS AND INDIANS Let’s be honest:Â Director Elizabeth LeCompte's sometimes astonishing adaptation of Shakespeare's Trolius and Cressida by the acclaimed Wooster Group of New Yor…
INTRIGUE? I'M GLAD YOU MASKED The poster of San Diego Opera's production of Verdi's A Masked Ball claims "Based on a True Story." This is not hyperbole. When their production opens on Saturd…
BAPTISM IN WORDS Seminar, Theresa Rebeck's utterly engaging one-act, is all about the wonders and terrors of writing. Both in the author's dazzling dialogue and the fascinating issues she co…
A FINE INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE It takes a few minutes to get going but once it does Ryan Lee's staging of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale becomes dynamic entertainment; Mr. Lee and his f…
A HEART-POUNDING, COSMOS-QUESTIONING PIECE OF THEATER Today may be your last chance to see Blue Cube's hauntingly philosophical drama, Coldwater, but now that it has been tried out as part o…
COMEDICAL, TRAGICAL, IMPROVISATORICAL Impro Theatre's long-form improvisational theater is among the most impressive of the performing arts. At South Coast Rep, the group proffered a full-le…
FLESH MADE TEDIOUS In my day job as a public librarian, I can tell you with certainty there is nothing more dreaded than finding E. L. James' turgid lust romancer Fifty Shades of Grey in …