THE LEGACY WILL HAVE YOU GEEKING OUT FOR GENE KELLY Gene Kelly's widow, Patricia Ward Kelly, is touring with her retrospective multi-media presentation of Gene Kelly's life and work, Gene Ke…
GAY BOYS AND INDIANS A Nice Indian Boy, currently enjoying its world premiere production at East West Players, is a charming little comedy about love, marriage, culture clash and the shiftin…
HAPPY IN THEIR SECOND HOME It's its second annual homecoming, the much-anticipated, event-filled Alvin Ailey American Theater arrives at the Auditorium Theatre, as well as to community venue…
CHERCHEZ LA CORPSE Sometimes truths get told that only murder can out. The quaint, perhaps anachronistic, setting for David Alex' problematic two-act drama, just premiered by MadKap Producti…
SQUASHED HOPES MAKE FOR BRILLIANT THEATER What a relief it is, what a glorious pleasure for a viewer, after sitting through so much unnecessary theater, to find oneself finally in the hands …
BASKETBALL MUSICAL IS ONE BIG PENALTY You wanna know how great the Chance Theater is? They actually made it a palatable experience to sit through one of the most half-baked and frivolous new…
LOVE GONE NUTS Here's a twisted little response to the maudlin sappiness of Valentine's Day:Â Steve Yockey's sprightly romantic farce is about love, all right, but it's love as pathologic…
ORANGE COUNTY GOES GREEN, I.E. VERDI Opera is alive and well in Orange County! Since the demise of Opera Pacific (1985-2008), Pacific Symphony, aided by Pacific Chorale, has emerged as the c…
WHEN THE BRASS RING IS JUST ANOTHER NOOSE The siren song of the bitch-goddess “success” croons loud and clear in this cautionary, modern melodrama. Golden Boy, Clifford Odets' 77…
LOST AT SEA To culminate a year-long centennial celebration of British composer Benjamin Britten, L.A. Opera revisits the acclaimed Francesca Zambello production of his 1951 seafaring opera …
THE FRUSTRATED AND THE BORED Watching The Cake Shop Theater Company perform Martin Crimp's brisk new translation of Ferdinand Bruckner's sharp 1926 play Pains of Youth, about a group of medi…
FRANCE TRIMS ITS 1% WITH THE GUILLOTINE 2014 has been as good to 1859 as it was to the late 18th century. Christopher M. Walsh's adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel"a saga of unexpected her…
STILLED LIFE In 2007, Noel Coward and David Lean’s 1945 film Brief Encounter, a somewhat maudlin expansion of the 1936 Coward one-act Still Life, was turned into a stage spectacle by C…
REFLECTIONS ON L.A. DANCE PROJECT The uneven and uninspiring effort presented by L.A. Dance Project last night isn't bad news; it just means that this nascent company needs to hone its visio…
A SEXUAL CAGE FIGHT The punning title"Cock"is a heavy clue on what to expect. From the moment you enter, you know you won't confuse this 80-minute tour de theatre with anything else. Profile…
A STUMP Sitting through Erin Mallon's 90-minute play Branched, A Comedy with Consequences, I found myself envying the gentleman who, silently and with the upmost discretion, managed to sneak…
A VILE VILLON MAKES FOR VILLAINOUS VIEWING Art isn't pretty " and neither is Murray Mednick's sharp, cynical comedy about the life of the great artistic poet François Villon, who, in 1…
THE BLOOMING OF A BUDD IN L.A. Based on Herman Melville's classic American tale, adapted into a libretto by English novelist E.M. Forster and writer Eric Crozier, Billy Budd tells the …
RACIAL PROFILING AND YOU Smoothly staged by Jessica Thebus for the Goodman Theatre local premiere, the blame game reaches Olympic proportions in Tracey Scott Wilson's wicked two-act troublem…
LOVE WITHOUT THE TRIMMINGS My darling, dearest Noël: It only just occurred to me that I haven't written you since I saw your play Peace in our Time. Do forgive me, lamb chop. Let me cut t…
LES MS. Conceived, written and choreographed by Ruthe Ponturo, Til Divorce Do Us Part is a collection of musical numbers, each illustrating different aspects of divorce from the point of vie…
THERE'S NOT AN APP FOR THAT Enough already. First, I applaud The Dallas Opera for taking a chance on Tod Machover's new experimental opera Death and the Powers, as well as the diligent ca…
THIS ELIXIR IS A TONIC FOR WHAT AILS YOU Some artistic works are such a product of their time that it is difficult for later generations to understand them without spending a considerable am…
A BLESSING FROM BLESSING Playwright Lee Blessing has done a gutsy thing. He puts himself in the head and heart of the mother of a ruthless African dictator who murders and tortures his compa…
A HAPPY FEW, A HAPPY MANY Just about every Shakespeare production runs the risk of getting a packed house of high school students at least one performance in the run. This situation is a…