WHEN PLAYTIME IS OVER Somewhere between "Once Upon a Time" and "Happily Ever After" there is a very adult world of tests, losses, disappointments, and grief. Despite this, we assert our agen…
NASTY NESTING DOLLS In Steppenwolf's new show, it’s the specifics that startle. There's enough grit here to repave Chicago's countless February potholes. But, despite its well-rooted s…
PATOIS, DIALECTS AND DELIVERY LEAVE US IN THE WOODS Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem, currently making a West coast premiere at San Francisco Playhouse, presents a darkly comic tale from the frin…
RICH AND BEAUTIFUL I like a play that vacuums the audience in the wake of its rocket so that we tumble after, happy travelers grateful for the bruises. We bounce and roll along, too ecst…
THE MUSIC MAN BEHIND THE MUSIC MAN When Musical Theatre West announced their production of The Music Man, which opens tonight at the Carpenter Center in Long Beach, I actually got excited. I…
FUNK ME Director and choreographer Otis Sallid wants to illuminate how James Brown's funky music and original dance styling has influenced contemporary culture. He engaged PHILADANCO (Philad…
A ROSE WHO EVENTUALLY BLOOMS Gypsy is as much a celebration of the addictive insanity of show business as a chronicle of the checkered childhood of super-stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Stephen Son…
LASAGNA AND MOANERS AND KASHA AND TRIPE The comical but frothy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike arrives at the Taper this week, but instead of a delectable meal, Christopher Durang's play…
STATE OF THE STEPS Playing (in every sense of the word) through Feb. 23, Joffrey Ballet's three-part showcase of Contemporary Choreographers delivers some (happily) bloodless cutting-edge mi…
RIGHT BETWEEN THE EYES It was the shot heard round the countercultural world " the Big Bang of the Beats, as it were. At a party one night in Mexico City in 1951, writer William Burroughs dr…
MTG DEFIBRILLATES DOA MUSICAL Sheaths can be written about how deadly the musical Death Takes a Holiday is, and where the creators went wrong. What's more important is that director Calvin R…
DAISEY: I LOVE HIM, I LOVE HIM NOT I'm jealous of Mike Daisey. In American Utopias at Royce Hall, the infamous monologist fulminated and commentated about three interpolated subjects near an…
FIVE-ALARM ACTING SETS THE STAGE ABLAZE IN FIREMEN After sixteen years of a nomadic existence, Echo Theater Company has finally found a permanent home at the Atwater Village Theater. If thei…
¡VIVA, VIVER! Perhaps the vibrancy of the Afro-Brazilian dance culture lures you in with the strong beats of the drum. Maybe it's the sensuality and seductiveness of its movement. Whateve…
IT DOESN’T GET MORE GOLDEN THAN THIS Hot stuff on a cold night! Just released as a companion piece to Black Ensemble Theater's runaway hit It's All-Right to Have a Good Time: The Story…
LIGHT SHINES IN SCR'S PIAZZA On general principle, it'd be very easy to dislike The Light in The Piazza. Let's say you don't consider stories about rich people in crisis having any relevance…
BELOW THE FOLD Above the Fold, a new play making its debut at the Pasadena Playhouse, has two major flaws that result in an evening of uninspired theater: both a lack of credibility and comp…
IF I LOVED YOU At a time when many ballet companies are commissioning short dance pieces, it's refreshing that John Neumeier"since 1973, when he became Artistic Director and chief choreograp…
NO NEED TO HOP ON OVER TO THE FALCON There's an old European superstition: In order to ward off evil spirits and bad luck the first words you utter on the first day of every month must be "r…
PLAYING GOD AIN'T FOR AMATEURS Following his return from a decade in exile in Siberia as a dissenter against the Romanov order, Fyodor Dostoevsky intended his second novel, written as much t…
ANATOMY IS NOT DESTINY Bursting with more arguments than solutions; cerebral, metaphorical and personal (sometimes simultaneously); Sarah Treem's two-act, two-person drama is also two plays:…
THE DUKE WHO WAS A KING A blast from the "big band" past, Queenie Pie is the great late Duke Ellington's sole–if unfinished"opera, recently revived in Los Angeles. On February 15, Chic…
A SWELL WHODUNNIT CREATES ANOTHER MYSTERY: WHY THIS ACTRESS? Part Rear Window, part Gaslight, Night Watch is currently dialing up the suspense at Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills. Â Lucille Fle…
SHANGHAIED A musical featuring three performers and 5,000 years of Chinese history in just 90 minutes sure sounded promising, but the production of China: The Whole Enchilada currently servi…
FATS FOREVER "One never knows, do one?" That's the favorite catchphrase of Fats Waller (1904-1943), an irrepressible master of music. The 285-pound, cherubic-cheeked jokester genius is the p…