EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED For over half a century, Rachel Rosenthal has been surprising audiences with her unique take on the theatrical experience. A master of performance art, she was recently…
THAT AIN’T THE WAY TO HAVE FUN, SON One of the most exciting events to come out of Los Angeles theater in the last few years was Zombie Joe's Urban Death, a naturalistic horror show…
BROTHERS' BOND Josh Hecht does an outstanding job directing Jake Jeppson's effective new play The Clearing, about two brothers who suffer from a dark secret they've shared for the past 17 ye…
GO DRUNK OR DON'T GO AT ALL The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, David Greig's ghostly, song-filled tale of a mousy academic in search of artful Scottish balladry, is running at the Broad …
A TRIP Your average 4 to 12 year old carries enough infectious optimism and joie de vivre to put even a theater critic in a good mood. But childless people who like children notice thing…
STRINGS ATTACHED A worldwide pandemic has already claimed the lives of hundreds of millions of humans and the apocalypse is near. An intriguing plot line to be sure but hardly one you wo…
A BARD OUT OF WATER Here's what we know for sure is the background for MadKap Production's Midwest premiere: In 1933 Nobel laureate and, in his own estimation, the greatest writer in the wor…
LEAR, BECAUSE IT'S THERE A friend commented to me once that as hard to take as Orthodox Jews might seem to us secular ones, it is largely thanks to them and their stubborn adherence to the o…
A WIND OF DISAPPOINTMENT Having seen some months ago Paul Takacs's outstanding staging of a two-character play called Tender Napalm, I was very much looking forward to watching his imagining…
YOU SEE A poet out of time, an ancient soul yet our contemporary, has come to sing to us of quarrel. He comes shabby from the road, dusty and reluctant. It is a killing effort for th…
A TURN FOR THE BETTER A Henry James novella first published in 1898, The Turn of the Screw tells one of the most ambiguous ghost stories ever written. It involves a brother and sister (Flora…
A SHOW THAT'S BETTER THAN PROZAC Been to the drugstore lately? Sick of taking semi-useless pills three times a day every day? You've got your Losartan and your Lisinopril. You've…
ANOTHER BRIDGE TOO FAR Solstice offers a disturbing look at a chaotic class-ridden conflict, and British playwright Zinnie Harris delivers some ugly goods: She imagines"and A Red Orchid Thea…
FEAR THE HYPHENATE If a person is lucky enough, they will discover their passion in life and be able to fine tune and truly excel at that skill. Others flounder about, trying a bit if this a…
AND HE DOES In the 1980s, Barry McGovern and Gerry Dukes collaborated to cut three novels by Samuel Beckett (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) into a few monologues, divided by lighting cu…
DISREGARD BEAUREGARD Much in the spirit of Ben Jonson's salacious Volpone and Giovanni Boccaccio's same-titled lascivious tale of irrepressible lust, Niccolò Machiavelli…
DIARY OF A PRETENTIOUS NITWIT The Woman in the one-woman show The Surrender, adapted for the stage by Isabelle Stoffel and Toni Bentley from Ms. Bentley's book The Surrender, An Erotic Memoi…
A SWING AND A MISS Theater, like baseball, is a team sport. To reign triumphant and put a tick in the "W" box, all the players must be at the top of their game. When everyone hits a home run…
SIC SEMPER BORE-ANNUS This solo musical effort by musician performer Hersey Felder has all the trappings of a work that is rich with worthy subject matter and culture. Â Peppered with song…
A FOGGY PLAY IN LONDON TOWN Should a play seemingly designed and targeted specifically for Judy Garland devotees have the right to be held to a different standard than a play for the public …
MORE JAZZ, PLEASE Interestingly, the work that opened Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal's program last night at the Bram Goldsmith Theater in the brand new Wallis Annenberg Center for the Perfor…
UNFINISHED BUSINESS Son of Semele’s 4th annual Company Creation Festival presents new works by nascent Los Angeles troupes. The festival’s first offering, Bunk, is what you&#…
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID The two most important aspects of the right kind of cabaret act are the singer and the songs. But when you go to see Laura Benanti's new cabaret In Constant Search of …
PARANORMAL PASSION Love can conquer death. That potent wishful thinking was why audiences gobbled up the popular 1990 film Ghost. It also explains why it was turned into a musical, which has…
TAKE A CHANCE Merrily We Roll Along is a notoriously difficult musical to get right. Even with Sondheim's magnificent score, the nature of the show"its lopsided cynicism and moving-back-in-t…