SOMETIMES LONGER WOULD BE BETTER Anxious to have a child with the best possible genes and distrustful of sperm from anonymous donors, Gretchen (Halley Feiffer) convinces her "gold-star" lesb…
THE KEY OF IMAGINATION Many an actor, writer, and director settle for professionalism. To get it up there and know your lines, to raise a question or resolve a story, to light the perfor…
MID-LIFE MYSTERIESÂ AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS A long-married couple says good-bye to the final guests who leave their house after a party. They are known for their parties; for their happy mar…
DOMINGO DAZZLES What do world-renowned singers do once they have reached the age of retirement? On the strength of their name, they fill cabarets and concert houses across the land with nost…
AN UNFOCUSED VIEW FROM THE BALCONY In Jean Genet's The Balcony, authority, sexual desire, and violence are so intricately intertwined that they're nearly indistinguishable. Outside Madame Ir…
AH, GOOD THEATER! Ah, Wilderness! is Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning O'Neill's only comedy, and he describes it as, "a wistful recollection…the kind of childhood I wished I had growing up…
NOT MUCH LIFE IN DEATH The miracle of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is that it contains so many themes relevant to today's world"the American Dream, the disconnect of father and son, a…
I COULDN’T BARE IT There's a kind of desperate seriousness about the "rock" musical Bare " more pop than rock " first produced in 2000, now back with updated music and a telegenic and …
BLUE MAN GROUP GETS BOWLED OVER International phenomenon Blue Man Group (BMG)Â made their Hollywood Bowl debut on Friday in a wildly uneven yet ultimately entertaining evening ranging from…
I SAY YOU WANT THIS REVOLUTION After the Revolution is a chewy new play about family dynamics and the difficulty of making moral judgments, especially after the fact. For audiences thirsting…
HEAVEN OR HELL? I surmise that opinions will be all over the map for San Francisco Opera’s production of Mefistofele, Arrigo Boito’s 1868 take on the Faust legend. To begin wi…
SOUND AND FURY INDEED The idea of site-specific theater"theatre which is performed in unconventional spaces compatible to the script"is nothing new, but it seems to be gaining ground. From N…
WAR IS CONCENTRIC SLICES OF HELL Just as America seems to be expanding rather than concluding our deal with the Devil in the Middle East, Sideshow Theatre Company's Chicago premiere–a …
A PRAIRIE THEATER COMPANION As many newer plays fail to grasp the art of storytelling, Word for Word Performing Arts Company offers compelling narratives via short stories which are performe…
LOONY TUNES IN EVERY WAY You could call this two-act, two-actor, two-hour romp Irma Vep meets Singing in the Rain. A charming trifle that's also a stunning tour-de-deuce, Porchlight Music…
TOO MUCH OF TOO LITTLE FOR TOO LONG An aged widow and an even more aged married man have a shared, passionate history with each other that ended after during World War II. Now, nearly sevent…
"I AM AN ARCHITECT OF MOTION" Born and raised in Paris, France, Jacques Heim received his MFA in Choreography from the California Institute for the Arts and founded Diavolo Dance Theater in …
THE TITLE SAYS IT ALL The most unfortunate thing about The Unfortunates is that a lot of talent (five writers, actually), having spent three years developing this new hybrid-musical, lacked …
A DRAGON IN BROOKLYN A true auteur and renaissance man of the theater, Robert Lepage returns with his troupe Ex Machina to The Brooklyn Academy of Music for its 2013 Next Wave Festival, this…
TO THINE OWN SELF BE SHREW What do you get when you cross Carl Perkins, a biker, and Chris Isaak? In David Ivers' rendition of The Taming of the Shrew, that rockabilly man with a sympathetic…
WHERE BLARNEY GOES TO DIE Who'd have guessed that a 90-minute Irish play would be set in a bar where everyone gets sozzled and crocked much sooner that an hour and a half could ever allow? B…
NOT PLAIN BUT TOO LIQUID In her tale of two slaves who seek passage back to Africa in 1791 Rhode Island, Naomi Wallace has constructed a compelling narrative based on true events and people.…
GOOD PEOPLE GETS BAY AREA PREMIERE Having seen productions of David Lindsay-Abaire's Good People at both the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles and Steppenwolf in Chicago, I can attest that thi…
A LOVERLY LITTLE LADY The 1956 musical My Fair Lady, based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, was so transplendent in production values that the myriad subsequent revivals all strive for th…
THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER…OR IS IT? Smart, funny and thought-provoking, Rapture, Blister Burn has arrived at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood with the original New York cast in tow. Writ…