THE PETITE POLITIQUE Few playwrights have it as good as Beau Willimon at the moment; he's a critical and commercial success on all three major platforms"stage, screen, and stream. His play F…
PORTER IS THE ONE WHO CARRIES THIS SHOW H.M.S. Titanic, they say, was unsinkable, but the S.S. American " the setting for Cole Porter's Anything Goes, his biggest hit before Kiss Me Ka…
ALMOST A FULL MOON The theater has been sorely affected by electronic communication. Since the advent of the internet, at least, the cumbersome amount of news bits and twittering has infecte…
WHEN UNIONS RULED THE EARTH Outrageously overdue for revival (the last one was at Marriott Theatre in 2004), this irresistible 1954 Broadway classic harks back to a time when producers could…
CHICAGO CAD MAKES BAD LOOK GOOD Sassy and brassy Pal Joey is a wondrous rouser that spins the tale of a roué gone rotten in Depression-era Chicago. Porchlight Music Theatre gained the ex…
SEVEN CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF A PLAY Undernourished as this commissioned play may feel, it is, in fact, the last of the "Elliot Trilogy" by Quiara AlegrÃa Hudes (bookwriter for In the Hei…
EYEING AMNERISÂ IN AIDA In this well-loved 150-year-old Guiseppe Verdi classic of Grand Opera, it may be heretical to question the relationship of the principle characters and their so-cal…
ALICE FALLS THROUGH AT LOOKINGGLASS "I miss myself." That's the plaintive cry from the titular character of Still Alice, adapted from Lisa Genova's book, and presented by Lookinggla…
PASSION OVER PERFECTION wild Up is an electric ensemble of twenty-two twenty-somethings who vigorously perform a maelstrom of eclectic musical works ranging from J.S. Bach to They Might Be G…
A FISH OUT OF WATER Ten years ago, the Tim Burton film Big Fish with Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney, based on Daniel Wallace's 1998 "novel of mythic proportions," charmed audiences with its…
THEATER OF CRUELTY (TO THE AUDIENCE, THAT IS) A blast from the past, this 1963 curiosity from the once-living Living Theatre is a tribute to author Kenneth H. Brown's total recall and recrea…
OH BROTHERS! Seven Brides for Seven Brothers: Talk about a musical with a strange history! It begins with the Ancient Roman legend "The Rape of the Sabine Women" " attributed to Plutarch " f…
HISTORY AS MYTHOLOGY AS ROCK AND ROLL Dan Dietz’s American Misfit is the kind of smart, provocative entertainment that stimulates the best part of an audience: its appreciation. As…
COMPRESSED CRUELTY IN A SMALL STRINDBERG SHOCKER August Strindberg, the "father of modern psychological drama," told his publisher that Creditors, a drama that he prized as much as he did hi…
NO SLIPS HERE After previous productions in Chicago and New York, Daniel Talbott's first play Slipping touches down in Los Angeles and serves as both the inaugural production of Rattlestick …
A MARRIAGE MADE IN HEAVEN Less than a month after its pop-up production of The Barber of Seville, Pacific Opera Project (POP) continues Beaumarchais' trilogy with Mozart's The Marriage of Fi…
A DARK, RIVETING AND WORTHY TRIP TO THE FOREST An undeservedly small house took in Friday's performance of Caryl Churchill's brilliant, unsettling Mad Forest. Commissioned in 1990 in res…
THE MUSICAL WITH LEGS Musical Theatre West's (MTW) exuberant production of A Chorus Line proves that the musical is as fresh as the day it appeared almost forty years ago, when the standard …
THE GEFFEN PRODUCTION OF AMERICAN BUFFALO PREFERS TO GRAZE RATHER THAN STAMPEDE The script of David Mamet's assaulting and brutal American Buffalo still packs bite after thirty-eight years. …
YOU GOTTA HAVE FAITH The adventurous playwriting of Tarell Alvin McCraney, who wrote the successful "Brother/Sister Plays" (In the Red and Brown Water, The Brothers Size, and Marcus),�…
RESTORED RESTORATION Northern Irish playwright George Farqhuar died at the tender age of 30, in 1707. However, he finished writing one last play before his passing, The Beaux' Stratagem, a r…
WE'RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER ROCK Since the first ship landed, since the first boot heel dug into the earth, since the first wagon ventured west, the American frontier has stirred the word's im…
SO MANY ATROCITIES IN ONE EVENING When stories appear which elucidate the carnage during WWII, many look to heaven and ask, "Why?" But the script and execution of Our Class, about a true-lif…
SMOKEFALL GETS IN YOUR EYES The most amazing thing about Noah Haidle's world premiere of Smokefall at South Coast Rep is Marsha Ginsberg's scenic design of a simple yet beautifully crafted t…
FORGING COMEDY FROM CHAOS Early in The Second City’s 101st revue Let Them Eat Chaos, the excellent Second City veteran Katie Rich sits on the stage alone and alternately chats with the…