ONE NIGHT WITH PEARL Break out the Southern Comfort and feathered boa, One Night with Janis Joplin is a helluva concert experience presented at the Pasadena Playhouse. Writer-director-creato…
HOW TO SUCCEED CHAUVINISTIC INHUMANITY WITHOUT REALLY TRYING We live in a nation where people celebrate socialite Kim Kardashian, who bore a child with a man who's not her husband. Sexual in…
A MATCH MADE IN HOLLYWOOD Last year, the Pacific Opera Project (POP) put on a show about a serial killer who also happened to be a barber: Sweeney Todd. This year, they have staged a product…
NOT WORTH THE WEIGHT The title of Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale refers to three things. The first is Charlie, a homebound, 600-pound tutor who instructs online classes in expository writing. …
SUGAR RUSH An adorable piece of clever and very funny fluff, Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike takes spoonfuls of ingredients from Chekhov's plays and mixes them into …
A BREAKFAST THAT LEAVES YOU HUNGRY FOR MORE Richard Greenberg’s new theatrical adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany’s owes more of a debt to Truman Capote’s novella than to t…
CHARM GALORE WITH A SIDE OF CHARM THROWN IN FOR GOOD MEASURE A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder is a captivatingly charming affair. Set in Edwardian England, the west coast premiere is l…
A TRIUMPHANT TRAINWRECK If you've never applauded a trainwreck, be prepared to do so when you see Peter Quilter's End of the Rainbow. I am not talking about the gossip-driven, hardly revelat…
HIT THE WALL When Hit the Wall, Ike Holter’s new play about the 1969 Stonewall Riots, opened at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater's Garage Rep last year, it quickly passed into theat…
THE WILDE ACCORDING TO BURBANK By Los Angeles standards, Theatre Banshee’s The Importance of Being Earnest is pretty good. It’s a time-tested script; the actors know their li…
WHEN 'TOMORROW' ISN'T ANOTHER DAY Anyone who cares about acting or classical theater or Shakespeare (particularly Macbeth) must see Donald Freed's new play Tomorrow. It has moments of spot-o…
YOU HAVE TO MEASURE CAREFULLY At the core of this dark and fascinating tragicomedy is a situation seething with modern irony: Can you be both above the law and beneath contempt? Angelo, a se…
THE BEAUTY OF MAKESHIFT THEATER Even with all its flaws Bedlam's revival of George Bernard Shaw's masterpiece Saint Joan is an immersive and ultimately gratifying theatrical experience. Unde…
AN APPETIZER FOR THE REAL LIFE OF ORIANA FALLACI At the top of Berkeley Repertory Theater's Fallaci, Italian opera soars as the chiaroscuro image of Oriana Fallaci is illuminated by only her…
SMOKIN' Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller " you may not recognize who they are but you sure know what they wrote: “Love Potion #9,” “Bossa Nova Baby,” “Kansas City.…
TRAINSPOTTING IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK Whether L.A. theatergoers are ready or not, seat of your pants Productions has resurrected it's much ballyhooed 2002 mounting of Henry Gibson's Trainspott…
NOT JUST FOR DUNGEONS & DRAGONS FANS Early in She Kills Monsters, the play’s protagonist, Agnes (Katherine Banks), strikes up a conversation with Chuck (Richard Traub), a high scho…
MAY THE RAP BE WITH YOU Before Othello: The Remix it was only Shakespeare's comedies that received the Q brothers' trademark, rap-happy revision"Funk It Up About Nothin' and The Bomb-itty of…
THE NEXT STEP(S) It's an impressive lineup for this respected Chicago company's annual "Spring Series""not just the always impressive Hubbard Street Dance Chicago but, here and elsewhere, th…
A LESSON IN CHARACTERIZATION Carol Kane's magnetic performance turns Craig Lucas's dramatically thin comic thriller The Lying Lesson into compelling entertainment. Ms. Kane plays Bette Davis…
AN OPERATIC DEATH IN VENICE A storm blackens the skies, casting a shadow on the land. The citizens and soldiers of Venice sway with anticipation, waiting for their mighty general to triu…
ACTING ON THE POLITICAL STAGE “Another play about Chekhov?” I thought as I settled into my seat for Neva, written and directed by Guillermo Calderón. Contemporary theater …
FINDING YOUR TRIBE Theatre of Identity, aka Social Issues Theatre, is a fascinating phenomenon: this genre promotes a particular people’s cultural identity and invites members of that …
L. A. THEATER RISES FROM THE DEAD With an assemblage of the bravest actors in Los Angeles, Zombie Joe returns with an all-new Urban Death, the naturalistic horror show in the style of Le Th�…
FAKE BOOK COMES TO TRUE LIFE Published in Paris in 1894, The Songs of Bilitis is a book of poems and epitaphs describing the life and loves of an ancient lesbian heroine named Bilitis. With …