BEST TO LOOK AT THE QUILT AS A WHOLE, NOT THE INDIVIDUAL ELEMENTS Intimate Apparel is a delicate but persuasive play about Esther (Vanessa Williams), a gifted black seamstress in 1905 who be…
SIBLINGS ON A CRASH COURSE IN ONE NOVEMBER YANKEE It's a no brainer to assume that with two marquee names (Loretta Swit and Harry Hamlin) and the backing of the multi-award winning NoHo Arts…
SLIPPED DISC NEEDS A STRONGER SPINE The mission of Green Card Theatre is to expose Los Angeles audiences to plays and playwrights from around the world. Their inaugural production entitled S…
GREAT F. SCOTT! REDCAT'S GOT GATZ A phenomenon is arriving at the Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theatre (REDCAT) this week in Los Angeles. I promise that once its 9-performance run is over on…
NUNBEARABLE If there's one thing I hate, it's to see a classic movie adapted for the stage for no apparent reason. Instead of transferring the heart and sassiness that made the movie Sister …
CHRISTMAS ISLAND With the superfluity of Christmas-themed theater descending upon America like a Biblical plague, there is one play which is opening this week that has intrigued and even exc…
CALL ME SLACKJAWED It's amazing what critics and audiences alike are willing to forgive when they're in the presence of a true star. Regardless of some bouncy and hummable Irving Berlin tune…
LIKE ADDING MILKÂ TO GREEN TEA, A GREAT PLAY IS SPOILED BY ADDING MUSIC. Post World War II Era in America isn't a red, white, and blue haven with a backyard and a Buick waiting for everyon…
PLEASE SIR, WE WANT SOME MORE SeaGlass Theatre only does one show a year, which is remarkable, since they’re such a spirited bunch. For instance, it’s a shame to miss Paul St…
BEAUMARCHAIS MARCHES ON The Pearl Theater's choice for its first production at its new home on 42nd Street is a new adaptation of Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais' 1778 play The Marriage of Figa…
SILK-SCREEN DEEP Even though icon Andy Warhol passed away twenty-five years ago, his legacy remains elastically strong in all its plastic nature; a man very "American" for being of the cultu…
DOWN HOME TO HEAL UP It's hard to make healing feel dramatic. But that's the challenge to which Julie Marie Myatt mostly rises in this engaging Midwest premiere. In 90 minutes she depicts in…
DARK AND DELIGHTFUL A liberatingly surreal and exquisitely poetic masterwork, Fernando Arrabal's Garden of Delights is a sinister fairytale that concerns itself with the inner struggles of L…
HOGWARTS AND ALL The Harry Potter parody called Potted Potter is the joint creation of a couple of Englishmen named Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner (Dan and Jeff on the stage). The duo …
AN OCCASION WHERE YOUTH IS NOT WASTED ON THE YOUNG The Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras (CYSO) consists of more than 100 musicians. They've received an international reputation as a premier…
ANYTHING BUT DEAD James Joyce is not usually considered a source of Christmas cheer, but the great Irish author did write one Christmas piece of sorts, a short story called The Dead that app…
A FEW PROTESTS… Todd Salovey's revue of mostly American songs of protest is buoyed by a fiercely energetic, multi-talented quartet of singers and musicians: Dave Crossland, Jim Mooney,…
A BIG YARN AND A BIGGER YAWN In theory and concept, Francine Volpe’s The Good Mother has all the fixins’ for a juicy, if not compelling drama: diverse, colorful characters, goofy…
WHAT THEATRE 40 NEEDS IS A GUIDE TO AN EXCRUCIATINGLY CORRECT PRODUCTION Miss Manners, the alter-ego of writer Judith Martin, is my heroine. Her "Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior" is…
WORTH THE FARE Hellcab opened in Chicago in 1992 for a 12-performance run and the immediate audience buzz had the show playing for the rest of the decade. Now it is is back at the Profiles T…
BAD GIRL DONE GOOD Here's a play with a fascinating history for you. Early-mid 20th century Chicago playwright Phillip Yordan originally intended this play to be set in the Polish Americ…
RETRO GERSHWIN STILL BESTS TODAY'S STANDARDS Like the unsurpassable Crazy for You, My One and Only is more than more than a dozen recycled Gershwin tunes. In the spirit of those daffy Jazz A…
LEAN HAMLET ON THE BROAD STAGE Shakespeare's Globe's touring production of Shakespeare' Hamlet is currently on the boards at the elegant Broad Stage in Santa Monica, CA. Written in a tim…
AN OPENING NIGHT SURPRISE It's one of those instances that may just be talked about in the San Francisco opera circle for years to come. In Act One of Puccini's Tosca (1900) at San Francisco…
HOT AUGUST STRINDBERG NIGHT St. Ann's Warehouse inaugurates its new space with an often gripping production of Mies Julie, adapted to post-apartheid South Africa. A dense fog sweeps over the…