UNRESOLVED USE OF STORY James Still's 80-minute play, Illegal Use of Hands, set in an old rural-American home, opens in the middle of a late-October night; an old man is reading in an armcha…
ONE NERDY, COMPULSIVE, AND SINGULAR SENSATION The Porchlight Theatre opens its 18th season at cozy Theatre Wit with a musical about musicals: the uncanny A Class Act, which pays tribute to E…
WITH A LITTLE LOVE, THIS COULD BE GREAT The perfect show is like the happy marriage: you can go decades without seeing one. If the script is good, the lead actor is usually somebody̵…
TRAPPED IN VIRTUAL LIFE Tune into Findlay//Sandsmark's fractured bones / let's get lost for an immersive meditation on the mediatization of contemporary culture. This Norwegian performance a…
MORE THAN JUST VARIATIONS ON A THEME 33 Variations starts out with a character asking the question, "Why did the great German composer Ludwig van Beethoven write 33 variations on a trivial l…
MAGIC TRICKS OR TRAGIC MIX? Everyone once in a while a show comes along that defies classification. Elephant Room, making its West Coast Premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre is one such show…
FISHING FOR LAUGHS If you are now or were at some point a wannabe entertainment professional, chances are you’re no stranger to slinging hash in a greasy spoon to make ends meet. P…
THE CAST IS GREAT, BUT THE BOOK AND THE STAGING ARE NOT SO DREAMY Dreamgirls is based on the rise of the Supremes, America's premiere girl singing group of the 1960's. The musical opened on …
THE ACTORS SHINE IN AÂ CLOUDY PLAY Playwright Christy Hall comments about her play To Quiet the Quiet, "I am most interested in the complexities of the human condition," and in her work sh…
EXPLOSIVE AND EXQUISITE "I'd rather be unhappy in her world than happy in another," says the Man about the Woman, in Philip Ridley's outstanding new play Tender Napalm, about a couple's love…
IF THERE’S NO WATER, WHY IS THIS SCRIPT DROWNING IN PRETENTION? A group of bad artists resent their (dare I say) "frenemy" because she is a more successful artist than they are, and be…
A NATIONAL LAMPOON While the 2012 presidential election has provided entertainment enough, from Donald Trump’s political posturing to the Sarah Palin bus tour, there’s always roo…
HIP POE HYPOCRITES Regretfully, I must admit I'm not familiar with the theatre company The Hypocrites, but have heard that they often use the basement of the Chopin Theatre for their perform…
A DINNER IN REAL TIME Richard Nelson's Sweet and Sad at the Profiles Main Stage has six characters gather around a dining table for 95 minutes of uninterrupted talk on a Sunday afternoon din…
IT'S THE PERFECT YEAR FOR THIS POWERFUL STORY, BUT FOR THIS PRODUCTION..? It must be an election year, as artistic directors all around the nation are presenting Adrian Hall’s meaty 19…
A LITTLE BLUE More than a few friends recently mentioned that there are many "great" things on the boob tube. Since I don't watch TV, it came as a surprise because I assumed it was mostly pa…
A MOUTHFUL OF SAND Kiff Scholl’s production of Raymond King Shurtz’s new play, Under the Desert, is a show that’s impossible to discuss without equivocation. It’s…
A HEARTBREAKING, FUNNY, AND COMPASSIONATE TALE FROM A PLAYWRIGHT WHO IS SORELY MISSED The audience never sees Marvin, the title character in Marvin's Room. He's an old man ravaged by cancer …
SEE HOW THIS WARTIME FARCE HOLDS UP The marquee outside of Lamb’s Players declares See How They Run to be “one of the funniest shows ever.”  While never achieving a …
CORPORATE FOUR-PLAY As the audience files into the Falcon Theater for their performance of The GrÓ§nholm Method, the sleek, stark and sterile meeting room of  Fortune 500 company Burnha…
SOUR SATURDAY A troubled production is a sad spectacle, especially at a venerable theater that does some fine work. PRT’s new staging of the John Steinbeck novel Sweet Thursday tri…
SUBLIME CITY Son of Semele has consistently produced spectacular productions with scant resources in their awkward garage-like space nestled between lower Silver Lake and Historic Filipino T…
THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED, BUT THE AUDIENCE WASN’T SO LUCKY Douglas Carter Beane’s 2007 Tony-nominated play The Little Dog Laughed is a comedy. Apparently director Jon Cortez did no…
WHAT WILL YOU SEE IN RED? John Logan's 2010 Tony-winning Red is a work of art, and the Mark Taper Forum is presenting the 2009 Donmar Warehouse Production, starring the illustrious Alfred Mo…
THE PLAY’S THE THING IN BLAME IT ON BECKETT The Oxford Dictionary defines a dramaturge as “a literary editor on the staff of a theatre who liaises with authors and edits texts…