Notions of family figure into the shows in this week's 99-Seat Beat up-close look at Los Angeles' smaller theaters. Families of the traditional, nuclear kind find themselves plunged into qua…
Zoe Lister-Jones wrote, directed and starred in the 2017 movie "Band Aid." Now, she's adapting the indie film for the stage. The new musical dramedy will debut as a reading May 20 in New Yor…
After a disastrous tea last year, critic and actress meet again, this time to spar about "Lear." Jackson delves into disagreements with director Sam Gold, a powerful female cast including Ru…
"Gulp!" That was my initial reaction when a publicist asked if I'd like to interview Glenda Jackson to discuss her performance in the new Broadway production of "King Lear." Our previous enc…
Bertie Carvel is a chilling media mogul and Johnny Lee Miller is the editor who may lose his soul in James Graham's "Ink," a London import about Murdoch's transformation of British journalis…
The British have a high regard for the state-of-the-nation play, that genre in which dramatists as different as David Hare, Alan Bennett, Richard Bean and Lucy Prebble take the temperature o…
Reviving a beloved musical can be a daunting proposition. Do you keep faith with tradition, or do you try something new? If you opt for a little of both, how much of each? It's hard to find …
It was already an incredibly busy time for Israeli actor, director and artist Yehezkel Lazarov. He was performing in one show in Tel Aviv, about to direct another and scheduled to curate an …
The hit 1980s film has been revamped as a hilarious stage production for the #MeToo era, smartly navigating new gender politics and starring Santino Fontana in a Tony-worthy turn playing the…
Let's face it: There are more ways these days to get a musical version of "Tootsie" wrong than right. The world has changed since Dustin Hoffman donned a red tousled wig, talked in a smoky S…
You could call it Cirque du Soleil: The Theater Geek Edition. Known as a theatrical circus for its no-animals, acrobatics-forward, story-framing format, the French-Canadian company has been …
Manga, anime and other sensations of 1990s pop culture made cosplay a fashionable pastime, but before that happened there was Tsuruya Kokei. An artist working at Tokyo's renowned Kabukiza Th…
Arthur Miller's play gets a timely revival by the Roundabout Theatre Company, director Jack O'Brien and costar Benjamin Walker, whose anguish and sorrow help to propel a domestic drama into …
The carpentry of an Arthur Miller play, all that sawing, hammering and sanding of wood, can sometimes distract from the impressiveness of the house that has been theatrically constructed. "A…
When Phylicia Rashad returns to Broadway, she will do so as a director. The Tony-winning actress is set to direct the Broadway premiere of "Blue," producers announced Monday. The new staging…
The Broad Stage in Santa Monica will announce on Monday that it has hired a new artistic and executive director, Rob Bailis, who comes from Cal Performances at UC Berkeley. Bailis, who succe…
What begins as a comic road trip of ancestral rediscovery takes a hairpin turn into tragic history as "Everything Is Illuminated" makes its Southern Californian stage debut courtesy of Santa…
No contemporary play better captures America's cultural divides than Eleanor Burgess' "The Niceties," in which a standout black student and a distinguished white professor clash over race an…
College campuses have become the crucible of the new and expanded culture wars embroiling America, and no contemporary play does a better job of capturing the tenor of this fierce battle tha…
In the first scene of the play "Steel Magnolias," Robert Harling's 1987 love letter to small-town Southern women, two Louisiana friends share favorites from their recipe boxes. Cuppa Cuppa C…
Squeaks of anticipation greet the opening strains of familiar songs at a local revival of the stage musical "Singin' in the Rain," adapted from the 1952 MGM movie that keeps Gene Kelly, Debb…
How would have Yuval Sharon's bewildering new production of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" gone over in Los Angeles? That was the first thing that crossed my mind as I walked out of the opera ho…
Questions of gender and identity drive headlines daily, so it's only natural to find the topic taking center stage in our theaters. With emotional tones ranging from light to dark, this week…
The first half of the musical "Falsettos" is set in 1979, the second in 1981 " years when Marvin, who leaves his wife and son for a man, was on the wrong side of sodomy laws in a number of s…
"Night of 100 Solos: A Centennial Event" was a celebration of Merce Cunningham on what would have been the 100th birthday of one the most pioneering and influential choreographers in contemp…