NINE IS A TEN AT THE KEN CEN In Nine, the musical adaptation of Federico Fellini's 1963 film 8½ now playing at the Kennedy Center, Guido Contini, a renowned Italian film director of…
A MEETING THAT'S TOUGH TO INTERPRET Four months before the November 2016 presidential elections, a crucial meeting took place at Trump Tower between Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr.; T…
ALICE BY HEART: FULL-HEARTED PRODUCTION; HALF-HEARTED SCRIPT Alice by Heart follows a young girl, Alice (Caitlyn Cerza), during the London Blitz of World War II as she takes refuge in her be…
YOU CAN GO HOLMES AGAIN! The world obviously cannot get enough of Sherlock Holmes. Since the first story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle appeared in 1887, the immortal fictional private detective …
SUPPLIANT AND DEMAND Looking for a thoroughly pleasant evening on the banks of the Mystic River? Head for Chelsea's PORT Park and a transfixing performance of The Suppliant Women, by the Gre…
CHICKEN STORIES IS A FOWL BALL! There are more than 8 billion people on the earth. But did you know that there are more chickens on the planet than human beings? And you know that we're not …
STRIKE A POSE! Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street. Fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening. " Coco Chanel Ret…
CLUELESS NO MORE As a kid, I never played the Hasbro board game Clue, nor did I ever see the Paramount Pictures movie based on that board game. But at opening night on July 31, I was absolut…
HAPPILY EVER EVER IN THE LAND OF NEVER NEVER There have been so many versions of Peter Pan over the years that current viewers might have been exposed to the character in numerous ways. Gran…
THE COMPANY WE KEEP To wed or not to wed " that is the question that Stephen Sondheim poses in his 1970 musical Company, for which he is the composer and lyricist (with a book by George Furt…
ALL HAIL THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES! The pre-Broadway production of The Queen of Versailles, studded with Broadway royalty, understandably had Boston abuzz at the opening last night. Despite th…
A RIVETING TALE OF ART AND IDEOLOGY AT ITS FINEST In Tom Jacobson's Crevasse, playing at the Victory Center Theatre, the curtain rises on a fractured world where art, love, and propaganda in…
PILOBOLUS IS re:INVIGORATING In 1971, at Dartmouth College, three non-dance students were asked by their composition teacher to create a dance piece. The students were Jonathan Wolken, Steve…
For 26 years, pianist/actor/playwright/producer Hershey Felder has conjured the spirits of George Gershwin, Frederic Chopin, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Leonard Bernstein, Piotr Ilyic…
LONG MAY THIS PRODUCTION REIGN Since its first production opened in Balboa Park in 1935, the Old Globe Theatre has built a national reputation for ambitious and stimulating productions, but …
The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each w…
Humor leads to the release of endorphins in the brain, which help to control pain. Â " RA Haig The Anatomy of Humor A play based on a grief group therapy session and life after an importan…
BORED OF THE RINGS In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo Baggins famously states to his nephew and adoptive heir, "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You st…
DON'T BOTHER FOR DINNER The North Coast Repertory Theater is offering two hours of exceedingly lightweight summer theater in the French farce Don't Dress for Dinner. And being a typical Fren…
WHAT'S ALL THE HOO-HA? Last Saturday, Berkeley's Shotgun Players opened a play by Jen Silverman which is so provocative that some publications won't publish its full title: Collective Rage: …
IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A GREAT JOB, HEAD TO THE HAYES THEATRE Two plays on therapy sessions presented at the same time a few blocks apart certainly show a phycological trend among young New Y…
A GREAT BIG BROADWAY SHOW Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends, starring Bernadette Peters & Lea Salonga, and directed by Sir Matthew Bourne " side by side with Julia McKenzie " with …
If you are aspiring to become a music star one day, you need to master the audition process. You might have the talent needed to make the cut, but if you can't impress during an audition, yo…
ESPIONAGE COMES TO GROUP THERAPY There's a pretty good reason why the world premiere of Greg Ostrin's The Spy Who Went Into Rehab, onstage at Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice, has been ext…
A SOLID 10 FOR 13 San Diego Musical Theatre's Pre-Professional production of 13: The Musical, with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown (Parade, Last Five Years), left me positively giddy …