A gala's a gala. Who can ask for anything more? Well, critics do all the time, and so, my emails show, do at least some concertgoers who complain of same old, same old with the annua…
California may be in a drought, but inside Walt Disney Concert Hall it's cloudy with a chance of rain. Nebulous slate-colored thunderheads loom above the escalators that transport visitors f…
Two years ago, Casa 0101 theater in Boyle Heights held an open call for short plays about, inspired by and tangentially touching on the life, times or melancholy of singer Morrissey…
This week: A song-filled salute to the films of Martin Scorsese, a musical prequel to Shakespeare's "Hamlet," and an updated take on a saucy 1970s-era satire by German filmmaker Rainer…
Los Angeles Times theater critic Charles McNulty has written that we're enjoying  "one of the most exciting periods in American playwriting in at least a generation," one in which "a cadr…
Edward Albee defied the downward trajectory of an aging genius. Lauded in his youth and then critically reviled in middle age, Albee disarmed detractors in his later years with "Three Tall W…
Twelve years have passed since the premiere of ABC's hit series "Lost," but die-hard fans are still as crazy about it as ever. So is Michael Giacchino, the man who composed the series' music…
David Mamet once described two of New York's leading drama critics as the syphilis and gonorrhea of the American theater. Edward Albee, whose death at age 88 on Friday marked the end of his …
The Getty Villa, that reproduction Roman estate in the Pacific Palisades where the J. Paul Getty Museum keeps an antiquities collection, has presented a Greek or Roman play in its outdoor am…
When playwright Robert O'Hara writes comedy, outrageousness is a given. His play "Bootycandy," a series of connected skits about growing up black and gay that was produced last year by Celeb…
In Ivo van Hove's celebrated production of Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge," the direction is the star. The Belgian auteur, who leads Holland's preeminent theater company, Toneelgroe…
This week: A sendup of a well-known cable-TV personality, a Mel Brooks musical, and a taboo-breaking British drama. (Give) Back to School Show! The Mad Jackrats improv troupe performs in …
History is more complicated than the simple version we're told in school or around the dinner table, says South Coast Repertory's artistic director, Marc Masterson. He is talking about L…
Try to remember a greener "Fantasticks," when props were leaner and sets were matchsticks ... Ah, well, memory of the original lyrics fades, and it may be hard at first to recognize the no-f…
Calls for a national conversation on race are routinely made in the wake of crises, but a better idea would be a requirement for all citizens to familiarize themselves with the work of playw…
There should be a special award for when one actor wins the Tony, but then another actor still finds a way to kill the role " to act the heck out of it and to make it new. I'd nominate Hugo …
Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 254-184 BC) has been described by classicist and novelist Erich Segal as "the least admired and most imitated" of the ancient Greek and Roman dramatists. His plays,…
The new theater season is a loaded lineup, with offerings from Deaf West, Ivo van Hove and Anna Deavere Smith. Here are 13 picks: Sept. 10-May 21 A Noise Within's 25th anniversary A quart…
For those who like a little song with their dance and vice versa, here's a rundown of new and classic musicals headed to Southern California stages in the coming months " including the mu…
This week: Musicals for every taste, including a Latino-themed celebration of Morrissey, the singer formerly known as the frontman for the British rock band the Smiths. Assassins Stephen …
A man flees his home on a ship, hoping to escape the turbulent life of his youth. All around him, a culture of slavery stains the past and future. The man sets out for a barely charted new l…
Frida Kahlo and John Coltrane are an unlikely pair, but at the Ford amphitheater in Hollywood, they proved an exhilarating match. The Los Angeles-based Latin dance theater troupe Contra-Tiem…
 Hal Linden, 85, acknowledges he's not the most disciplined human being " and that turned out to be a good thing for his career. "If I had discipline, I would have been a professional mus…
The theater world lost two giants this summer, Zelda Fichandler, co-founder of Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage and a heroic pioneer of the regional theater movement, and James Houghton, found…
In his book "Conducting Business,"Â Leonard Slatkin, former principal conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, recalls a time when bowl audiences cheered after the …