At the electric reading of William Goldman's screenplay for "All the President's Men" at Los Angeles City Hall on Saturday night, Watergate once again had the freshness of current events. Co…
The irreverent Chicago theater company the Hypocrites brings its adaptation of the Gilbert and Sullivan musical to Pasadena.
"Shakespeare in Love" at South Coast Rep captures the rom-com spirit of Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard's Oscar-winning screenplay, while Philip Whitchurch's "Shakespeare his wife and the dog" …
Welcome to the Shakespeare Emporium, your one-stop shopping choice for all your Shakespeare accessories. Tote bags and sweatshirts will advertise your love of the Bard. A Stratford-upon-Avon…
One of the last performances I saw in 2017 was one of the sliest: Billy Crudup in David Cale's "Harry Clarke" at New York's Vineyard Theatre. I caught this off-Broadway solo work at the end …
Playwright Bess Wohl, who trained as an actor at the Yale School of Drama, has written a play that asks actors to do more than speak the speech trippingly on the tongue, as Hamlet advised th…
A few years ago, Poor Dog Group, founded in 2008 by a group of young theater artists who met while studying at the California Institute of the Arts, brought in a licensed therapist to hold g…
The power of individual performers redeemed 2017, a theatrical year overrun with flotsam and jetsam but one that at least gave us Bette Midler and Bruce Springsteen in unforgettable form on …
Where do new musicals come from? For a while, the answer regularly seemed to be pop-music catalogs and movies guaranteed to put baby boomers in a nostalgic mood. Broadway became the great cu…
At the start of Duncan Macmillan's "People, Places & Things," which concludes its triumphant run at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn on Sunday, Emma, an actress with a serious substance abuse…
A fascinating experiment is underway on Broadway. A substandard comedy that received, let's just say, mixed reviews out of town has been recast with fashionably hip actors in a new productio…
Every season theater producers drop a wad of coins in the jukebox like gamblers pouring quarters into slot machines. Broadway jackpots might be rarer than Las Vegas windfalls, but the behemo…
Is there a play-doctor in the house? A concerned onlooker would have reason to make this plea during "Chasing Mem'ries: A Different Kind of Musical." Unfortunately, there's not much anyone c…
"King Charles III," British playwright Mike Bartlett's "future history play" that was nominated for a Tony Award last year, begins with the funeral procession for Britain's longest ruling mo…
If you can't beat 'em, parody 'em. Gerard Alessandrini, the man behind the popular "Forbidden Broadway" series, has made his theatrical career spoofing his musical theater betters. He's turn…
Following in the audaciously silly footsteps of "The Book of Mormon" and "Spamalot," "Something Rotten!" is a Broadway musical that sets out to pinion you with laughter. Punchlines and pratf…
The theater excited Albert Camus' communal instincts as a writer, but the stage wasn't the ideal medium for his brand of political existentialism. "Caligula" is perhaps his most fully realiz…
"Gem of the Ocean" may not rank at the top of August Wilson's plays, but anyone doubting the soul-shaking power of this drama should brave Orange County traffic to see this wrenching new rev…
As one theatergoer's bliss is another theatergoer's cornball, let's accentuate the positive before delving into the negative of a show that reveals just how thin the line is between hokey an…
After acclaim for HBO's "The Leftovers" and an Emmy nomination for FX's "Fargo," Carrie Coon talks about returning to the stage to star in Amy Herzog's "Mary Jane" off-Broadway at New York T…
Dick Gregory, the comedian and civil rights activist who died this year, played the role of the Shakespearean fool to white America, quipping subversive sentiments about race relations in a …
Bravo, Bruce. The star of Broadway's fall season delivers a piece of theater that few will forget - two hours of longing, loss, quiet melancholy and reflection, all from the man who was born…
"Our Town" has become such a chestnut that it's easy to forget just how innovative it was when the drama premiered in 1938. Thornton Wilder's style, so thoroughly absorbed by the 20th centur…
The word "audience" comes from the Latin word "audientia," meaning a hearing. People gather to listen, and an individual or group is given the opportunity to be heard. It is a basic exercise…
John Douglas Thompson, the British-born actor of Jamaican heritage who trained in America and is now a citizen here, has carved out a reputation as one of our leading classical actors. His O…