COME TO THIS CABARET Aside from the fact that it will sell out quickly, there are a number of reasons to rush out and get tickets for Celebration Theatre’s revival of Cabaret. First…
WHILE HARDLY REVELATIONAL, A REVVED-UP REVIVAL BECOMES RELATABLE It’s a miracle. After seeing the original 2005 musical adaption, it seemed that nothing could fix this show. But the…
CELEBRATING BROADWAY ROYALTY When I tell you that the Original Broadway Cast Recording of the revue covering Harold Prince’s oeuvre mostly works, it’s an enormous compliment. For…
NO SHY VIOLET Based on The Ugliest Pilgrim, a short story by Doris Betts, Violet — with book and lyrics by Brian Crawley and music by Jeanine Tesori — takes place in 1964 and fol…
FILLING THE VOID IN L.A. THEATER Neither my friend nor I were looking forward to this play — I mean, good grief, when I heard that it was about a couple of “fools” going on…
BLENDING BANANAS AND BORSCHT Mark Harelik's 1985 play The Immigrant is based on the story of his grandparents, Haskell and Leah Gorehlik, immigrants from Russia who settled in the tiny centr…
SPLITSVILLE Five years after its world premiere, L.A. is just now getting Amy Herzog’s disturbing domestic thriller. Both praised and not, the controversy with this one-act has been…
AN UPDATED BABY IS STILL CAPTIVATING THEATER For all its melodrama, Jane Anderson's The Baby Dance has always been one of my favorite plays since I first saw it at Pasadena Playhouse in 1990…
A HONEYMOON IN GLENDALE More fun than walking away a few bucks ahead from a black jack table, this pell-mell, silly-sweet, old-fashioned musical comedy (ya know, gangsters, lovers, Elvis imp…
EAGER FOR EGAN It was sheer luck that I've been able to see Broadway Baby Susan Egan in over 10 shows since the mid-1980s. From intimate stages (Babes at the Matrix; Hello, Again at the Blan…
WEST SIDE GLORY It's a relief that Chita Rivera, one of the last great holdovers from the Golden Age of Broadway is still performing today, and you'll get only one-night — Thursday May…
A BLUES REVUE A female-centric revue from 1980, Sheldon Epp’s Blues in the Night celebrates the melancholic but often very humorous songs of black American folk origin. The blues as we…
JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR RISES AGAIN, BUT ONLY PARTIALLY TO THE HEAVENS Not nearly as powerful and raw as it could have been, NBC's live telecast "event" of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's …
NO MUSICAL IS AN ISLAND Whenever it's revived, it's hard to imagine a more necessary musical than this 1949 Pulitzer Prize winner. 72 years after the Japanese surrender, it remains a healing…
O, BEAUTYFUL AMERYKA After a successful run in 2016, Ameryka has arrived for a short run at the Kirk Douglas Theatre as part of CTG’s Block Party. It’s a testament to writer/dire…
It’s 1979 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where people are disappearing right off the street. The so-called “Dirty War” waged by the military Junta against its own people is in…
JUBILATION! It promises to be one of the most enchanting nights of theater in a long time. On Saturday April 28 at 8:00, some of London and Hollywood's greatest names will gather at The Wall…
A ROYAL TREAT For almost 40 years, The Groundlings has proved itself to be one of the premiere comedy troupes in the nation, creating more stars than the Big Bang (and creating more Big Bang…
WILIES AT THE WALLIS First staged in 1841, Giselle is one of the oldest surviving ballets still in the international repertory, especially because the lead role is a showcase for the w…
SAVING FAITH Even with a few blemishes, Bedlam's revival of George Bernard Shaw's 1923 masterpiece Saint Joan is an immersive and ultimately gratifying theatrical experience. The story…
WELL WORTH A VISIT Perhaps composer/lyricist David Yazbek (The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) was inspired by one of our best new playwrights, Itamar Moses, and his adaptation of the t…
REPRISE REPRISED It’s a strange sort of serendipity. Just when Musical Theatre Guild announced its final season after eight glorious years presenting rarely produced musicals, along co…
SUCH SWEET SORROW FOR THE WRONG REASONS It's as if choreographer Krzysztof Pastor, director of the Polish National Ballet, gave Prokofiev the opportunity to protest Stalin's tyranny that he …
DON’T MYTH OUT, OR DANCING THAT’S ORPH THE CHARTS LA Opera’s gorgeous production of Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice (Orphée et Eurydice), featuring a welc…
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST I'm actually happy I didn't see this musical live on stage. It makes for a wonderful original cast recording, but what seems like a giant heart on this CD, out…