ROYAL SHAKESPEARE’S RICHARD II COMES TO WESTWOOD Brits had already heard about Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Richard II, directed by Gregory Doran and starring former Docto…
A HIT-AND-MISS HOLIDAY HYBRID IS AT LEAST MORE HO HO THAN HO HUM Silliness and charm reign supreme in The Actors' Gang's original Christmas show, The Queen Family’s Very Special Holida…
JOCKEY-SIZED JORDAN REMAINS A COMICAL CLYDESDALE Have you ever been to a sultry party that has the oppressive feel of a languid, humid day in the Deep South, only to have the energy shift dr…
WOULD YOU LIKE COFFEE, TEA OR THE AMERICAN DREAM? Sometimes we take a short vacation just to get away from it all. A few days. No big tourist attractions or monumental natural sites are nece…
YOU CAN'T TWIN THEM ALL There is nothing more fascinating for this Broadway musical aficionado than a flop"but not for gloating purposes. It's natural to wonder "What were they thinking?" wi…
WHIPPED INTO A FRENZY If I had any doubts prior to attending San Diego REP's production of Venus in Fur (an on-again, off-again playwright; two characters; two directors), they were vanqu…
UPDATING THE OLD, PRESENTING THE NEW As part of the North American tour celebrating its 45th season, the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company arrived at Valley Performing Arts Center last Saturday wi…
A HITCH IN THE BOURNE LEGACY It's a shame that Matthew Bourne's narrative began to fizzle out in the second act of his Sleeping Beauty, for up to then this extraordinarily imaginative and en…
MUSICAL THEATRE GUILD GOES TO TOWN "Charming" doesn't begin to describe Musical Theatre Guild's offering of the 1953 musical Wonderful Town. Even with a recent 2003 Broadway outing starring …
CHEAPENED BY THIS DOZEN Words such a "tolerance" and "acceptance" are bandied about as America continues a national dialogue on race, oversimplifying the subject of prejudice. Sadly, politic…
ROGUE MACHINE'S PRODUCTION KEEPS SCRIPT FROM FALLING In Deanna Jent's Falling, a mom is reaching burnout: Her 18-year-old autistic son is consuming her time, her marriage is shaky, her mothe…
A DANCE PIECE THAT'S A KEEPER The frequency of site-specific events continues to grow exponentially in the City of Angels, but Heidi Duckler has been doing it for many years, creating unique…
HIT THE WALLIS A brand new theater has opened its doors in Beverly Hills, but nothing could have prepared me for its magnificence in contemporary construction and design. The 500-seat Bram G…
BALLET SUPERSTAR RETURNS TO SEGERSTROM The title of two world premiere dance pieces at Segerstrom Hall this week could not be more apt: Diana Vishneva of the Mariinsky Ballet and American Ba…
A HIGH FLYING, ADORED REVIVAL Composer Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice released the Evita "rock opera concept album" in 1976, a few years before the first theatrical production…
A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF ACTING Last August, Time's cover story, "A World Without Bees," brought to light a frightening occurrence: In recent years, there have been mass deaths of honeybee…
A CLOSED-MOUTH KISS There are so many sexual allusions and situations in Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate that it is remarkable the musical came out in 1948. I surmise the reason that Porter got …
SEEING WHAT’S INVISIBLE In describing Invisible Cities, allow me to paraphrase Gore Vidal's critique of Italo Calvino's 1972 novel of the same name on which this production is based: O…
COMPRESSED CRUELTY IN A SMALL STRINDBERG SHOCKER August Strindberg, the "father of modern psychological drama," told his publisher that Creditors, a drama that he prized as much as he did hi…
PUTTING THE THEATER IN DANCE Living up to its name, Nederlands Dans Theater 1 bounded into Los Angeles last night, showing off the reasons why The Hague-based contemporary dance outfit is kn…
CIRQUE'S PERKS What’s a circus without lions, tigers, and elephants? Â In the case of Cirque du Soleil's Totem, their eleventh major production in 26 years, it’s a marked impro…
SITE-SPECIFIC IS NOT SO SPECIFIC La Jolla Playhouse supported the trend of site-specific and immersive theater by presenting a four-day program of over 20 different performances in and aroun…
STOPPARD AND GO Tom Stoppard's brilliant Travesties (1974) is literate and fiercely crafted, tackling ideas of love, wit, politics, art, theater, literature, intellectualism and whatever els…
NO HALLELUJAH FOR THE LAST GOODBYE No one can deny why Jeff Buckley has achieved cult status. The coffeehouse-rock singer brought an aching, wrenching, ethereal and vulnerable quality to bot…
TOO FEW Samuel D. Hunter's slice-of-life one-act, The Few, returns to familiar territory for this up-and-coming playwright. As in his previous plays, Hunter takes us to small-town Idaho; thi…