From Broadway to Cabaret: Sally Mayes on Music, Mentorship, and Meaning She belts when it counts, crafts when it's quiet, and teaches with heart" Sally Mayes is still doing it all, her way. …
A MUSICAL SALTIER THAN SALT LAKE ITSELF Let's start the actual religious text called The Book of Mormon, published in 1830. Without going into all its details about other planets, Jesus visi…
THE SOUND OF FAMILY Berkeley Playhouse has a reputation for doing family-friendly musicals right, and their latest production, The Sound of Music, hits that sweet spot again. With a cast tha…
SQUEEZABLE THEATER Those dark days all seem so long ago. The face masks, drive-thru testing, fear of crowded indoor spaces, and some idiot assuring us, "It's going to disappear. One day " it…
Unlike his previous shows at The Hollywood Fringe " Spank the Monkey and Shagadelic: The Origins of Slang Words for Doing It " Michael Blaha has shed his stage persona of Professor Richar…
A MUSICAL COMEDY TO REMIND YOU WHY YOU FELL IN LOVE WITH THE ARTFORM IN THE FIRST PLACE "In 1982 a man called Larry put himself in a lawn chair, got some 42 balloons, and went to sixteen tho…
EVENTUALLY, EVERYTHING COMES OUT IN THE WASH Woodie King Jr.'s New Federal Theatre has found a new home, relocating from the Lower East Side to the Upper West Side's WP Theater. Their second…
BEAUTY IN STEP: GRACE, MELODIES, AND ACB'S ELEGANT NEW WORKS Few phrases in the world of classical music fill me with as much excitement and dread as "world premiere." This applies even with…
FROM CASTLE HILL IN THE BRONX TO A DEBUT AT CARNEGIE HALL IN MANHATTAN, SAMARA JOY IN CONCERT AND IN THE GROOVE # # # Most jazz vocalists dream of rapid success: winning a major contest, daz…
Have you ever wanted to run away from your own life? In Becky's New Car, now playing at Theatre 40, playwright Steven Dietz takes that midlife fantasy and drives it straight into a quirky, c…
A REVIEW OF A REVUE Whatever happened to the topical revue format? As differentiated from musical revues that recycle old, established songs by particular writers, the topical revue presente…
FEMINIST CLOWNS COLLIDE WITH CAPITOLISM Clownish perfection poses a unique problem for reviewers in that the blend of Da-Da slapstick and rib-tickling existentialism tends to defy easy descr…
DIAL M FOR MURDEROUS LAUGHTER Chicago is the city of improv, but excellent improv can still be hard to come by. Yet the magnificent company Hitch*Cocktails always delivers, and they do it wh…
REVENUE AND RESPECTABILITY George Bernard Shaw (1856"1950) knew about cancel culture long before the term came into vogue. The first New York production (1905) of Mrs. Warren's Profession wa…
HA-LLELUJAH! HELP IS JUST A "HA" AWAY Julia Masli makes a slow, focused entrance onto the stage of the Anspacher Theater at The Public. Despite the surrounding moody blues, her face is lit b…
TITANIC SINKS AGAIN Mallie McCown's madcap reimagining of Titanic, James Cameron's $220 million epic, is ambitious beyond words, which is the source for most of the problems that plague this…
NINETY YEARS IN NINETY MINUTES Playwright Noah Haidel compresses 90 years of story into his 90-minute one-act comedy-drama Birthday Candles at North Coast Rep. However, that's sufficient tim…
SMALL LIVES, BIG TRUTHS What's a nice girl to do? Upstairs at The Matrix, Rogue Machine Theatre is putting on another winner of a show, Nice Girl by Melissa Ross. It's a small dram…
Synthwave Romance: The Wedding Singer Grooves on Camp, Chemistry, and Crimped Hair If you still belt out "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" in your car or secretly miss the days when big hair …
St. Clair's Swan Song: Pacific Symphony's Volcanic Verdi's Requiem Last night, the walls of the Segerstrom Concert Hall didn't merely vibrate. They braced. Verdi's Requiem opened not with re…
A PRESCRIPTION FOR GREAT THEATER Ray of Light Theatre has once again delivered a production that hits hard and sings even harder. With 25 years of tackling socially relevant musicals"whether…
Sick of It All"and Loving Every Minute: Molière's Hypochondriac Gets a Hilarious Check-Up Molière's final theatrical work, The Imaginary Invalid, is a scalpel-sharp satire of medicine and …
TIGERS, TRAUMA, AND THEATRICAL MAGIC: LIFE OF PI ROARS TO THE STAGE Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel's story has found enormous commercial success " first in Yann Martel's Booker Prize"winning nov…
MUSICAL SATIRE SUPREME Napa's Lucky Penny Productions closes out its 2024-25 season with a screamingly funny spoof of an inexplicably popular TV franchise, in which five rich boozy women can…
A NIGHT OF MUSIC, MEMORY, AND MADNESS: PARADISE FOUND The Studio Theatre's Victor Shargai stage has been strikingly transformed into a 1949 jazz club for Paradise Blue, Dominique Morisseau's…