Nearly every holiday season for the past 27 years, San Diego's Teatro Máscara Mágica has staged a fresh take on the Mexican Christmas tradition of the "Pastorela," a play about the bib…
In the first moments of "The Year to Come," a woman named Pam shambles onstage, oxygen tank in tow, to offer what seems some deeply considered advice: "Only look ahead." And if you trust her…
At the close of a year in which Coronado's Lamb's Players Theatre distinguished itself with a long-running, unforgettable production of the musical "Once," it's appropriate that its annual F…
The five prime movers behind the new Tuyo Theatre are in the middle of trying to articulate the happy accidents and artistic affinities that brought them all together, when a single word see…
It's been 30 years now since "Always … Patsy Cline" was first produced, which means that the show now has been around as long as its famous country-music namesake was alive. That doesn't s…
As if diving into the lives of a big extended family over two decades and three generations weren't quite enough for Lindsey Ferrentino, the rising playwright's latest work poses an added de…
Sara Bareilles didn't know quite what she was getting into when she signed on to write the score for "Waitress," the musical-stage adaptation of the late Adrienne Shelly's film about a diner…
Three years after it premiered at San Diego's La Jolla Playhouse, the musical "Come From Away" " a story of journeys interrupted by tragedy and redeemed by kindness " is about to see its own…
When the Broadway stars Matthew Morrison and Kelli O'Hara reunite for a concert with the San Diego Symphony next week, you can count on hearing their voices soar. There's also a slight possi…
When it comes to holiday stage happenings in San Diego, the traditional theater feast feels just a bit slimmed-down this year, with such notable absences as Lamb's Players Theatre's long-run…
A door gets the last word (as it were) in Henrik Ibsen's great 1879 play "A Doll's House," when the disaffected Norwegian housewife Nora Helmer slams it on her husband and her own stultified…
It takes a perverse sense of poetry to make a grin sound grim. But leave it to Sarah Ruhl to achieve that early on in "Melancholy Play," her charmingly oddball 2002 work now getting a reviva…
First, it was the story of religion in a scenic mountain metropolis " and maybe, to some degree, the story of any place in America confronting tensions between the secular world and communit…
Country music has always been the place where Clint Black hangs his hat " and if you know this Texas-raised superstar, you've seen the jet-black cowboy number that has long been his head-top…
The forest outside Athens was a patch of plastic chairs, and fluorescent lights stood in for moonglow, but playgoers still found magic in the staging of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dr…
For decades, a 4-foot-tall illuminated crystal Champagne glass stood in the lobby of the Welk Resorts Theatre in Escondido. Today that oversize TV prop from "The Lawrence Welk Show" is gone …
"What's past is prologue," as Shakespeare wrote in "The Tempest." And when people from across the San Diego theater community first began gathering last spring for a series of summits on the…
Both leads Jackie Burns (Broadway's longest running Elphaba) & Kara Lindsay (a comic natural)have deep experience with their roles and it shows brilliantly as they get strong support from Jo…
Whether portraying a frazzled acting teacher in La Jolla Playhouse's "What Happens Next", a troubled waitress in Ion Theatre's "Bug" or a fame-hungry spinster in Diversionary's "The Moors," …
Stephen Schwartz remembers exactly where he was when "Wicked" opened on Broadway 15 years ago this month. And it wasn't anywhere near the Emerald City. "I was already in Vermont," says the c…
Assimilation, discrimination, the hazards of navigating dual cultural identities: Those are big, potentially daunting concepts that are skillfully distilled into an intimate story made both …
You might've thought Jane Austen had visions of orchestras and chorus lines in her head when she was penning all those famous novels, so regularly are they now adapted into works of musical …
The trailers for the upcoming movie "Holmes & Watson" depict Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly " as the great detective Sherlock Holmes and his trusty confidant, Dr. John Watson " snapping sel…
Spanish-language telenovelas " those pulpy soap operas that play out like romance-novel cover shots come to life " are clearly not the subtlest of entertainment forms. But in Tony Meneses' g…
Every year, the winners of the statewide Playwrights Project contest prove that young dramatists are fully capable of thinking outside the box. This time around, though, one honoree has show…