The wait is over! 20 years after its National Tour stopped for a brief 2 weeks at the Hollywood Pantages, Little Women The Musical finally gets the major regional production it richly deserves, and the result is a superbly staged and performed Broadway-caliber gem.

Not to say that the 2005 musical adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott classic has been absent from our local stages over the past two decades. Chance Theater has staged it four times, and I’ve also seen it brought to life in college, 99-seat, and community theater productions.

But that’s not the same as experiencing Little Women Broadway-scale, with a full orchestra, and a primarily Equity cast, in particular when you’re as big a fan of this musical as I am.

Compacting Louisa May Alcott’s 400-plus-word novel into a two-and-three-quarter hour musical would seem a Herculean task, but it is one that book writer Allan Knee achieved quite adeptly indeed, the 2005 Broadway adaptation retaining the book’s most memorable moments while adding a batch of tuneful songs (music by Jason Howland and lyrics by Mindi Dickstein) running the gamut from Jo’s feisty “Better” to the bouncy “I’d Be Delighted,” to the rousing Act One closer “Astonishing.”

An opening sequence introduces us to one of aspiring writer Jo’s (Jenna Lea Rosen) romantic flights of fancy, its characters embodied by March family members and friends, a gothic tale that gets quickly poopooed by Jo’s German friend Professor Bhaer (Jonathan von Mering) after which we are transported back several years to the Marches’ Concord, Massachusetts home circa 1863.

With the Civil War still raging and the family patriarch serving as a Union Army chaplain, it’s the March sisters’ mother “Marmee” (Tami Tappan Damiano) who is left behind to care for the couple’s “Little Women.”

There’s Meg (Katie Roche), the “pretty one,” who falls for the local tutor John Brooke (Aaron Gibbs); dreamer Beth (Haven Watts), who wishes nothing more than her sisters’ happiness; Amy (Jordan Cruz), the youngest, and perpetually in a pout about being the forgotten one; and above all second sister (and Alcott stand-in) Jo, who eschews dreams of love and marriage much to smitten boy-next-door Theodore “Laurie” Lawrence’s (Ariel Neydavoud) dismay, opting instead for a writer’s life despite those twenty-two rejection letters that have shown up in her mailbox so far.

Joys, sorrows, disappointments, romances, and at least two weddings, Little Women has them all, plus an ending promising much more still in store for the March sisters. (Alcott did, after all, write two sequels to Little Women.)

Equally important, Little Women The Musical manages to be family-friendly while maintaining an adult sophistication that makes it a treat for theatergoers of all ages, and in the award-winning Cate Caplin, Musical Theatre West has found the ideal director-chorographer to bring all this magic to vibrant, thrilling life.

Not only is Caplin a master of “the big picture,” i.e., making effective use of the entire staging area, but her attention to detail where performances are concerned ensures that every cast member delivers finely nuanced work.

Add to that Caplin’s inventive integration of dance and movement into scenes that aren’t “dancy” per se makes Musical Theatre West’s Little Women quite special indeed.

Still, even the finest director-choreographer can’t succeed without a cast capable of bringing her vision to life, and in the ten crème-de-la-crème performers she’s assembled on the Carpenter Theatre stage, she has struck solid gold.

Leading ladies don’t get any more incandescent than the surely Broadway-bound Rosen, who virtually grew up on the MTW stage, and who now gives Jo an irresistible combination of passion, spunk, beauty, and brains while revealing a gloriously rich soprano seemingly inherited from stage mom Damiano’s magnificent Marmie, which makes the one-two punch of the former’s “Days Of Plenty” and the latter’s “The Fire Within Me” as stirring a pair of emotion-packed solos as I’ve ever heard.

Roche’s radiant Meg duets an exquisite “More Than I Am” with the dashing Gibbs’s smitten suitor John Brooke, Watts embodies Beth’s innate sweetness and heart to deeply touching effect, while the bubbly Watts transitions from bratty Amy to a French-spouting, still full-of-herself young lady to amusing effect.

Stuffy doesn’t get any more leading-man-appealing than von Mering’s Professor Bhaer, Neydavoud is a boy-next-door high-notes-hitting charmer as Laurie, Kildare gives gruff, curmudgeonly Mr. Lawrence a heart of mush, and Barbara Carlton Heart does delightful double duty as the punctilious Aunt March and Jo’s considerably warmer Irish landlady Mrs. Kirk.

Add to all of the above a terrific package of rented sets, costumes, and properties vibrantly lit by Paul Black and MTW’s Little Women has the look of a high-caliber national tour, with sound designer Shannon Slaton providing a pitch-perfect mix of vocals and the show’s 12-piece orchestra under the expert baton of ace music director Diane King Vann.

Little Women is produced by Paul Garman. Bren Thor is associate producer. Sabrina Marielle and Donovan Mendelovitz are stand-bys.

Catt Fox-Ururburu is production manager. Heather M. Brose is production stage manager and Kyrsten Goodrich and Katherine Brauer are assistant stage managers.

Additional program credits are allotted to Kevin Clowes (scenic coordinator), Jenny Lynn Deck (costumes), and Jane Hamor (props).

Twenty years is way too long a time to wait for a major regional theater to give a Broadway musical the full-fledged production it should have gotten a couple decades ago, but heavens be praised, Musical Theatre West’s Little Women makes it well worth the wait.

Musical Theatre West, Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 Atherton St., Long Beach. November 22. Fridays at 8:00, Saturdays at 2:00 and 8:00, and Sundays at 1:00. Also Thursday November 12 at 7:30 and Sunday November 15 at 6:00.
www.musical.org

–Steven Stanley
November 7, 2026
Photos: Jason Niedle

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

Tags: Allan Knee, Jason Howland, Los Angeles Theater Review, Louisa May Alcott, Mindi Dickstein, Musical Theatre West