SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER

Even a minor Tennessee Williams play like Suddenly Last Summer deserves far better than the misbegotten revival the 1958 one-act is being given at North Hollywood’s Whitmore-Lindley Theatre.

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THE HEIDI CHRONICLES


Playwright Wendy Wasserstein encapsulates a quarter century of the American women’s movement as she recounts the Life and Loves of Heidi Holland in her Pulitzer Prize-winning dramedy The Heidi Chronicles, now being given an absorbing, illuminating 37th-anniversary revival at the Group Rep Theatre.

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XANADU


Wisteria Theater Company makes it five hits in a row with their zestfully entertaining take on Douglas Carter Beane’s 2005 Broadway treat Xanadu, itself a textbook example of how to turn a movie lemon into multiple Tony-nominated lemonade.
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MOTEL 66

The seven one-acts that comprise the latest incarnation of the Group Rep’s Motel 66 may not all be slam-dunks, and a couple of them are not ideally cast, but put them all together and you’ve got one enjoyable afternoon or evening of short-form live theater.
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NETWORK

Bert Emmett is on fire in the role that won Peter Finch a posthumous Oscar, but the snail-paced production the Group Rep has staged of Lee Hall’s West End-to-Broadway adaptation of Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar-winning screenplay for 1976’s Network fails to ignite similar sparks.
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RODGERS + HAMMERSTEIN’S CINDERELLA


Delightful performances, clever direction, and Douglas Carter Beane’s fresh new book are three big reasons why Wisteria Theater’s scaled-down take on the 2013 Broadway revival of the 1950s live TV classic known as Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella makes it four winners in a row for the new North Hollywood company.
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THE TOTALITY OF ALL THINGS


All hell breaks loose in an Indiana town when a swastika is found spray-painted on a classroom bulletin board celebrating the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in Erik Gernand’s The Totality Of All Things, a discussion-provoking, expectations-defying Road Theatre Company West Coast Premiere.

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THE WEDDING SINGER


There may be less than half the number of performers lighting up the stage as was the case on Broadway back in 2006, but Wisteria Theater’s stripped-down take on The Wedding Singer loses not one iota of entertainment value where the movie romcom turned Broadway musical is concerned.
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