A CHRISTMAS CAROL


Frederick Stuart’s reinventive star turn as Ebenezer Scrooge tops the reasons why my third time seeing A Noise Within’s A Christmas Carol felt like experiencing this holiday spectacular for the very first time.
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LA CAGE AUX FOLLES

Pasadena Playhouse’s five-year-long winning streak of Broadway musical revivals comes to a crashing halt with Sam Pinkleton’s ill-conceived take on the 1980s Jerry Herman-Harvey Fierstein classic La Cage Aux Folles.
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AUGUST WILSON’S THE PIANO LESSON


To sell or not to sell. That is the question at the heart of the Pulitzer Prize-winning August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, an October gift from A Noise Within to the playwright’s many fans, and even for those like this reviewer who’d prefer it if Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle decalogy didn’t run a hefty three hours each, this is easily one of his most entertaining and powerful works.
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GUYS AND DOLLS


Damon Runyon’s picturesque band of New York denizens continue to delight audiences almost seventy-five years after their Broadway debut in Altadena Music Theatre’s lively outdoor revival of the 1950 Broadway classic Guys And Dolls.
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THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH


It’s hard to imagine a finer revival of Thornton Wilder’s 20th-century American classic The Skin Of Our Teeth than the one now enrapturing audiences at A Noise Within.
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CYRANO DE BERGERAC


The translation’s the thing, but far from the only thing that makes Pasadena Playhouse’s dazzling staging of Martin Crimp’s “free adaptation” of Edmond Rostand’s French classic Cyrano de Bergerac the latest Pasadena Playhouse winner.
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THE 39 STEPS


South Pasadena Theatre Workshop treats audiences to 75 minutes of virtually nonstop laughter in their somewhat abridged take on Patrick Barlow’s masterful four-actor stage adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie version of John Buchan’s spy classic The 39 Steps.
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HAY FEVER


A weekend in the country has rarely proven as delightfully, deliciously madcap as the one L.A. theatergoers can now spend with the ever so eccentric Bliss family in South Pasadena Theatre Workshop’s ever so effervescent revival of Noël Coward’s 1924 comedic gem Hay Fever.
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