LITTLE WOMEN, THE MUSICAL

Santa Monica’s venerable Morgan-Wixson Theatre once again blurs the lines between community and professional theater with the best performed of the more than half-dozen big-and-small-stage Little Women, The Musicals I’ve seen.
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BINGO HALL

A high school boy navigating unrequited feelings for a female best friend while making college plans either to stay close to home or to travel thousands of miles away is a tale, if not as old as time, at least as ancient as the John Hughes 1980s, but it feels fresh and new when the high schooler in question has only ever known life on a New Mexico Indian reservation in Dillon Chitto’s World Premiere comedy Bingo Hall.
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DAMN YANKEES

Inland Valley Repertory Theatre serves up midweek musical entertainment at Claremont’s Candlelight Pavilion with its revival of the 1955 Broadway smash Damn Yankees.
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CAMBODIAN ROCK BAND

The Cambodian genocide may seem the least likely of subject matters for a raucous rock-music comedy, but this is precisely what Lauren Yee has pulled off in Cambodian Rock Band, her most accomplished, fulfilling play to date.
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ANNIE GET YOUR GUN

Candlelight Pavilion treats audiences to a crowd-pleasing revival of Irving Berlin’s 1948 classic Annie Get Your Gun, the song-and-dance tale of legendary 1880s “cham-peen” sharpshooter Annie Oakley as reimagined by Oscar-Emmy-Tony winner Peter Stone.
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STEEL PIER

Few musicals have faded into obscurity more unjustly than John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Steel Pier, just one reason to celebrate its two-decade-awaited West Coast Premiere, and don’t let the term “student production” scare you away. Though its cast may be younger than many of the characters they are playing, in all other respects this UCLA Department Of Theater stunner is second to none.
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UNEMPLOYED ELEPHANTS – A LOVE STORY

Playwright Wendy Graf proves herself as adept at the romcom two-hander as she is at her dark, dramatic solo pieces in Unemployed Elephants – A Love Story, a Victory Theatre World Premiere sparked by Maria Gobetti’s deft direction and a couple of couldn’t-be-better leads.
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EL NIÑO

No one mines more laughs from dysfunction than Justin Tanner, and if you don’t believe me, check out the latest from the playwright who gave the world Voice Lessons, Teen Girl, Oklahomo!, Space Therapy and more, and whose latest, El Niño, proves the perfect Rogue Machine follow-up to the darkness and depravity of Ruth Fowler’s bled for the household truth.
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