THE WHY

Comedy might be the last approach you’d expect a playwright to take in response to the Columbine High School massacre of April 20, 1999, but leave it to an audacious teenager to pen The Why, the darkest, funniest, most button-pushing and thought-provoking play you may ever see about gun violence.
(read more)

BRONIES: THE MUSICAL

The charming musical-in-the-rough that was Bronies: The Musical at this past summer’s Hollywood Fringe Festival has since been polished into the sparklingly rainbow-hued gem now getting its official World Premiere Production at the Third Street Theatre. Simply put, Bronies: The Musical is the feel-best show in town.
(read more)

MAPLE AND VINE

If you could leave your cell phone and sushi and Facebook and lattes and 21st-Century stress behind for a trip back in time to the halcyon Leave It To Beaver mid-1950s, would you? Could you?

This is the question faced by a publishing executive and her plastic surgeon husband in Jordan Harrison’s provocative if somewhat problematic Maple And Vine, now getting a first-rate Greater Los Angeles Premiere at Orange County’s Chance Theater.
(read more)

CABARET

It takes a combination of inspiration and chutzpah to reinvent a 58-year-old musical theater classic that’s been reinvented time and time again—but director Gary Lamb has done just that with Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret, his creative touches adding up to the best of the five intimate Cabarets I’ve seen and one of the top two or three of the ten productions I’ve experienced in all.
(read more)

KISS ME KATE

A stellar, (almost) all-African-American cast breathe new life into the 1948 William Shakespeare-meets-Cole Porter classic Kiss Me Kate, an innovative Pasadena Playhouse revival that works to perfection for all but about ten minutes of its thrillingly reinvigorated two acts.
(read more)

MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT

Rare is the musical that can delight and satisfy both Broadway buffs and those who would never be caught dead at My Fair Lady, The Sound Of Music, or heaven forbid, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Monty Python’s Spamalot is that rare Broadway show, and therefore a supremely savvy follow-up to Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre’s recent Smokey Joe’s Café. That it happens to be served up in an all-around splendid production is like whipped cream on one of Executive Chef Juan Alvarado’s scrumptious desserts.
(read more)

GOOD PEOPLE

What better way could there be of following David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole (La Mirada Theatre For The Performing Arts’ recent Scenie-winning Production Of The Year) than with the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright’s latest hit? Simply put, Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People makes for an evening of Great Theater.
(read more)

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

Following its pitch-perfect intimate staging of Broadway’s 110 In The Shade, Hollywood’s Actors Co-op returns just four months later with a visit to the 19th Century London Musical Hall in their charmingly cheeky, crowd-pleasing revival of Rupert Holmes’ 1985 Tony-winning The Mystery Of Edwin Drood.
(read more)

« Older Entries Newer Entries » « Older Entries Newer Entries »