THE PAINTED ROCKS AT REVOLVER CREEK

Premier South African playwright Athol Fugard once again puts a personal face on apartheid in his deeply moving two-act drama The Painted Rocks Of Revolver Creek, now getting a gorgeously-acted West Coast Premiere at Fugard’s Los Angeles home, the award-winning Fountain Theatre.
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DO I HEAR A WALTZ?

If ever there were an ideal show for Musical Theatre Guild to revive, it is Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents’ Do I Hear A Waltz? Terrific songs. A book based on a successful play and movie. A couldn’t-be-more-romantic setting. Mixed reviews. Only 200 performances on Broadway. In short, a show you’re unlikely to see revived in any major sort of way any time soon.

Fortunately, thanks to MTG, L.A. audiences got treated to its many delights last night at Glendale’s historic Alex Theatre.
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THE FEAST

A suddenly meatless world serves as the pretext for what well may be the most bizarre dinner party in the history of contemporary theater in Celine Song’s absurdist black comedy The Feast, now being given a terrific Los Angeles New Court Theatre L.A. Premiere in precisely the kind of DTLA loft-with-view in which said dinner party might actually take place.
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42nd STREET

Three dozen pairs of “dancing feet” have arrived at the Segerstrom Center For The Arts, which as any Broadway buff will tell you can mean only one thing—42nd Street is in town, exciting news indeed for musical theater aficionados, particularly since the show’s latest national tour is just about as terrifically performed, directed, choreographed, and designed as national tours get.
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THE ADDAMS FAMILY

The “creepy, kooky, mysterious, and spooky” family known as The Addams have arrived at the Simi Valley Performing Arts Center in a production that proves an audience-pleaser even without Broadway sets and Equity performers, particularly as captained by a sensational George Chavez as Gomez Addams.
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EL GRANDE CIRCUS DE COCA-COLA

Gracias a Doña Barbara Beckley, Don Pepe Hernandez and his El Grand Circus De Coca-Cola have moved arriba from their 99-seat-plan origins and brought their multiple Scenie-winning* 90 minutos of nonstop hilardad to Burbank’s Colony Theatre for what remains the funniest show you’re likely to see in todo el año de 2015.
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THE SPARROW

A teenage girl’s return to her hometown following a ten-year absence takes both the introverted orphan and the audience observing her journey-into-adulthood on unexpected paths in The Sparrow, now getting a supremely theatrical West Coast Premiere by Coeurage Theatre Company, “Los Angeles’ only pay-what-you-want theatre.” (They’ve even trademarked the slogan.).
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UNCLE VANYA

You know from the moment Ilya Ilych Telegin, aka “Waffles,” starts the show off by singing and strumming along to Marvin Etzioni’s “The Mandolin Man” that The Antaeus Company’s West Coast Premiere of Annie Baker’s Drama Desk Award-winning adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya isn’t going to be like any Vanya (or perhaps any Chekhov) you’ve seen, and though I remain ambivalent about the talky Russian playwright, when the Anateus revival takes flight, it soars.
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