COOPERSTOWN


The history-making 1962 induction of Jackie Robinson, America’s first African-American major league baseball player, into the Baseball Hall Of Fame provides a backdrop for Brian Golden’s nostalgic Cooperstown, now getting a first-rate West Coast Premiere at The Road Theatre Company’s brand spanking new second home—The Road On Magnolia.
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SOUTH PACIFIC


Director-choreographer Valerie Rachelle makes a stellar Glendale Centre Theatre debut with as fine an in-the-round production of the legendary Rodgers & Hammerstein classic South Pacific as you will likely ever see, one that strips away the cobwebs to reveal just why the legendary team’s third Broadway smash remains one of the greatest musicals ever.
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THE FANTASTICKS


Sometimes it takes magic to make magic, or at least such is the case with South Coast Repertory’s exhilarating, eye-popping new staging of The Fantasticks, a revival that even those who’d put the record-breaking off-Broadway smash on their list of least-favorite musicals can enjoy. (I know, as I am one of them.)
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BE A GOOD LITTLE WIDOW


25-year-old Melody is still struggling with the demands of being a newlywed wife when she is faced with the even greater challenge of being a newlywed widow in Bekah Brunstetter’s singular new comedy Be A Good Little Widow, now getting a splendid West Coast Premiere at San Diego’s The Old Globe.
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OTHER DESERT CITIES


The continental divide that has polarized America into mud-slinging camps of liberals vs. conservatives over the past few decades takes on a personal, familial note in Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities, one of the best written, most thought-provoking, and ultimately most moving plays of the last decade, now getting a superb San Diego premiere at The Old Globe.
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THE FULL MONTY

Those out-of-work Buffalo factory workers have taken their Chippendales-style strip show to Candlelight Dinner Theater, and the result is the San Gabriel Valley musical theater event of the season.
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THE CRUCIBLE


Arthur Miller’s dramatization of the Salem witch trials has rarely if ever seemed as timeless or proven as powerful as it does in The Antaeus Company’s stunning new revival of the 1953 classic The Crucible, brilliantly directed by Armin Shimerman and Geoffrey Wade.
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CHESS


Though Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus’ Chess may now and forever remain a musical that “needs work,” there are ample reasons to catch Tim Dang’s multiethnic revival of the West End hit at East West Players, not the least of which is the singular opportunity to see Chess Not In Concert—but rather as a fully-staged production, with performances, direction, choreography, costumes and lighting all combining to make for a thrilling evening of theater, despite its source material’s undeniable flaws.
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