LOVE SICK


A loaded gun proves the best medicine for lovesick Emily in Kristina Poe’s deliciously dark comedy Love Sick, now getting its World Premiere production at the always edgy Elephant Theatre.
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SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS


The 1954 MGM musical movie hit Seven Brides For Seven Brothers comes to life in-the-round at Glendale Centre Theatre in a production that provides old-fashioned G-rated family entertainment under Robert Marra’s assured direction.
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SHREK THE MUSICAL


Forget any preconceived notions you may harbor about Shrek The Musical being just another animated movie-turned-Broadway musical or a show designed only for tiny tots. With book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire (the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Rabbit Hole) and music by multiple award-winning Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change, Thoroughly Modern Millie), Shrek The Musical is a smart, funny, tuneful musical treat whose fresh new non-Equity tour, now playing at Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts, puts it at the top of my list of favorite recent Broadway hits.
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HOW THE WORLD BEGAN


Ask a big city Blue State high school science teacher and a rural Bible Belt high school student how the world began and you’ll probably get two quite different answers. Put this teacher and this student in the same classroom in small town Kansas and sparks are likely to fly.
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UP


The recent spate of It Gets Better videos could easily have been made with the teenage protagonists of Bridget Carpenter’s Up in mind. Fifteen-year-old Mikey, though not gay, is “different” enough to get pushed around and called “faggot.” As for Mikey’s new friend Maria, the six-months-pregnant sixteen-year-old was sent packing when her “drunk bitch” of a mom found out her little girl had gotten herself knocked up.
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SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN


The 1952 MGM Musical classic Singin’ In The Rain gives Downey Civic Light Opera its best production since 2009’s My Fair Lady, one that judging from the enthusiastic reaction of Friday’s Opening Night audience could well prove DLCO’s biggest hit in as many years.
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RICHARD O’BRIEN’S THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW


How does one review the revival of a camp classic? How does a reviewer deal with that oxymoronic juxtaposition of camp and classic? Can something “so bad it’s good” actually achieve the status of a classic?
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NOISES OFF


Imagine a production of one of those hilarious English farces like No Sex Please, We’re British whose actors are still struggling with their lines, have yet to master the requisite comic timing, and still haven’t learned when to enter and exit. Lines will be forgotten, jokes won’t get their payoff, cues will be missed, and the entire production an absolute mess. Certainly not one you’d pay to see, right?
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