Dan Zeff

LEARNING HOW TO SURVIVE IN THE DESERT Jon Robin Baitz‘s Other Desert Cities—which opened at Cygnet Theatre last weekend—portrays about 24 hours in the upscale home of the Wyeth home in Palm Springs, California, and it’s an emotional stunner. Baitz sets his play over a 24-hour period in 2004. All the action takes place in the…

Isn’t it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?    — John Leonard, American critic Appropriate won Branden Jacobs-Jenkins the 2024 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play on Broadway. The Tony committee chose well. The American dramatist has composed a scorcher, a ferocious dysfunctional family saga that will stagger…

ONCE UPON AN AMAZING TIME Once is back at the Lamb’s Players Theatre for an extended run through March 30, glorious news for area playgoers. This is one of the must-see musicals of the early 21st century, a rare production that finds power in simplicity and emotion in restraint. As an additional bonus, local audiences are…

NO ONE EATS, BUT THERE’S PLENTY TO CHEW ON IN THE DETERMINEDLY DECEPTIVE BARBECUE Robert O’Hara has been a significant contributor to the American theater scene since his first play debuted in 1996. A Black dramatist, O’Hara has received a collection of awards and reward nominations for his idiosyncratic comedies about the American social scene….

ACTORS LOOKING FOR WORK: GOD BLESS THEM, EVERYONE! La Jolla Playhouse is presenting the world premiere of a play for the holiday season, and beyond, with the extensively titled Your Local Theater Presents: A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, Again. The playwright is Anna Ouyang Moench, an MFA graduate of the UC San Diego’s Department…

YOU’LL BE GRINCHING FROM EAR TO EAR For the 27th year The Old Globe is presenting its hit musical Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, continuing its position as one of the essential entertainment attractions of the holiday season. Youngsters and adults will love it for the same reasons. It tells a great story…

INCIDENT AT NORTH COAST REP IS ANOTHER IN A LINE OF HITS THAT NEED NO HELP Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help is a nostalgic domestic comedy drama now on view in an illuminating and highly entertaining production at North Coast Rep. Written by Katie Forgette, and first staged five years ago, it now…

THIS IS GREAT THEATER. TRUST ME. Reviewers across the country have honored the 2024 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Primary Trust with many positive adjectives, like “touching” and “deeply affecting.” But one adjective comes closer to the mark in describing the Eboni Booth drama: mesmerizing. The show is receiving its West Coast premiere at the La Jolla…

ATTEND THIS TALE: IT’S MURDER Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a musical filled with gore, brutality, hate, and vengeance. But the show, as composed by the great Stephen Sondheim, became a major Broadway hit after it opened in 1979 and has since been revived on Broadway, in opera houses and throughout…

DRAC-OOH-LA-LA The play Dracula, in its West Coast premiere at the Old Globe is subtitled A Comedy of Terrors. It’s unlikely that viewers will be terrified by the show, but as for “Comedy,” it’s laughs all the way. Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen, riding the praise heaped on them for their satire of Dostoevsky’s Crime…

THE IMPORTANCE OF SEEING THIS IMPORTANCE Is there a funnier comedy in the English language than Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest? Since it opened in London in 1895 the play has astonished audiences with its dazzling wit, charming characters. and clever plot. Lamb’s Players Theatre has taken on the challenge of reviving this…

BOY, OH JERSEY BOY, IS THIS SHOW EVER GREAT In 2004, a new musical called Jersey Boys quietly debuted at the La Jolla Playhouse. It transferred to Broadway the next year, running for 12 years while road productions popped up worldwide. It’s now back for a short run at the California Center for the Arts…

A BRIDGE TO GREAT THEATER Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge may be a small play physically, with a single drab set and just five significant characters. But it builds from a sympathetic beginning to a shattering violent conclusion in the spot-on production played to the hilt at the North Coast Repertory Theatre. The…

DON’T PAY ATTENTION TO THE PLOT, AND YOU’LL HAVE A BLAST In 1973, a rock musical called The Rocky Horror Show opened in London and ran until 1980 as other productions of the show blossomed throughout the world. One source estimated that the show was eventually performed in 20 languages for 30 million people. The…

ALL ABOARD FOR MURDEROUS FUN Agatha Christie fans rejoice! There is a new Christie adventure in a terrific production at The Old Globe, a novel/play hybrid of one of the Dame’s most popular novels, the 1934 best seller Murder on the Orient Express. Opening last night, this imaginative production blends the original novel with comic…

DRAGTACULAR Velour at the La Jolla Playhouse subtitles itself “A Drag Extravaganza” and for 105 uninterrupted minutes it validates the label with a smorgasbord of song, dance, film, projections, animation, circus stunts, and narration. It’s primarily a one-person show but if any entertainer can shoulder such a load, it’s the inimitable Sasha Velour, who has…

The Coronado Playhouse is currently presenting Exit, Pursued by a Bear, a one-act 80-minute play by American dramatist Lauren Gundersen. who is one of the most successful writers on the American theater scene, with more than 25 staged productions since the early 2010s. Yet after the first half hour, I was ready to give up…

YOU CAN GO HOLMES AGAIN! The world obviously cannot get enough of Sherlock Holmes. Since the first story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle appeared in 1887, the immortal fictional private detective has appeared in countless books, films, plays, and television shows, with Dr. Watson as his faithful friend and chronicler. But there is always room…

LONG MAY THIS PRODUCTION REIGN Since its first production opened in Balboa Park in 1935, the Old Globe Theatre has built a national reputation for ambitious and stimulating productions, but this summer the company’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s history trilogy Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III has raised the bar to what must surely…

DON’T BOTHER FOR DINNER The North Coast Repertory Theater is offering two hours of exceedingly lightweight summer theater in the French farce Don’t Dress for Dinner. And being a typical French farce, the play revels almost exclusively in ostentatious slapstick with an erotic edge. My large Sunday matinee audience seemed to love every unsubtle moment…