Michael M. Landman-Karny

Wilde at Heart: The Quiet Theatrics of A Man of No Importance Some musicals don’t announce themselves. They drift in quietly, settle beside you, and before you know it, you’re sitting there, wrecked, wondering when the tears began. That’s the spell cast by A Man of No Importance, now playing at A Noise Within. Based…

THE TRUTH IS RARELY PURE, AND NEVER SAFE, IN TASTY LITTLE RABBIT There is a tender brutality in the way Robert Mammana shatters a glass plate negative under his heel in Moving Arts’ aching new production of Tom Jacobson’s Tasty Little Rabbit. It happens early. The crack is too small to be mythic, too large to ignore….

REASONABLE DOUBT? NOT ABOUT LEGALLY BLONDE‘S PINK POWER Let’s get one thing straight. Legally Blonde: The Musical is not highbrow theater. It is not Sweeney Todd with meat pies and too-close shaves. It is not The Light in the Piazza with yearning strings and emotionally repressed tourists. This show is pink, peppy, and rides a…

When There’s A Second Knock On The Door: Love and Lockup in Furlough’s Paradise In Furlough’s Paradise, a. k. payne has crafted something that moves like a whisper but hits like a reckoning. Now in its West Coast premiere at the Geffen Playhouse, this 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize-winning one-act plants two women in a…

IN CORKTOWN ’39, THE LIVING ARE JUST GHOSTS WITH BETTER TIMING Mark Mendelson‘s tightly composed set at The Matrix Theatre is a room cloaked in aging wealth at the Keating family’s Philadelphia home. Heavy curtains. Soft chairs. Whiskey always within reach. It feels like it once held power and still holds its consequences. That atmosphere…

THE FAIRY TALES BREAK– AND THAT’S THE POINT The stories are still here. Cinderella. Jack. Little Red. Rapunzel. A Baker and his Wife, tangled in a curse and each other. Into the Woods has always worn its source material like a costume—but it keeps a blade tucked underneath. Musical Theatre West’s new production doesn’t sharpen…

SWINGS BIG, SHINES BRIGHT All Roads Theatre Company just set the bar sky-high with One for My Baby, a slick, jazz-soaked tribute to the music of Harold Arlen. This is old-school showbiz at its best—big voices, big orchestrations, and enough high-voltage talent to power a city block. With a Broadway-caliber cast and an 11-piece band…