Los Angeles

DROP-DEAD FUNNY What happens when you take Little Shop of Horrors and mix it with The Pink Panther cartoons, and throw in a little dash of Urinetown? You get this fantastic dark musical comedy Did You See What Walter Paisley Did Today? Based on Roger Corman’s 1959 horror-tinged beatnik satire A Bucket of Blood, the…

COME FOR THE SCORE, LEAVE FOR THE BOOK Prior to Geffen Playhouse’s world premiere musical The Lonely Few, a pair of orange ear-plugs in ironically loud cellophane is offered to patrons, indicating a loud show will soon be upon us. We enter the amazingly transformed Audrey Skirball Kennis black-box theater, which now has patrons seated…

LOVELESS DISINFORMATION As I’m ushered into Antaeus Theatre Company’s mainstage theater at Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center in Glendale to see Love and Information, I’m invited (as evidenced by a freshly painted sign) to “embark on an exploration of meaning.” In the 90 painful minutes that follow, however, this promised “meaning”’”like Godot’”never shows….

OFF TO NEVERLAND! It is common knowledge in the theater world that the most difficult show to create is a musical. The second is a parody. But both together?And yet, success has arrived in Los Angeles with For the Love of a Glove: An Unauthorized Musical Fable About Michael Jackson’s Life As Told By His…

HERE’S ANOTHER PLAY THAT SHOULD BE LOST A muddled, misjudged attempt to resurrect “Shakespeare’s lost play” that collapses under amateur acting, confused direction, and a baffling lack of theatrical intent. In Cardenio, now playing at City Garage, a character states in Latin, “De gustibus non disputandum est,” which means “There’s no accounting for taste.” Well,…

THE SECRET’S OUT: THIS GARDEN’S IN BLOOM It’s been almost a year since Ahmanson Theatre ushered in spring with the national tour of Hadestown. This season (thank ye, Fates!), spring has come again with a lush new production of the 1991 Broadway musical The Secret Garden. Based on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 English children’s novel…

HELP WANTED AT THE LAPIN AGILE As I wrote last Sunday in my review of Sunday in the Park with George: “art isn’t easy.” Having just now seen Picasso at the Lapin Agile, I’ll add to that Sondheim quote: “’”especially comedy.” Opening last night at The Ruskin Group Theatre in Santa Monica, this 1993 comedy…

HAROLD AND MAUDE ARE BACK AND BETTER THAN EVER It has been decades since I saw, or even thought about, the classic 1971 movie Harold and Maude starring Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon. Do you remember it? It’s the black comedy directed by Hal Ashby about a deadpanned death-obsessed 20-year-old who has an emotional and…

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE JUST GETS BETTER WITH TIME “Art isn’t easy,” sing the cast of players in Sunday in the Park with George; the words are most notably sung by the artist-protagonist himself — or perhaps, his creator. With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Sunday won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama…