Los Angeles

SHE’S BA-A-A-ACK For those who think the sun won’t come up until 2020, here comes another  Annie, that 1977 optimistic spitfire of a musical — based on the Harold Gray comic strip Little Orphan Annie — which insists that simply thinking about a brighter tomorrow will perk you right up. Although a national tour just wrapped…

THE PLEASURES OF WEBFOOT COCKLEWOMEN AND MINCED CAT Under Milk Wood is a vivid combination of poetry, drama, and music that was first performed as a radio play in 1954, and it is squarely rooted in language. Set in a seaside town in Wales called Llareggub (“bugger all” backwards), it is described as a place…

ITCHING TO BE SWITCHING ROLES Burt Grinstead and Anna Stromberg’s take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde switches between comedic farce and serious scenes just as slickly as Jekyll, the affable, handsome physician, becomes Hyde, a maniacal, marauding murderer. Blessedly not as silly and madcap as the stage…

EMOTIONAL TURMOIL AND MUSICAL BLISS One of the pleasures of the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble’s production of Side by Side by Sondheim is the experience of hearing voices without amplification. I have never been to a Broadway musical without a sound system and have often wondered what it was like. Did it always take an Ethel…

WE NEVER STOP CRYING IT OUT The term “cry it out” refers to the practice of letting babies bawl until their fit subsides without parents coddling and mollifying them; assumedly this causes the child to become more self-sufficient later in life. In Molly Smith Metzler’s persuasive west coast premiere, three adult women find themselves in…