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Los Angeles
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San Diego Theater Review: BLITHE SPIRIT (North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach)
LET THE SPIRIT MOVE YOU TO NORTH COAST REP Is it bigamy if you’re still seeing your first wife while married to your second? Does your answer change if the first wife has been dead for seven years? Herein lies the plot and fun of a séance that goes a bit too far, leaving Charles…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: NATIVE GARDENS (Pasadena Playhouse)
THE WAR OF ROSES — AND WEEDS Christian Barillas is adorably frazzled and enormously appealing in Native Gardens at the Pasadena Playhouse. He plays Pablo Del Valle, an ambitious lawyer born to wealth in Chile but disowned when he married a working-class Latina from New Mexico. In his youth he was “The Man,” surrounded by…
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Theater Review: GUNSHOT MEDLEY: PART 1 (Rogue Machine Theatre in Los Angeles)
MURDER WITHOUT END Sha’Leah Nikole Stubblefield is already a mesmerizing, ethereal presence on stage when you take a seat for Rogue Machine’s American Saga Gunshot Medley: Part 1, now in its American premiere at the MET Theatre. She is the High Priestess of Souls, perched in a graveyard, resplendent in a vermillion gown. Her garment…
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Theater Review: SCHOOL GIRLS; OR, THE AFRICAN MEAN GIRLS PLAY (Kirk Douglas Theatre, Culver City)
WE ARE THE MEAN GIRLS The subhead of Jocelyn Bioh’s 2017 play, now at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, is alluring but ultimately misleading. School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play is not merely a lighthearted twist on the popular film or its giddy siblings. This tale of a teenage queen bee and…
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Theater Review: SWEAT (Mark Taper Forum)
THE BIRTH OF TRUMP’S RACIAL BLUE-COLLAR DIVIDE Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage places much of the action of Sweat, now at the Mark Taper Forum, in a working-class bar in Reading, Pennsylvania, where floor workers from a nearby factory meet every evening to celebrate their comradery and drown their considerable sorrows. Though set in 2000 and…
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Theater Review: THE WORLD GOES ‘ROUND (REPRISE 2.0)
THE WORLD IS FLAT Musical revues are a tricky business. While highly enjoyable and entertaining, even high profile compilations such as Side by Side by Sondheim and the Fats Waller songbook Ain’t Misbehavin’ amount to little more than glorified cabaret shows. Jukebox musicals a la Smokey Joe’s Café (Leiber and Stoller) and the long running Broadway smash Jersey Boys (Frankie Valli and…
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Theater Preview: 2018 PLAY LA FESTIVAL (Casa 0101)
PLAY ON Opening Night of the 2018 PLAY LA Festival of New Plays takes place Friday, September 7, at CASA 0101. Doors open at 7:00 pm at the Casa 0101 Gallery space for Hotel Mariachi, photos from acclaimed photographer, Miguel Gandert, followed by live Mariachi music (More about Gandert’s work here). At 8:00, HUMANITAS and PLAY LA will announce next year’s PLAY…
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Theater Review: I GO SOMEWHERE ELSE (Playwrights’ Arena at Atwater Village Theatre)
THE MOTHER OF THEM ALL “Don’t call me a liar,” a mother says. “But you lied,” responds her daughter simply. And all holy hell breaks loose. In I Go Somewhere Else from Playwrights’ Arena at the Atwater Village Theatre the “flat circle of time” gives life to the daughter at three ages, roughly 10, 30,…
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Theater Review: AIN’T TOO PROUD–THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE TEMPTATIONS (Pre-Broadway Run at the Ahmanson in Los Angeles)
MAGIC IN THE MUSIC Sometimes jukebox bio-musicals get so caught up in the fame and fortune of the journey that they miss the creative passion that is the true force driving most artists forward. Happily, Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations at the Ahmanson Theatre puts the music front and center,…
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Theater Review: JEWS, CHRISTIANS AND SCREWING STALIN (Matrix Theatre in Los Angeles)
RED SCARE IN BROOKLYN I was at a dinner party in New York once and met a 97-year-old woman who embodied a kind of Upper West Side left-wing glamour I find intoxicating. She had grown up in a family of Jewish intellectuals and recounted terrible tensions at the dinner table. “I was a socialist,” she…
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Theater Review: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (The Old Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre)
AND NOW, WITH FURTHER ADO… Not only is it one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, but Much Ado About Nothing contains a favorite character: Dogberry. This bumbling constable arrives much later in the play than the famous sparring couple Beatrice and Benedick, and adds an enormous amount of comic energy to a play that is already awash…
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Theater Review: PARADISE – A DIVINE BLUEGRASS MUSICAL COMEDY (Ruskin Group Theatre)
THE ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF A FOR-PROFIT PROPHET There are many pleasures on display in the newest incarnation of the bluegrass musical Paradise, which has been in development for over five years. Now at Ruskin Group Theatre, this is the third version I’ve seen in the show’s journey, and the most fully staged. The story is…
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Theater Review: A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE (Coronado Playhouse in San Diego)
A STORY OF IMPORTANCE Unlike manipulative Broadway machines such as Priscilla and Kinky Boots, which shove issues down our throats, the societal consequences for a homosexual in A Man of No Importance resonate more because the story follows a closeted man who compensates for his restrictive 1964 Dublin atmosphere by taking pride in other areas of his life — namely…
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Theater Review: END OF THE RAINBOW (Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach)
THE LEGEND THAT GOT AWAY No, this show isn’t how fans want to remember Judy Garland at the bittersweet end. End of the Rainbow, Peter Quilter’s sardonic salute to a star on the skids, is a sometimes-sadistic portrait of an imploding diva. A festering production at Laguna Playhouse, Quilter’s retro take on “Little Girl Blue”…
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Theater Review: HAIRSPRAY (San Diego Musical Theatre at Horton Grand Theatre)
EVEN WHEN YOU’RE HAIR CAN’T HOLD UP, THIS MUSICAL CAN To say you like Hairspray really doesn’t cut it. Do you mean the 1988 John Waters film starring Devine and newcomer Ricki Lake? Or maybe you mean the 2003 Tony winner for “Best Musical,” which also yielded Harvey Fierstein a Tony for his role as…
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Concert Preview: GREGORY PORTER AND SAVION GLOVER (with Vince Mendoza at the Hollywood Bowl)
OLDIES AND TAP: YOU’D BE NUTS TO MISS THIS CONCERT Jazz singer Gregory Porter certainly has amassed an impassioned and appreciative audience of all ages and races. But ever since double Grammy-winning composer, actor, and soul, jazz, and gospel song stylist released his latest Blue Note recording, Nat “King” Cole & Me, he cemented himself…
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Film and Music Review: STAR WARS IN CONCERT (Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl)
MAY THE HORNS BE WITH YOU As difficult as it may be to tear your eyes away from the giant screen at the Hollywood Bowl, try to espy the LA Phil brass section during the climactic battle scene of Star Wars: A New Hope, which plays this week in rep with Empire Strikes Back. Bring your…
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Theater Preview: THE MOST HAPPY FELLA (Musical Theatre West in Long Beach)
ABBONDONZA If ever there was a reason to say, “Absolutely, positively, do not miss this event,” this is it. For one night only on Sunday August 19 at 7pm, Musical Theatre West’s Reiner Reading Series offers the final show of its eighth and final season, Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella. While it’s been an incredible…
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Theater Review: BAREFOOT IN THE PARK (The Old Globe in San Diego)
THE GLOBE MAKES IT LOOK LIKE A WALK IN THE PARK Barefoot in the Park, Neil Simon’s second Broadway hit after Come Blow Your Horn, played a staggering 1,530 performances in its initial run, winning a Tony Award for director Mike Nichols. It’s somewhat inconceivable that a play this frothy, containing less pathos than Simon’s…
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Theater Review: WAITRESS (National Tour)
SWEET AS PIE, FLAKY AS CRUST, OR BOTH? If the heat in the kitchen is getting you down, you may want to head on over to Hollywood, where the Broadway hit Waitress arrived last night for a limited four-week at the Pantages Theatre August 3-26, 2018, and then continuing on tour after that through the…
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