Los Angeles

A GREAT STATE FAIR Corny? Completely! Simple and sentimental? Sure! Did I love it? You betcha! Rarely performed since its Broadway outing in 1996, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s frolicking farmyard musical will have you believing that happiness is just a thing called prize pig and perfect pickle (“She knows her way around a cucumber” is now…

PURE CONFIDENCE BY A NOSE Featuring a bright, pretty Tom Buderwitz set, Lower Depth Theatre Ensemble’s Pure Confidence is a chance to see something increasingly rare under Equity rules: a stageful of hot actors really close up, working hard and nailing it. From the front row (there are only three), William Salyers’ frightened eyes, Tamara…

PRINCE ON FIRE Chronicling the lurid and lamentable swashbuckles of a permanent ingenue, Pericles is a Book of Job for the Age of Reason. If the play were self-aware enough to be cynical, with its outrageous slings and arrows it could be a grandfather to Voltaire’s Candide. But Pericles doesn’t enjoy the season-anchoring repute of…

ACB’S BEGUILING  ABC’S OF BALLET On the 32nd floor of The BLOC building in downtown LA, a small gathering looks out at a twinkling cityscape through large windows, admiring the scene until a wavering note from a lute draws us  back into the room. Three musicians tune  Renaissance instruments’”lute, long tabor, and double-reeded curtal (or dulcian)’”as audience members…

COME SALUTE THE END OF AN ERA It’s a bit surreal, but the the theater community’s longest-running AIDS-related benefit is having its final fundraiser on Saturday May 13, 2017. The Southland Theatre Artists Goodwill Event (best known by its acronym S.T.A.G.E.) will present its 33rd  cavalcade of stars at the snazzy Art Deco-styled 1930 Saban Theatre…

THE LOVE CONTINUES [Editor’s Note: To celebrate the work being done on intimate stages in Los Angeles, the Center Theatre Group (CTG) is producing Block Party at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. CTG received 76 submissions from intimate theatre companies throughout the L.A. area. Each company was able to submit one production that opened between January…

AN ORIGINAL IDEA The late Antonin Scalia (1936-2016) was an important conservative voice on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1986  until his death. He was a loud-voiced proponent of the intellectual ideal of “originalism,” meaning that interpreting the U.S. Constitution (b. 1789) lies directly with what the framers meant at that time and that no “newfangled”…

IT’S TIME FOR S’MORE GROUNDLINGS Who doesn’t love sitting around a campfire scaring the crap outta some brat? Who doesn’t love canoe trips down a rocky  brook? Who doesn’t love that first crush on  a nubile  camp counselor? Who doesn’t love listening to Allan Sherman’s “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah”? Who doesn’t love watching a deranged lunatic  having his way…

FINAL WEEKEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD If you think the end of the world is scary, how about the end of a run of a terrific new play and you missed it? The Ovation-recommended Apocalypse Play closes up shop this weekend, and you definitely want to be around for the end. I know…

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS As a part of A Noise Within’s 25th Season, co-Artistic Director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott helms an extraordinary production of this 1964 hit musical, Man of La Mancha, adapted by Dale Wasserman from his 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote, which was adapted from Miguel de Cervantes’ 1605 Don Quixote. The timeless score…