Palm Springs
(Coachella Valley)

Still impactful, The Boys in the Band, now playing at Palm Canyon Theater until April 21, is largely based on playwright Mart Crowley‘s own life in 1960s’ Manhattan. The 1968 play was a sensation Off-Broadway, won Tony for Best Revival of a Play in 2019 starring an all-gay cast, and was filmed twice. When the…

DAMN, IT’S GREAT Desert Theatricals hits another home run this weekend with their contagiously joyful production of Damn Yankees at Rancho Mirage Amphitheater running through Sunday, April 7th. I must confess, I never fully embraced the Damn Yankees phenomenon. Up until last night, I had not seen a full stage production. I had only seen…

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul. — George Bernard Shaw With Avenue Q, Mid-Century Moderns, and The Boy Band Project, Palm Springs’ newest professional theater group, Revolution Stage Company (RSC), has been knocking it out of the ballpark since it launched its inaugural…

NEW PLAY ELLIE SHOWS ITS UNDERBELLY Desert Ensemble Theater (DET) is one of the boldest and few Coachella Valley companies committed to creating new work and producing envelope-pushing plays. At the end of DET’s current season — it’s thirteenth — DET  executive director  Shawn Abramowitz and artistic director  Jerome Elliott Moskowitz will have commendably produced fourteen world premieres….

A CASE OF GREAT THEATER It is rare to see intimate, loving friendships between straight and gay men both in life and on stage. In A Case for the Existence of God, running at Dezart Performs through March 10, playwright Samuel D. Hunter masterfully crafts a narrative that defies stereotypes and societal norms, portraying a…

ALTERNATIVE FACTS This past weekend Desert Ensemble Theater kicked off 2024 with The Lifespan of a Fact, a poignant and funny play by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Jordan Farrell. Based on a book by Jim Fingal and John D’Agata, who detailed their personal experience preparing a magazine essay for publication in 2003, the play’s…

Cabaret  was and remains one of the boldest and most innovative experiments in the history of musical theater, a ravishing work that has neither lost its power nor its pertinence no matter what one does with it. (If you think you’ve seen  Cabaret  because you saw the movie, you don’t know this show.) With a book by  Joe Masteroff,  music…

HEARTBREAK AND HILARITY IN FULL DISPLAY Palm Canyon Theater has launched into 2024 with a revival of Del Shores’ uproarious and heartfelt Sordid Lives. The playwright himself introduced the show on Saturday evening, graciously acknowledging Palm Springs and recognizing the city’s integral role in the tremendous success of both the play and the movie adaptation….

WHAT A GREAT SHOW CAN MEAN TO YOU Dezart Performs kicked off 2024 this past Friday with a compelling production of Heidi Schreck‘s What the Constitution Means to Me. When I saw the direct-from-Broadway production at Mark Taper Forum in 2020 it stood as a profoundly relevant tour de force. Astonishingly, since then, we have…

AVENUE Q GETS AN A+ Avenue Q, the delightful musical comedy which affectionately lampoons  Sesame Street, opened last night to a packed house at Revolution Stage Company, and it’s a non-stop, positively adorable romp which will have you floating out of the theater, but the run is short, so don’t procrastinate to get seats. Songwriters Robert…

WHAT THE DICKENS? SCROOGED AGAIN Pretty much everyone knows the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, the lonely miser in 1800s London who is visited by three ghosts (four if you include Marley) urging him to change his ways, or face the consequences of an even lonelier life. The result is redemption and transformation just in time…

CAN’T SKATE AROUND IT: IT’S THE SCRIPT “Let’s Just Skate While We Still Can” — is this the moral of Summer Session with the Bones Brigade, now playing at CVRep through December 17th? Is it really? Does this play earn this last line of the evening? Akiyo Komatsu/DK, Ethan Zeph/Heath, Alex Michell/Lee Kudos to CVRep…

IT IS, INDEED, ONLY A PLAY; IT’S THE ENSEMBLE THAT MAKES IT MORE The Bent, in partnership with the Palm Springs Cultural Center, runs Terrence McNally’s It’s Only a Play for its final weekend this Thursday through Saturday. Go see it. The play unfolds on the opening night celebration for the Broadway premiere of Peter…

WITH MID-CENTURY MODERNS, FROTHY, PLAYFUL AND FUNNY ARE MORE THAN ENOUGH Written and nicely directed by Mark Christopher, Mid-Century Moderns is a light, breezy, funny and entirely enjoyable entertainment. Mid-Century Moderns is the musical adventures of Maryann Popecky, (Shannon Mary Dixon) a Wisconsin widow who want to move West for her dream job – a…