Regional

HOW’S THE  WITHER? (JUST IN CASE YOU WERE  WUTHERING…) A complicated nineteenth-century story of love and retaliation, featuring 13 characters, could be tough  to pull off in ninety minutes in any case. For playwrights and co-performers Phil Johnson and Omri Schein, the challenge is heightened by the pair opting to play all thirteen in their two-man show. It…

GRILLED TO PERFECTION North Coast Rep’s rendition of James Valcq and Fred Alley’s simple musical The Spitfire Grill demonstrates two things: the redemptive power of acceptance, forgiveness and love; and just  how a magnificent company  can turn  a  problematic piece  into a powerhouse of a revival. Released from prison, Percy (Aurora Florence) seeks a new life in Gilead, Wisconsin, a…

“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings.” Now through July 15, 2017, Robert Sean Leonard (TV’s House, The Old Globe’s  Pygmalion) returns to the Old Globe in San Diego to take on the title role of one of the greatest of Shakespeare’s towering cycle of…

DAMN, YANKEES DOESN’T HIT IT OUT OF THE PARK While many of Jerry Ross and Richard Adler’s songs from the 1955 Broadway classic hold up rather well, Douglass Wallop and George Abbott’s book isn’t tremendously captivating by 2017 standards. Oh, it’s a  likeable-enough musical, but only a stellar production  can sell this aging staple. San Diego Musical…

WHAT A SHOCK In 1845, German psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann wrote a disturbing but popular children’s book featuring the perils of children who misbehave. A  century and a half later, in 1998, the popular book was  adapted for the stage by Improbable, a London theater company, and The Tiger Lillies,  a cult British musical trio; together, they  brought the stories…

AN  IMAGINARY IMAGINARY Back in March, Roundabout Theatre announced their plans for 2017. After collaborating with Fiasco Theater on their acclaimed paired-down production of Into the Woods in 2015, Roundabout  has named Fiasco their company in residence. This means Fiasco will be provided with an artistic home and full use of Roundabout’s  resources to continue developing their work….

OLD MAN, OLD MOON, OLD GLOBE Having seen  PigPen Theatre Co.’s The Old Man and the Old Moon in Chicago, I can guarantee that gem of a theater experience will  gently pluck at your heartstrings – just as it did with a successful run Off-Broadway’s Gym at Judson. Opening May 13 and running through June 18, 2017…

A SUBURBAN WEST SIDE STORY Sadly, hate conquers all in West Side Story, but the love we see and feel can hold its own. Though over a half-century old, the Bernstein/Laurents/Sondheim/Robbins tour-de-force is, like its Shakespearean source, young as first love. You don’t revive it, you detonate it, as happens repeatedly in La Mirada’s mixed…

A FIRST  DATE THAT GOES WELL The device of having characters receive advice from a conscience or someone from their past is tried and true in musicals: They’re Playing Our Song‘s Vernon’s gets help from his Greek Chorus “boys”; Grease‘s Frenchy is (beauty)schooled by the Teen Angel; and now,  First Date‘s Aaron and Casey get input, helpful…

IT’S WORTH SINGING ABOUT GETTING OLDER Perhaps the only thing worse than getting older is thinking about it. So when a nascent theater company puts on a show’”a musical no less’”about the  fear and associated feelings regarding  aging (and the odds of becoming what is referred to as a “Geeze”), some theatergoers may understandably be hesitant to…

A LONG RIDE ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In today’s world of seeing T-shirts in fancy restaurants, it’s almost difficult to envision that, once upon a time, people would dress to the nines for a 16-hour train ride, being attended to by spiffy stewards, waiters, and chefs. But  that’s exactly what hundreds of New York’s elite did…

SUPER SQUIRREL Flora &  Ulysses, the best play I’ve seen all year,  begins when  Flora Buckman, a  ten-year-old self-proclaimed  ­“natural-born cynic”, saves the life of a squirrel using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. You see, the squirrel had been sucked into a neighbor’s Ulys ­ses Super-Suction, Multi-Terrain 2000X vacuum cleaner. When the squirrel is revived, it has been blessed with both human thought…

I COULD WATCH 9 TO 5 24/7 In 1980, an unlikely film trio, Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton, was the center of  9 to 5,  an amusing feminist romp with lovable characters. Years later, Patricia Resnick took the screen play she co-authored and created the book for the stage version, featuring   new music by Parton,…

A WHALE OF A PRODUCTION Moby Dick, Herman Melville’s 1851 whale of a tale (or tale of a whale), is as unsinkable as its title cetacean. It’s never been more so than in Lookingglass Theatre Company’s sensation staged and adapted by David Catlin. After an extended sell-out run in Chicago, Catlin now brings this thrilling…

BAD JEWS MAKES FOR GOOD THEATRE, BUT OY SUCH AGITA There’s an old joke: “What do you get if you put three Jews in the same room?   Four opinions.” In Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews, the joke is elevated to a new level when the three strikingly different people are two brothers, Liam and Jonah, and…

MOST  OF THE WAY Sick of politics? Miss the days when strongarm politicians got things done with blackmail, threats, and tit-for-tat backroom deals? Well, politics are exciting and inspiring again in Robert Schenkkan’s 2012 All the Way, which opened last weekend at South Coast Rep. The 3-hour docudrama begins on the day of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s…