Regional

A CHARMING MUSICAL WITHOUT A VIEW Theatre lore maintains that creating a successful new musical for the stage is more difficult and trying than creating peace in the Middle East. Noticing the deficiencies is easy; fixing the flaws can lead to a nervous breakdown. Jeffrey Stock and Marc Acito teeter between enjoyably simplistic and disconcertingly…

THE TORTILLA CURTAIN RISES TO BIG APPLAUSE A frequently-used device in plot is to create two or more distinctively different characters and see how they function once they are thrown together (Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Odd Couple), but in Tortilla Curtain, the difference is the effect they have had on each other as…

FIREBIRD SWOOPS INTO SEGERSTROM In honor of Costa Mesa’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts’ 25th Anniversary Season, American Ballet Theatre will present the world premiere of Alexei Ratmansky’s production of Firebird, the classic 1910 Igor Stravinsky ballet, originally choreographed by Michel Fokine at the Ballets Russes in Paris. This event is not to be missed…

ODD CASTING CHOICE NEARLY SINKS SHOW There is a perplexing and ultimately infuriating casting choice in the Old Globe’s production of Anna Christie that nearly sinks Eugene O’Neill’s 1921 tale of two sea-faring men and the woman who comes between them. Nearly. There is enough fully-realized acting and truly breathtaking stagecraft (including a scene change…

A PARADE IS COMING TO TOWN In the NY Times, Christopher Isherwood stated that while the authors of Parade deserve credit for their fidelity to history and their ambition to probe a painful chapter in the American past, the true story of Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was lynched in Georgia in 1915 for…

3-D THEATRICALS MAKES QUITE A SOUND The 70MM, Panavision aerial shot of Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer and entourage trekking over the border into Switzerland in The Sound of Music (1965) may be impressive, but it pales in comparison to the final moments of 3-D Theatrical’s revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1959 audience pleaser. On a…

THEY’RE BA-A-A-A-A-CK Here’s the story: we are at  the 1958 Springfield High School senior prom, and the entertainment isn’t coming because  the leader of The Crooning Crab Cakes got busted for smoking around the girls’ lockers. Fortunately,  there is  a replacement four-girl group named The Marvelous Wonderettes who belt and rock sophisticated harmonies as they humorously grapple with adolescent…

WHEN RECOMMENDATIONS DON’T TURN OUT AS HOPED FOR Aaron Feldman, the charismatic, bright, and privileged protagonist of Jonathan Caren’s promising but highly unwieldy new play The Recommendation, reminds me of an old college chum. My friend wasn’t just privileged, he was over-privileged. While I worked three jobs to support myself through college, his parents kept…

THE SHOW ABOUT THE HAND THAT GIVES YOU THE FINGER I get a thrill when I think of the tourists who are milling about Old Town in San Diego. Exhausted from tchotchke shopping and sugary treats, they decide to take in a play at the incredibly lovely Cygnet Theatre. Most of these unsuspecting travelers have…

EXCELLENCE VS. HOKUM With Lonesome Traveler, a compendium of the golden years of American folk music, writer/director James O’Neil has developed a long-winded and incoherent revue that is more appropriate for a pledge drive on PBS than a stage. Almost 50 songs are beautifully warbled (at least 36 in their entirety!) by a multi-talented, incomparable…

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A GOOD STORY After winning two Tony awards in 2007 for book and lyrics of Spring Awakening, Steven Sater teamed up with the one-and-only Burt Bacharach to write some pop songs.     According to an L.A. Times article, the legendary composer told Sater that he dreamt they rented a theater…

CORNED BEEF TRASH The Great American Trailer Park Musical has a misleading superlative. The show mirrors A Tuna Christmas and Sordid Lives, in that it takes a humorous look at the goings-on of America’s trashy lower-middle class, yet these other shows are far superior in writing and character development.   The Rep’s solid production can not…

SWEET AND WITTY SPOOF IS A CURE-ALL FOR THE BLUES The playbill cover for Coronado Playhouse’s highly charming production of The Drowsy Chaperone describes it as “A Musical Within A Comedy,” which is partly true: it’s also both a take-off and homage to old-fashioned Broadway musicals (book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar and music…

YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN A trip to South Coast Rep is exactly what was needed to shake off the blues of this year’s morass of over-produced and/or over-written theater. The Trip to Bountiful, Horton Foote’s plaintive 1953 teleplay (adapted for Broadway and for the 1985 film with Geraldine Page), paints a picture of rural…

CYGNET’S GLASS MENAGERIE SPARKLES It is easy to see why Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie was an immediate hit when it debuted in 1944.   In an era of everyone keeping up appearances, hiding any real pains at home, personal struggles could make one feel painfully alone.   Williams gave the masses a chance to sneak a…