San Diego

GOOD GOLLY, MISS DOLLY! Under Randy Slovacek’s direction for San Diego Musical Theatre, Hello, Dolly! festoons the theater with a cumulatively enchanting restoration of this infectious delight. So much that life fails to encourage, theater redeems—seldom more winningly than in  Hello, Dolly! Charismatic matchmaker Dolly Levi (Heidi Meyer) arrives in Yonkers in the late 1800s,…

LEARNING HOW TO SURVIVE IN THE DESERT Jon Robin Baitz‘s Other Desert Cities—which opened at Cygnet Theatre last weekend—portrays about 24 hours in the upscale home of the Wyeth home in Palm Springs, California, and it’s an emotional stunner. Baitz sets his play over a 24-hour period in 2004. All the action takes place in the…

Isn’t it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?    — John Leonard, American critic Appropriate won Branden Jacobs-Jenkins the 2024 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play on Broadway. The Tony committee chose well. The American dramatist has composed a scorcher, a ferocious dysfunctional family saga that will stagger…

ONCE UPON AN AMAZING TIME Once is back at the Lamb’s Players Theatre for an extended run through March 30, glorious news for area playgoers. This is one of the must-see musicals of the early 21st century, a rare production that finds power in simplicity and emotion in restraint. As an additional bonus, local audiences are…

IT’S WORTH WAITING UNTIL DARK Playwright Frederick Knott’s Wait Until Dark debuted on Broadway in 1966, set in the contemporary world of its time in Greenwich Village. Lamplighters is now presenting Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation, which moves the setting to 1944. Aside from this time shift and the removal of some minor characters, the storyline closely follows…

NO ONE EATS, BUT THERE’S PLENTY TO CHEW ON IN THE DETERMINEDLY DECEPTIVE BARBECUE Robert O’Hara has been a significant contributor to the American theater scene since his first play debuted in 1996. A Black dramatist, O’Hara has received a collection of awards and reward nominations for his idiosyncratic comedies about the American social scene….

YOU’LL BUY THIS HEART In my ninth-grade English class, Mr. Rozran taught that a short story, versus a novel, should aim to capture a small slice of life, leaving much of what happened before and after to our imaginations. That perspective came to mind while watching The Heart Sellers, a play that offers a focused,…

THESE CREATURES ARE DEFINITELY STIRRING UP HOLIDAY SPIRT AT LAMPLIGHTERS Ken Ludwig’s story begins with a homey Uncle Brierly (Christopher T. Miller) wanting to read to us the famous poem that this play is named after. Unfortunately for the frustrated fellow, he is repeatedly interrupted by a mouse (Matt Sayre) named Amos who keeps questioning…

ACTORS LOOKING FOR WORK: GOD BLESS THEM, EVERYONE! La Jolla Playhouse is presenting the world premiere of a play for the holiday season, and beyond, with the extensively titled Your Local Theater Presents: A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, Again. The playwright is Anna Ouyang Moench, an MFA graduate of the UC San Diego’s Department…

LITTLE WOMEN WITH A BIG PRESENCE Allen Knee took on a daunting task in creating a play from Louise Mae Alcott’s hefty 1868–69 two-volume novel, but he also cuts back the narrative for the musical version of Little Women with Jason Howland’s music and Mindi Dickstein’s lyrics, which opened on Broadway with Sutton Foster in…

A PLAY THAT RAISES THE ESCOBAR Pablo Escobar was a Colombian drug lord, narcoterrorist, and corrupt politician who founded and ran the deadly Medellín Cartel. Known as “the king of cocaine”, Escobar was one of the wealthiest criminals in history, reaching a net worth of close to thirty billion U.S. dollars by the time of…

YOU’LL BE GRINCHING FROM EAR TO EAR For the 27th year The Old Globe is presenting its hit musical Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, continuing its position as one of the essential entertainment attractions of the holiday season. Youngsters and adults will love it for the same reasons. It tells a great story…

EVERYTHING ODD IS NEW AGAIN Before ABC-TV made 114 episodes of the 1970-1975 sit-com The Odd Couple starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugma), there was the movie starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in 1968. But all of that followed the original Neil Simon play by the same name, which was a huge Broadway hit…