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Theater Review: LEGALLY BLONDE (Berkeley Playhouse / Berkeley)
BEND, SNAP, AND BELIEVE IN YOURSELF Berkeley Playhouse gives Elle Woods plenty of energy, heart, and high-octane dancing in a buoyant musical about refusing to be underestimated Berkeley Playhouse opens its 2026–27 season with Legally Blonde: The Musical, the stage adaptation of the popular 2001 movie starring Reese Witherspoon. With music and lyrics by Laurence…
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Theater Review: TEXAS SODOMY (Whitefire Theatre / Sherman Oaks)
A LANDMARK CASE GETS THE SITCOM TREATMENT A pivotal civil-rights case deserves sharper comedy and deeper drama than Howard Skora’s overstuffed retelling provides On September 17, 1998, a 911 caller claiming there was a weapons disturbance sent police into John Lawrence’s Houston apartment. Officers arrested Lawrence and Tyrone Garner under a Texas law criminalizing sex…
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Theater Review: THE GLASS MENAGERIE (Center REP / Walnut Creek)
THE FRAGILE THINGS WE CAN’T LEAVE BEHIND Center REP’s intimate revival finds the suffocating bonds of family at the heart of Tennessee Williams’ enduring memory play Center REP launches its 2026–27 season with Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, the 1944 classic that helped establish Williams as one of America’s great playwrights. Directed by Matt M….
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Theater Review: HANGMEN (Long Beach Playhouse)
GUILT IS SOMEONE ELSE’S BUSINESS Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy makes murder a profession, morality a technicality, and laughter increasingly uncomfortable Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen opens with a man about to be hanged and everyone fussing over procedure. It is 1963. James Hennessy insists the police have the wrong man. His executioner, Harry Wade, is unmoved. Harry…
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Theater Review: THE HUMANITIES (Victory Gardens Theater / Chicago)
FIVE MONOLOGUES IN SEARCH OF A PLAY A sharp, funny satire of academia wrestles with difficult questions—and nearly gets derailed by its sexual detours They’re back! After a four-year hiatus, during which time I’m sure some serious soul-searching was conducted, Victory Gardens Theater returns to the Chicago theater scene with The Humanities, a world premiere…
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Theater Review: BEGIN AGAIN (World Premiere Musical / The Old Globe / San Diego)
PREDICTABLE NEVER SOUNDED SO GOOD Terrific music, performances, and sheer good feeling make this familiar story hard to resist Sometimes a show really tears at your psyche, makes you question your beliefs, or exposes you to a new level of consciousness. This isn’t that show. Instead, this world-premiere musical will make you feel good almost…
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Theater Review: JEKYLL & HYDE (Kokandy Productions / Broadway Playhouse / Chicago)
KOKANDY UNLEASHES ITS HYDE A problematic musical gets a thrilling jolt of theatrical electricity from Kokandy’s powerhouse performers and audacious design Kokandy Productions’ remount of Leslie Bricusse and Frank Wildhorn’s Jekyll & Hyde with Broadway In Chicago has no problem filling the Broadway Playhouse stage with raucous, dangerous fun. Seeing Kokandy produce outside of their…
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Theater Review: MARISOL (Open Fist Theatre Company / Los Angeles)
WHEN THE APOCALYPSE LOSES ITS MAGIC José Rivera’s surreal vision of a world coming apart demands theatrical daring that this earthbound revival rarely delivers What would you do if you lived in the Bronx, God went senile, and your guardian angel left you to fight him with the other angels? This is the scenario of…
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Theater Review: THE VISIT (Pasadena Playhouse)
A TOWN LEARNS WHAT IT’S WORTH Darko Tresnjak’s blistering production watches Güllen purchase its way toward murder When the Burgomaster (mayor) of Güllen rises in his most solemn civic register and declares that his town would rather starve than have blood on its hands, Claire Zachanassian lets the speech hang. The richest woman in the…
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Theater Review: THE BIRTH OF THE PILL (TimeLine Theatre / Chicago)
AN EASY PILL TO SWALLOW The opening production of TimeLine’s first full season in its gorgeous new home in Uptown, the world premiere of Jessica Huang’s The Birth of the Pill, gets off to an inauspicious start. On Regina García’s lovely set, all warm earth tones and tourmaline tiles, a young woman, Ramona Delgado (María…
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Theater Review: A CASE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD (Rogue Machine / Los Angeles)
THE HUMAN INTEREST RATE A deeply affecting production makes its unrelieved sadness difficult to shake Kierkegaard shows up late in Samuel D. Hunter’s A Case for the Existence of God, now at Rogue Machine, delivered almost as a throwaway line by a mortgage broker named Keith. Proof of God, he says, isn’t something you build….
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Theater Review: DEAR EVAN HANSEN (Cygnet / San Diego)
YOU WILL BE WON OVER Cygnet delivers a moving, beautifully acted production with terrific voices Hooray for misunderstandings! Where would theatre be without them? And in Cygnet Theatre’s excellent production of Dear Evan Hansen, some serious misunderstandings rule. The specifics of high school senior Evan Hansen’s (Aiden Meyndert) personality quirkiness are not spelled out in…
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Theater Review: WILD CHILD (Laguna Playhouse)
ROUGHING IT This new musical still has considerable work to do Carl Jung called the work individuation: integrating the selves we invent with the self that has to live in the world. Wild Child shows it understands the idea in a single stage direction. Near the end, the teenage protagonist Rina finishes the song she…
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Theater Review: THE MAN WHO FELL WITH THE RAIN (Trap Door / Chicago)
NO MIRACLE HERE Moments of brilliance cannot make this uneven García Márquez adaptation cohere It has been raining for several days, and in a small house, a husband (Dan Cobbler) and wife (Laura Nelson) are freaking out about the health of their child. He has a fever that will not abate, and the wife believes…
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Theater Review: WITCH (Idle Muse / Chicago)
SCRATCH IT Silverman’s Jacobean reworking is hilarious, dark, and exhilarating How does one determine if an adaptation is a success? Does it require rigorous fidelity to the source material? What if it honors the spirit of the material but not its text? Or what if it just uses the bare bones of its source as…
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Theater Review: WATER FOR ELEPHANTS (National Tour / Los Angeles)
THE ELEPHANT IN THE MUSICAL Circus artistry and inventive puppetry soar where the musical itself falls short Water for Elephants, based on Sara Gruen’s bestselling novel, with a book by Rick Elice and music and lyrics by PigPen Theatre Co., opened Wednesday, September 9 at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre. The musical follows Jacob Jankowski (Zachary…
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REALISTIC PROP CIGARETTES ARE CHANGING THE WAY SMOKING IS ACHIEVED ON STAGE AND SCREEN
A small hand prop can affect performance, continuity, venue planning and the visual language of an entire scene A cigarette in a scene is rarely just a cigarette. It can fill an awkward silence, reveal nervousness, mark a period, establish status or give an actor a physical action while the meaning of a conversation shifts….
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Theater Review: THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB (Promethean Theatre Ensemble / Chicago)
THE CASE AGAINST AN EASY OUT A darkly funny, anxiety-inducing thriller loses its footing in the final stretch In the skies over Texas, a pregnant young woman called Nessa faints on a plane en route to New York. The plane is diverted to Dallas/Fort Worth, and she is rushed to the emergency room, where she…
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Off-Broadway Preview: IMITATION OF LIFE (The Shed / New York)
AN AMERICAN STORY GETS A NEW LIFE Lynn Nottage, John Legend, Whitney White, and Adrienne Warren take on a story that has been provoking America for nearly a century Some source material arrives onstage carrying more baggage than most shows acquire in a lifetime. Imitation of Life has had nearly a century to accumulate its…
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Theater Preview: A SLOW FIRE (Steep Theatre / Chicago)
HOME IS WHERE THE FIRE STARTS Steep Theatre opens its new home with the U.S. premiere of Simon Stephens’ post-apocalyptic drama What use is hope after the world has ended? That question sits at the center of A Slow Fire, the newest play by Tony and Olivier Award winner Simon Stephens, which will receive its…
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