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Theater Review: HANSEL & GRETEL BLUEGRASS (24th Street Theatre)
FAIRY TALE THEATER Debbie Devine and Jay McAdams are a theater couple. They’ve been putting up shows for a long time. If you and your love dream of having your own space and staging your own stuff, you’d do well to study 24th Street Theatre. One of the first things you’ll notice is that it’s…
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Theater Review: FUN HOME (National Tour)
LEARNING TO LOVE FROM WHAT DAD DIDN’T DO Dedicated memory-mongering, the 2013 chamber musical Fun Home–based on Alison Bechdel’s 2006 semiautobiographical graphic novel–is a worthy coming-out. We get the inside portrait of a lesbian daughter who learns more than she wanted from her gay dad. With serviceable songs by Jeanine Tesori and persuasive lyrics and…
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Theater Review: HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (National Tour)
THE WINNER BY AN INCH Not long into its original run at Jane Street Theatre Off-Broadway in 1998, a cult following had already been firmly entrenched for Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It was the West Village’s answer to Rent (1996), which gave a musical voice to gays, AIDS, homelessness, and a disaffected generation. Hedwig…
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Theater Review: NEWSIES (National Tour at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre)
THERE’S GOOD NEWSIES AND BAD NEWSIES Winner of two 2012 Tonys for best score and choreography, the rampaging romp called Newsies is mediocre material wrapped up in a special delivery. It comes from the Disney dreamers of Disney Theatrical Productions who fleshed out The Lion King, Mary Poppins, et al. from their original film counterparts. This screen-to-stage adventure…
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Theater Review: THE SPONGEBOB MUSICAL (Pre-Broadway World Premiere, Oriental Theatre in Chicago)
BIKINI BOTTOM HITS THE HEIGHTS Upfront confession: I’ve never seen Nickelodeon’s 17-year-old SpongeBob SquarePants animation series. But my ignorance of this aquatic Sesame Street and its fishy fantasies (happily enlightened by two knowledgeable theater companions) actually helps to objectively judge the self-sustaining entertainment value of The SpongeBob Musical. Can this confection, now in a pre-Broadway…
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Theater Review: THE SOUND OF MUSIC (National Tour)
EV’RY MOUNTAIN GETS CLIMBED AGAIN It’s fitting that Rodgers and Hammerstein’s final collaboration is a tribute to the art and craft they served so well’”music and singing. Like Mary Poppins, convent girl Maria Rainer is a very nice nanny (minus umbrella) who teaches by example and uses play to build courage and confidence. Fraulein Rainer…
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Theater Review: 42ND STREET (National Tour at Pantages Theatre Hollywood)
THE LAND OF 10,000 TAPS Call us saps or suckers but we can’t, it seems, get enough of “The Understudy Who Becomes A Star.” Not when the sweet and satisfying story is stuffed with thrills like “Lullaby of Broadway” and “Young and Healthy.” Some clichés justify themselves, if only because nothing less than hokey can…
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Theater Review: CHICAGO (National Tour at Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago)
CORRUPTION: MORE FUN WHEN CHOREOGRAPHED Now in its twentieth year, this slimmed-down, near-concert version of Kander and Ebb’s cynical and enthralling musical features, as the smoothly lying lawyer Billy Flynn, John O’Hurley (J. Peterman in Seinfeld and a fixture on Dancing with the Stars. (He last appeared in the show in the 2011 tour which…
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Theater Review: BULLETS OVER BROADWAY (National Tour at PrivateBank Theatre in Chicago)
AS FUNNY AS A PUNCH ON THE JAW Call it a comic “war of the worlds.” It’s the tabloid-trashy tale of a Broadway show that is literally “under the gun.” As the title suggests, Woody Allen and Douglas McGrath’s 1994 film Bullets Over Broadway depicted a forced marriage between the Mob and Manhattan, specifically a…
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Theater Review: RIVERDANCE (20th Anniversary Tour)
TWENTY YEARS OF HARD-HEELED HOOFING What Stomp delivered through percussive street-dancing, Forever Tango gave to Argentina’s national cooch dance, and A Chorus Line and 42nd Street did for tap, Riverdance breathtakingly offers Irish dance and its cultural spin-offs. Wowing rapt crowds at Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre in its 20th anniversary world tour, this high-hoofing extravaganza can…
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Theater Review: AN ACT OF GOD (Ahmanson Theatre)
EVEN GOD CAN’T SAVE THIS FROM ITSELF Dear God (if I may quote Alice Walker): What’s going on with the theater these days? Oh, that’s right, you already know. In fact, you’re appearing on stage at the Ahmanson in the guise of TV’s Will & Grace star Sean Hayes, whose name actually is placed over your…
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Theater Review: GOTTA DANCE (Pre-Broadway World Premiere at Bank of America Theatre in Chicago)
SENIOR RUSH No, despite the title, Gotta Dance, a world premiere at Chicago’s Bank of America Theatre, is no musical homage to Gene Kelly or MGM’s musicals. It’s a true-life, feel-good salute to sexagenarian (and older) hoofers who deserve’”and get’”a second chance to literally kick their heels and make a splash. Based on the real-life case…
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Theater Review: THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY (U.S. National Tour)
HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR BRIDGES? Given Marsha Norman’s awkward and dispiriting adaptations for The Secret Garden (1991) and The Color Purple (2005), the most surprising, but not the best, element of the musicalized version of The Bridges of Madison County is her libretto. Neither is Jason Robert Brown’s score the greatest thing on stage at the Ahmanson Theatre, where this short-lived…
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Theater Review: CARRIE: THE KILLER MUSICAL EXPERIENCE (Los Angeles Theatre)
GET CARRIE’D AWAY The key words in the title Carrie: The Killer Musical Experience are Killer Experience. Director Brady Schwind has taken a forever-troubled musical based on source material which probably should have never been musicalized and turned it into one of the most blazingly memorable and, yes, killer experiences you may ever have in…
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Theater Review: MOJADA: A MEDEA IN LOS ANGELES (Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades)
BORDERING ON TRAGEDY There is a lot to like about playwright Luis Alfaro’s Mojada, a modern retelling of Medea which sets the main character as an undocumented immigrant and seamstress in the East L.A. neighborhood of Boyle Heights. At its best moments, this Euripides redux offers remarkable insight into both the harrowing and promising aspects…
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Theater Review: SONDHEIM UNSCRIPTED (Impro Theatre at the Falcon Theatre in Burbank)
RECREATION My editor and I didn’t toss a coin to see who would write the review – he’s smarter than that; he wrote a very nice preview piece, the kind I find very difficult, and that was that. Neither one of us wanted to write a review because we’re out of words to describe Impro…
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Theater Review: UP HERE (La Jolla Playhouse)
THERE’S NOTHING GOING ON UP HERE It’s an idea whose time has already come this summer, and with far superior results. In fact, the character of Lindsay, a t-shirt designer who has fallen for the analytical nerdy computer whiz Dan, mentions on their first date the enormously successful Disney’¢Pixar film Inside Out, which chronicles the…
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Theater Review: ALWAYS…PATSY CLINE (Sierra Madre Playhouse)
A FINE CLINE Patsy Cline couldn’t be more fondly or accurately recalled than by Cori Cable Kidder in Robert Marra’s production of Always…Patsy Cline, the oft-produced 1990 paean to the once and future crossover country icon who made audiences “fall to pieces.” Written and originally directed by Ted Swindley, this tribute—equal parts play, concert and…
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Theater Review: BENT (Mark Taper Forum)
DACHAU DELIVERANCE TO THE MAX More than six million Jews were slaughtered by Nazis. When Martin Sherman wrote Bent in 1979, the yellow star that emblazoned the clothing of Jews was well-known, but history had yet to add “We shall never forget” to the image of a pink triangle, the insignia used to identify the…
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Theater Review: ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL (Stage Left Theatre at Theater Wit)
AN OFFER HE CAN’T REFUSE It’s easy to dislike this alleged 511-year-old comedy. All’s Well That Ends Well (originally Love’s Labors Won) is the wrong title: It should be “The End Justifies The Means.” The end is for the sadly smitten Helena to successfully fornicate with Bertram, her attractive and worthless spouse. The means is…
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