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Theater Review: BRIGADOON (Pasadena Playhouse)
BRIGADOON EARNS ITS MIRACLE Pasadena Playhouse’s revelatory new production treats Lerner and Loewe’s fable not as nostalgia, but as a question of faith, sacrifice, and survival Dormancy is a survival strategy. Seeds use it. Bears use it. A village in the Scottish Highlands uses it in Brigadoon, which premiered on Broadway in 1947 — the…
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Comedy Review: THE ARABISH IMPROV SHOW (The Arabic Theater Company / Balance Arts Center)
LOST IN TRANSLATION? NOT TONIGHT The Arabic Theater Company blends improv chaos, bilingual comedy, and cultural specificity into a fun night of laughs First, take eight appealing actors, all with roots in the Arab world. Add fluency in both English and Arabic. Throw in considerable comedic talent and a desire to “amplify Arab voices” in…
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Theater Review: THE HULA-HOOPIN’ QUEEN (Young People’s Theatre Chicago)
HOOP DREAMS IN HARLEM Young People’s Theatre closes its season with a charming, energetic celebration of childhood, friendship, and community In The Hula-Hoopin’ Queen, the stakes are very low; to an adult, that is. But if you’re a 10-year-old girl like Kameeka (or her friend Jamara), being crowned the Hula-Hoopin’ Queen of 139th Street is…
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Off-Broadway Review: THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD (J2 Spotlight Musical Theater Company at AMT Theater)
WHO KILLED EDWIN DROOD? WELL, IT’S UP TO THE AUDIENCE The musical whodunit is done with panache by the reliable J2 Musical Theater Company The unpleasant fact about life is that everybody dies. In 1870, before completing his last novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood, in which the title character dies—apparently by murder—the author himself…
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Theater Review: EXIT THE KING (A Noise Within / Pasadena)
LONG LIVE THE ABSURD Michael Michetti’s visually stunning staging transforms Ionesco’s meditation on death into a thing of eerie beauty It is rare, nowadays, when a play by the Romanian Godfather of absurdist theatre, Eugène Ionesco, is staged, and rarer still when it is staged well. That happy convergence can be currently experienced at the…
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Theater Review: A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE (The Bent / Palm Springs)
A LITTLE SHOW WITH A VERY BIG HEART The Bent’s first musical proves this company is ready for anything The Bent, Palm Springs’ queer theatre company, closes its fourth season with its first musical, A Man of No Importance — and what a debut it is. This intimate chamber piece proves the company’s trademark excellence…
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Theater Preview: AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’ (Ebony Rep / Nate Holden Performing Arts Center / Los Angeles)
FATS WALLER’S JOINT IS JUMPIN’ AGAIN Ledisi and an all-star cast bring the Harlem Renaissance roaring back to life at the Nate Holden Center Ain’t Misbehavin’ is a sizzling celebration of Fats Waller’s music—songs that he made famous in a career that ranged from uptown clubs to downtown Tin Pan Alley to Hollywood and concert…
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Theater Review: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (TUTA Theatre / Chicago)
GUILT TRIP TUTA Theatre turns Dostoevsky’s sprawling masterpiece into a feverish psychological horror story of conscience, damnation, and salvation Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterpiece Crime and Punishment runs around 700 pages and involves close to two dozen significant characters. TUTA Theatre’s production uses as its text a 2003 adaptation by Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus: this version…
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Theater Review: A ROOM IN THE CASTLE (Moxie Theatre / San Diego)
THE WOMEN LEFT OFFSTAGE Lauren Gunderson reclaims Shakespeare’s sidelined women in a sharp, emotionally intelligent companion piece to Hamlet The women in Hamlet exist largely to reflect Hamlet’s choices and actions. They are little more than props to propel the plot, with no backstory or motivation. Playwright Lauren M. Gunderson clearly feels frustration at this…
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Theater Review: OCTET (Raven Theatre / Chicago)
LOG OFF AND SING Dave Malloy’s brilliant chamber musical turns doomscrolling, loneliness, and internet addiction into something unexpectedly humane [Editor’s Note (June 2026): Raven Theatre’s production of Octet, originally reviewed by Stage and Cinema in May, transfers intact to the Goodman Theatre for a limited engagement beginning July 15, 2026. DO NOT MISS.] ✦ ✦…
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Off-Broadway Review: THE PEOPLE VERSUS LENNY BRUCE (Cause Célèbre at Theatre Row)
A TRIAL FOR LENNY—AND SOMETIMES THE VIEWER A courtroom drama that probes language, censorship, and the cost of pushing boundaries Unique among the performing arts, standup comedy is the only craft that cannot be sharpened without an audience. And, ironically, the only performing art that we allow, even expect, to deeply offend. Who ever heard…
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LIGHTING ON A SHOESTRING: HOW INDIE THEATERS CAN UPGRADE THEIR STAGE LIGHTS WITHOUT BLOWING THE BUDGET
For small and mid-size theaters, keeping the lights on is more than a figure of speech. Older tungsten rigs gulp electricity, chew through gel rolls, and leave crews sweating under followspots that double as space heaters. The good news: you don’t have to choose between artistic ambition and the utility bill. With a targeted, fixture-by-fixture…
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Theater Review: BIRTHDAY CANDLES (Buffalo Theatre Ensemble / Glen Ellyn)
MAKING A LIFE, ONE BIRTHDAY AT A TIME A meditation on aging, loss, and the small rituals that shape a lifetime After leaving Buffalo Theatre Ensemble’s sweet little play Birthday Candles last Sunday, another story that also looks at the sweep of time soon rushed to mind: Thornton Wilder’s The Long Christmas Dinner, a play…
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LOKI – THE END OF THE WORLD TOUR (World Premiere at Lifeline Theatre / Chicago)
IT’S TIME TO RAGNARÖK ‘N’ ROLL An exuberant Norse rock opera with enough swagger to survive the apocalypse A corner of a decrepit night club greets you as you walk into Lifeline Theatre’s performance space. Shabby chandeliers hang from the ceiling. Tinsel and trash are everywhere. Above the instruments, a broken entablature hangs askew, with…
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Theater Review: PICASSO: LE MONSTRE SACRÉ (Odyssey Theatre Ensemble / Los Angeles)
THE MINOTAUR IN THE MIRROR A powerful performance anchors a portrait that never fully reveals its subject The journey of Picasso: Le Monstre Sacré to the Odyssey Theatre in L.A. is both convoluted and tragic. It began with Terri D’Alfonso (also spelled “Terry” in the program). An American with a long career in Italian Swiss…
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Theater Review: DARK LIBRARY: THE TIME MACHINE (After Hours Theatre Company)
The Salon at the End of the Century: The Cardinal Assumption of Dark Library H.G. Wells published The Time Machine in 1895, The Island of Doctor Moreau in 1896, The Invisible Man in 1897, and The War of the Worlds in 1898. Four books in four years, each one inventing a genre. He wrote them…
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Theater Review: SANCTUARY CITY (Chance Theater / Anaheim)
THE COST OF STAYING A rigorously observed production that grips in silence, even as the play leans toward explanation There is a language people invent when citizenship can vanish with a knock at the door. It moves sideways. It disguises itself as ordinary conversation. It turns omission into grammar. Martyna Majok’s Sanctuary City hears that…
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Theater Review: SWEPT AWAY (SpeakEasy Stage at Boston Center for the Arts)
ADRIFT, AND MORALLY AT SEA A haunting, musically rich survival tale that probes faith, labor, and the cost of living on Directed by Jeremy Johnson and driven by the highly listenable roots-inflected songs from The Avett Brothers (music director Paul S. Katz), this engrossing SpeakEasy Stage production of Swept Away, a New England premiere, tells a…
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Theater Review: ‘NIGHT, MOTHER (Redtwist Theatre / Chicago)
MOTHER KNOWS BEST— UNTIL SHE DOESN’T A devastating, clear-eyed revival that refuses comfort and lingers long after the lights go down I first watched ‘night, Mother, the Pulitzer-prize winning drama by Marsha Norman, when I was in my early teens. I remember being thoroughly absorbed, if slightly shocked, by its matter-of-fact discussion of suicide. Beyond…
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Theater Review: FREMONT AVE. (South Coast Repertory / Costa Mesa)
THE HOUSE THAT BUILT YOU A sweeping, structurally ambitious play that grips in the moment even as it searches for its final form There is a moment near the end of the first act of Fremont Ave. when George Plique, a music therapist who cannot stop composing, sits alone at a piano in a room…
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