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Theater Review: JURASSIQ PARQ: A MUSIQAL PARODY (Oasis)
I HAVEN’T BEEN THIS GAGGED AND CLAWED SINCE STEAMWORKS ON A SATURDAY NIGHT Summer is the perfect time to flock to theaters for campy escapist joy, and Oasis SF and producer D’Arcy Drollinger are delivering exactly that with Jurassiq Parq—a hilariously silly and campy “musiqal parody” of the blockbuster 1993 film. Created by the multi-talented…
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Theater Review: THE DOG LOG (Broadwater Studio)
A DUPLEX THAT’S GOING TO THE DOGS Those who flocked to the “Sunshine State” during the population boom of the 1920s and ’30s, were mostly “easterners” who had only known tenement living, cut off from the world outside on the upper floors of some aging brownstone and reduced to the numbers of their apartment door….
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Theater Review: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM (MadKap Productions at Skokie Theatre)
A FITFULLY AMUSING THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM IN SKOKIE A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a glorious farce, a 20th-century construction based on the characters and situations from the works of the old Roman playwright Plautus. The book is by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart (who…
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Theater Review: THE GARBOLOGISTS (Gloucester Stage)
A TRASH-TALKING ODD COUPLE The Garbologists opens with a few seconds of complete darkness and the clang and grind of machinery before two bright headlights move straight toward the audience. Then the lights come up on what was previously an empty street to reveal two New York City Sanitation Department workers in the cab of…
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Theater Review: DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS (Sonoma Arts Live Theatre Company at Andrews Hall)
CON ME IF YOU CAN: SCOUNDRELS STEAL THE SHOW IN SONOMA I was a bit reluctant to review this musical based on that hilarious 1988 film with Steve Martin and Michael Caine as Lothario con men in the south coast of France. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has had success from Broadway to Brisbane. Can a small…
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Theater Review: STEEL MAGNOLIAS (Lamplighters Community Theatre in San Diego)
THE MAGNOLIAS MAY BE STEELY, BUT THEY STILL SMELL PRETTY SWEET For over 80 years, Lamplighters Community Theatre has been providing an important role in San Diego’s theatre scene: creating a space for non-professional actors to come together to do quality work at affordable ticket prices. Part of their sweet spot is their knack for…
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Theater Review: MY FAIR LADY (San Francisco Playhouse)
GET ME TO SF PLAYHOUSE ON TIME: MY FAIR LADY CHARMS UNION SQUARE Every summer, San Francisco Playhouse puts on a classic blockbuster musical that runs from early July into September. It’s an unbeatable gambit taking advantage of the tourist traffic in the Union Square district. Jillian A. Smith This year’s offering is a stunning…
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Theater Review: CIRCUS ABYSSINIA: ETHIOPIAN DREAMS (Chicago Shakespeare Theater)
BIG TOP, BIGGER DREAMS: ETHIOPIA FLIPS THE SCRIPT AT NAVY PIER (OR “GRAVITY? NEVER HEARD OF IT!”) Despite their being a part of nearly everyone’s lives, dreams hold a never-ending fascination in our psyches and imaginations. And all around the world, they routinely act as a fuel that focus and power our aspirations. One of…
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Theater Review: YANKEE DAWG YOU DIE (East West Players)
ACTING WHILE ASIAN: A SURVIVAL GUIDE IN ONE ACT Kung Fu, Sidekick, Wise Man, Dead: The Hollywood Starter Pack. Philip Kan Gotanda’s Yankee Dawg You Die pulls no punches in its portrait of two Asian-American actors navigating Hollywood’s tangled machinery—one a hardened veteran, the other freshly idealistic. Set in the late 1980s but pulsing with…
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Theater Review: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (Kick-Off of the 2025 North American Tour at Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre)
THE BUSINESS OF NOSTALGIA: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST ALL DRESSED UP WITH NOWHERE TO GO Last Thursday night, a rainy July 10th, ensconced in the stunningly beautiful Cadillac Palace Theatre, I finally took in a Disney stage musical. Fittingly, it was the very first one they’d produced in 1994, Beauty and the Beast. While a…
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Theater Review: FALSETTOS (Palm Canyon Theatre)
A man leaves his wife to start a relationship with another man. Together, the two men—Marvin and his new partner, Whizzer—try to co-parent Marvin’s twelve-year-old son, Jason, alongside Marvin’s ex-wife, Trina. Over time, Whizzer becomes a close friend to Jason, while Trina begins a relationship with Marvin’s psychiatrist, Mendel, whom she eventually marries. They are…
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Theater Review: EVITA (Reagle Music Theatre of Greater Boston in Waltham, MA)
ANOTHER FAMOUS BALCONY SCENE Romeo and Juliet isn’t the only play with a famous balcony scene. The London revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Evita has attracted attention for the decision to stage the signature song “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” on a balcony outside the London Palladium, disappointing many in the ticket-buying…
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Theater Review: A WRINKLE IN TIME (Arena Stage)
CAST TRAVELS LIGHT-YEARS, SCORE FINDS A NEW UNIVERSE, THE BOOK GETS LOST IN SPACE. CAN THE WRINKLES IN THIS NEW MUSICAL BE IRONED OUT? Round about a lifetime ago, in the shadow of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War, Madeleine L’Engle wrote a fable for precocious children that she was pretty sure no one…
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Theater Review: HEATHERS THE MUSICAL (New World Stages)
A DARKLY HILARIOUS REVIVAL The 1989 cult classic film, Heathers (if you haven’t seen it, it’s a friggin’ must) preceeded the film Mean Girls (2004) by fifteen years. Later, it was adapted into a stage musical in 2014, four years before the Plastics sang their way onto Broadway. Now, eleven years later, Heathers the Musical…
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Theater Review: BIG TIME TOPPERS (Theatre L’Acadie at Redtwist Theatre in Chicago)
SEND IN THE CLOWNS Farce is not a style of performance one sees too often these days and that’s probably because it is extraordinarily difficult to pull off, requiring complete commitment from cast and crew to its sensibilities, razor-sharp comic timing, physical comedy chops, and tight pacing and direction. There’s a lot that can go…
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Theater Review: PUMP UP THE VOLUME (Los Angeles Premiere of A New Rock Musical)
A NEW MUSICAL HAS ARRIVED TO PUMP UP PATRONS FOR DECADES TO COME Allen Moyle’s 1990 film Pump Up the Volume starred Christian Slater as Mark, a graceless, socially awkward high school student in Phoenix, Arizona, a town so conservative that even the Saguaro cactus wore Bush/Quayle campaign buttons. Unable to fit in, Mark resorts…
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Theater Review: PIPPIN (Jaxx Theatricals)
PIPPIN GOES HOLLYWOOD Pippin, with music and lyrics supplied by Stephen Schwartz, and book penned by Roger O. Hirson (who was best known for writing the script to the war flick The Bridge at Remagen) may have been an oddity when it opened on Broadway in 1972, given the choice of the central character, but…
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Theater Review: THE 70s! THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE ALBUM (Lamb’s Players Theatre in Coronado)
A GREAT 70s TRIBUTE HAS VINYL-LY ARRIVED Normally, calling a show predictable isn’t a compliment. But when I heard that director Kerry Meads and musical director Vanda Eggington were once again teaming up for a musical tribute, The 70s! The Golden Age Of The Album, I predicted a joyous celebration of feel-good music, performed by…
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Theater Review: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company)
STILL PLENTY TO DESIRE A Streetcar Named Desire was one of the greatest hits for playwright Tennessee Williams. Born in 1911, he didn’t have any major successes until The Glass Menagerie premiered on Broadway in 1945. While that certainly put him on the theatrical map, it was Elia Kazan’s 1947 staging of Streetcar that truly…
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Theater Review: ONE MAN POE (Stephen Smith on Tour)
A MONODRAMA OF SHADOWS AND SHATTERED SANITY Stephen Smith’s One Man Poe at the Broadwater Studio comes in two one-hour servings, with each serving offering two of the author’s most macabre and disturbing pieces. The first part consists of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” The second part comprises “The Black Cat”…
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