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Theater Review: ANGELS IN AMERICA (Invictus Theatre Co.)
CHICAGO-BORN AND HEAVEN-SENT, THIS IS NOT A REVIVAL. IT’S A RECKONING. Angels in America is one of the greatest plays in the American theatre canon. Period. Tony Kushner created a two-part epic story of unforgettable characters, both lovable and despicable, that captures a moment in American history—the Ronald Reagan era—that changed our community forever. If…
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Theater Review: THE COLOR PURPLE (Goodman Theatre)
COLOR ME DISAPPOINTED I came to see the Goodman Theatre’s current production of The Color Purple with a complicated history. I devoured Alice Walker’s novel three times as a callow teenager and recoiled from Spielberg’s 1985 Disneyfied cinematic adaptation, abandoning the VHS midway through. Since then, The Color Purple has been adapted into a Broadway…
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Theater Review: THE MOONWALKERS: A JOURNEY WITH TOM HANKS (The Saunders Castle at the Boston Park Plaza)
FLY ME TO THE MOON… AND INTO HISTORY A song, a wish, a dream, a childhood astronaut fantasy in a family kiddie pool—Tom Hanks taps into all of it in The Moonwalkers, an amazing, enlightening, educational, and downright thrilling immersive experience about the NASA Space Program. Co-written and narrated by Hanks himself, it’s now showing…
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Theater Review: ONE MAN POE (Stephen Smith on Tour)
MADNESS MADE FLESH I’ve seen several performances of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and short stories over the years, but none compare to the artistry, intensity, and total immersion Stephen Smith brings to Poe’s descent-into-madness characters in One Man Poe at the 2025 Hollywood Fringe Festival. The production is divided into two one-hour shows, each featuring…
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Theater Review: TOM & ELIZA (TUTA in Chicago)
BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ What is theatre? This was the question that popped into my head as I took my seat in the tiny TUTA Theatre space in Chicago’s Ravenswood Manor neighborhood, ready to take in their production of Celine Song’s Tom & Eliza: a…
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Theater Review: TO BE LIBERATED (Hobgoblin Playhouse)
A REQUIEM FOR THE ERASED Written and directed by Soo Chyun, To Be Liberated is perhaps the most exquisite show the Hollywood Fringe has to offer. Running a mere half an hour, there is a clarity and brevity that complement each other while strengthening the production as a whole. It is August 15, 1945, the…
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Theater Review: THE JANEIAD (Old Globe in San Diego)
THE ODYSSEY, IN ASHES AND UPHOLSTERY The chair will not move. That is how we begin. In Anna Ziegler‘s The Janeiad, now in a quietly astonishing production at the Old Globe, which produced Ziegler’s The Last Match in 2016, a woman sits in a green armchair and does not get up. Not because of laziness….
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Theater Review: MOULIN ROUGE (2025 Touring Production)
CAN THIS SHOW LIVE UP TO THE MOVIE? YES, IT CAN CAN! The 2001 film Moulin Rouge told its La Bohème-like story with tremendous use of cinematography and computer animation, pulling off an other-worldliness while also portraying turn-of-last-century France. Without those skills to fall back on, musical playwright John Logan had his hands full in…
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Theater Review: BANANAS? (The Town Hall in NYC)
QUINTUPLE THREAT NYMPHIA WIND HAS MORE THAN BANANA APPEAL I’m a bad gay. I’ve only seen one or two episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race out of—how many seasons now? Seventeen! But after seeing Nymphia Wind’s pride-month blowout at Town Hall last night, June 26, I get the hype. The reigning queen of Season 16 isn’t…
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Theater Review: BULL IN A CHINA SHOP (Treehouse Collective)
BULLISH ON WOMEN’S EDUCATION With sharp, witty, and informative dialogue, Bryna Turner’s Bull in a China Shop offers a fascinating glimpse into the life and accomplishments of Mary Wooley (Linnea Lyerly), the little-known and yet highly influential president of Mount Holyoke College from 1900 to 1937. Wooley transformed a women’s seminary with an emphasis on…
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Theater Review: THE RESERVOIR (Geffen Playhouse)
SOBER TRUTHS AND SLIPPERY MEMORIES IN A COMIC, CHAOTIC QUEST FOR CLARITY Alcoholism and Alzheimer’s. What a combo. Sounds serious, right? They both are, of course. But in the hands of playwright Jake Brasch, The Reservoir at Geffen Playhouse pulls off a theatrical magic trick: a powerfully moving and poignantly funny play, melding millennial angst…
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Theater Review: GASLIGHT (Pacific Resident Theatre)
WHEN THE ONLY TENSION IS IN THE CORSET: GASLIGHT IS ALL DIM AND NO SPARK AT PRT Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play, Gas Light (now known as Gaslight) is a melodrama which follows a young woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing she is descending into insanity. This one-time taut psychological thriller is set in Victorian…
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Theater Review: THE LARAMIE PROJECT (Theatre Rhinoceros)
It’s been 25 years since the debut of the tour de force play known as The Laramie Project. It’s based on the 1998 brutal murder of Matthew Shepard, a 21 year old student at the University of Laramie Wyoming. The entire nation was shocked to hear how this young gay man was brutally beaten, tied…
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Theater Review: SHAKE IT AWAY: THE ANN MILLER STORY (Kayla Boye)
TAPS, TINSEL, AND TENACITY: KAYLA BOYE DAZZLES AS ANN MILLER Kayla Boye is a powerhouse performer whose ability to step inside the soul of her characters will astound you, beginning from her intimately revealing portrayal of legendary Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor at Fringe 2022 to her current tour-de-force performance as Hollywood Golden Age and Broadway…
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Theater Review: OKLAHOMA! (Cygnet Theatre in San Diego)
OKLAHOMA! RIDES AGAIN– THIS TIME WITH DEPTH IN THE SADDLE When gay playwright Lynn Riggs wrote the rather dark Green Grow the Lilacs, his eighth play, and saw it produced in 1931, it’s likely he never dreamed it would be turned into an upbeat musical that would still be hitting stages 94 years later. Thirteen…
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Theater Review: ANNUNCIATION (Word for Word & Z Space)
FROM CUBICLES TO CLARITY: A THEATRICAL GEM IN FOG CITY San Francisco’s Word for Word Theatre Company, known for its singular mission of staging short stories word-for-word—narration and all—returns with Annunciation, a semi-autobiographical tale by Lauren Groff. Presented in collaboration with Z Space, the story is a slow-burning meditation on reinvention, loneliness, and quiet transformation,…
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Theater Review: THE NINA VARIATIONS (Broadwater Studio)
SEAGULL INTERRUPTED An extraordinarily well-written play—and a perfect choice for the Hollywood Fringe—Steven Dietz’s 75-minute one-act, The Nina Variations, takes the final scene of Chekhov’s The Seagull—that charged, heartbreaking reunion between Nina and Treplev—and explodes it into 43 compact riffs, each a new lens on longing. Dietz isn’t attempting parody or pastiche; instead, he digs…
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Theater Review: A LETTER TO LYNDON B. JOHNSON OR GOD: WHOEVER READS THIS FIRST (SoHo Playhouse & Edinburgh Fringe)
WAR IS FOR CLOWNS Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland join the thrilling ranks of clown-trained performers (Julia Masli is another) reshaping the boundaries of theatrical storytelling. A Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First is an electrifying 65-minute performance that plays only through June 29 at the Soho Playhouse (formerly the…
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Theater Review: TALES OF THE ANCIENT EAST (Hudson Guild)
FIRE AND BRIMSTONE FATIGUE One must admire Antony Zioni for his aspirations with Tales of the Ancient East, which, regrettably, makes the failure of this production all the more lamentable. Tales of the Ancient East is a tribal experience. Entering the Hudson Guild Theatre one is confronted by an environment cloaked in a primitivism that…
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Theater Review: 52 PICK-UP (Broadwater Studio)
A GAME OF HEARTS PLAYED FACE DOWN There is no question that Ann Noble is one of the most talented actresses gracing the stages of Los Angeles. There are moments in her bitter-sweet, two-person clown show 52 Pick-Up at the Broadwater Studio, where this shines through. However, the show itself does not work. At the…
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